Agriculture Committee on Jan. 31st, 2019

[Vincent Lévesque]

Regarding funding for indigenous projects, I am setting up a plant and purchasing equipment, but there are issues. Since the assets of indigenous people living on reserve cannot be seized, they cannot obtain loans. When we want to obtain funding, we are often told to buy what we need and that we will be reimbursed later. That is often how programs work. We have to ask for loans, but since our assets can't be seized, putting up collateral for the loan is an issue. People want us to incorporate, but then we would lose all of our rights. There are several problems in this regard.

There might be other ways of doing things. We could, for instance, make direct payments to the suppliers as a guarantee. This would keep us from having to ask for bridge financing, which also costs money and is complicated, as it involves three levels of government: the provincial level, the federal one, and the band council.

There's no end to it. By the time we obtain authorizations from all of those levels of government, the government will have changed in the meantime, the funding will have run out, and everything will have to be done all over again. It's complicated and it's very slow, if you are trying to run a business. It's been seven years. I am patient, but I can't wait any longer. I'm going to die waiting.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Maybe this could be an offline conversation and not one for the committee, but I would be interested in testing that www.innovation.ca website. It's pretty new. If you put in your postal code, it will tell you all the government programs, provincially or federally. Is it working? Does it reach you where you need it in your business? Maybe we could follow up. I would be interested in having that conversation.

I have to go to the Northwest Territories. I was on the other side of your lake. I was in Yellowknife this summer. I was heading up to Eureka, on Ellesmere Island. I got a little bit of a flavour of the land up there. Until you see it, it's hard to appreciate.

Congratulations on your project, Ms. Milne. I'm very interested in the social innovation piece. We don't think about agriculture and social innovation, but you're talking about transforming small communities. As Mr. Berthold said, your report would be very interesting for us to see. It may not be strictly in agriculture, but could you comment on the social benefit you're trying to provide?

[Jackoline Milne]

Yes. What's happened is there's a criss-crossing between community sustainability and self-sufficiency, and commerce. What happens is that sometimes we're trying to advance the commerce of agriculture, but in the small, isolated communities that don't have access to markets, we need to focus more on resilience and sustainability. They could eventually move to producing a niche product that maybe could be exported, but right now the communities are in a dire situation. Let's help stabilize those food systems that are appropriate for the area, appropriate for the land and appropriate to the skills of the people. That's what we're doing.

It's going to look different. For the more remote and small, there's going to be a different system. If you're closer to a larger centre, then there could be more focus on the commerce. A little bit like a tailor-made suit is what we need to do.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Have you done enough work to get samplings of the barriers that the different types of communities might be facing, something we could include in our study?

[Jackoline Milne]

Absolutely. The barriers are, first of all, that we assume people in the communities have access to the same things we have. Most of the houses don't even have a tap on the outside of the house to support irrigating a garden. They do not have hardware stores. They do not have access to the most fundamental tools that we take for granted.

Another one that the other gentleman mentioned is that lots of the programs are structured so that you apply, you get approved, you must pay for it and then be refunded. If you are living at the poverty line, you do not have $3,000 or $4,000 to pay up front, to purchase the equipment and then be refunded. That's one of the things our project bridged.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Seed funding, a few thousand dollars, would make a big difference. It's not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Jackoline Milne]

Right. Exactly. How our organization was created is that we become the recipient. We purchase everything to give them.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right, the micro financing.

I don't know whether your Internet picture is better than ours, but you need more broadband up there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

Next we have Mr. MacGregor, for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Monsieur Gros Louis, I want to continue on the same topic you were talking about with Mr. Berthold. You were talking about some of the heritage varieties that exist in the traditional corns, beans and squashes.

When you go into today's supermarket, all we have is the yellow corn and the orange pumpkin. In domesticating many of these products for agricultural use, we have narrowed down the options that are available to many Canadians. You have talked about the role that first nations have traditionally played in trying to preserve these individual varieties.

I'm curious. Can you expand a little bit more on that subject, the important role that first nations play in making sure those heritage varieties still exist? Do you see some opportunities for trying to get some of these beautiful corns—I have a picture from your website of all of the different colours you have here—into more of the mainstream market? I think we're missing out so much when all we see in the major supermarkets is that yellow corn, but you have almost every single colour of the rainbow here. You have talked about the high nutritional value of some of those heritage varieties.

Can you expand a bit more on that, please?

[Michel Gros Louis]

It's a question that requires a long answer. To try to keep it short, however, there are seed keepers among the Iroquoian peoples in Ontario and Quebec who are secretly keeping their seeds alive. They have to grow crops. There is a huge number of varieties. In North America alone, it is said that there are 3,500 bean varieties, and less than half of them have been inventoried. That was my first example.

The Agriculture and Agri-food Canada project consisted in visiting the communities, studying the DNA of the varieties, listing their characteristics and protecting them. It's an agreement that was made in the wake of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which rallied all of the countries of the world. The Iroquoians still grow and eat these local varieties. Many indigenous farmers would like to grow these products, but as I mentioned earlier, there are problems. If they invest everything in a crop and it is destroyed by a summer drought, they can lose everything if crop insurance does not cover organic products. That problem may be solved by the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

I can't speak for the rest of Canada, but there are a lot of problems regarding indigenous agriculture in Quebec, notably with respect to funding. As I said earlier, let's take the example of a Kanesatake farmer who is 35 years and 2 months old and has five sons. He obtains 2,000 apple trees in a land claim and asks the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for a subsidy. He is told that he is 2 months too old. He gets discouraged, decides to try his luck with the federal government, but receives a very similar reply.

These programs lack flexibility. And yet the watchword is that there should be flexibility in the application of programs for first nations. We have extended families. If one of us works the land, his aunt, brothers and cousins will all benefit. We all work together. And yet we are considered non-indigenous farmers and private enterprises, despite being family or community businesses. Those factors should be taken into account. Often, it's the start-up that's the issue.

There are extraordinary products that could be sold in Amerindian, Canadian and international markets, but indigenous people have to be given an opportunity to grow them. However, current conditions are unfavourable for these crops. I don't know what the situation is in Ontario, but I'm talking about Quebec, as well as the Maritimes, which I am also familiar with. If I were to begin to list all of the issues, the list would be endless.

The programs, whether provincial or not...

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but my time is running out. I just want to get a quick question to Ms. Jackie Milne.

I really loved your enthusiasm. You can tell that this is not just a job for you, this is a way of life, and I really appreciate that. I just want to let you know that sometimes this question-and-answer format is not enough to get very substantive answers. You are always welcome to submit a brief to the clerk of the committee to lay your positions and solutions down in more detail. We can try to include those in our report.

You were talking about some of the skills gaps that exist. I imagine that in the north you have those short, intense summers, but also during the long winters the ability to preserve your food and maybe add value to it is also another skill set that we need to look at as well.

[Jackoline Milne]

That's what we do. We focus on the appropriate crops for their sparse season, maximizing growth. We focus on various methods of food preservation, which we teach: food drying, dehydrating, fresh storage, all of it to carry us though. What does it actually look like? Now what's exciting is we've worked it out. It can be done. We have animals: cows, sheep, goats, poultry, pigs. We have greenhouses, very simple low input, low tech. These systems have to be manageable. We don't have access to repairs for complicated things, but once these systems are built they're permanent. They will produce food for generations with the skills—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Milne; unfortunately I have to cut you off.

Mr. Breton, you may go ahead for six minutes.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. I have a lot to learn about indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, there are no indigenous communities in my riding or my region.

I find all of these issues very compelling, so I thank you for giving us so much to think about today.

There's a basic thing I don't understand. I had a look at the latest figures on farmers' incomes. According to the statistics, a non-indigenous farmer earns, on average, a gross income of $70,000 annually, as compared with $20,000 to $26,000 for an indigenous farmer, be they a member of the Métis or first nations community. That's a huge gap—a non-indigenous farmer makes triple.

I'd like to hear from each of you. Please tell us the reasons and factors behind the difference, if you would. What more could the Government of Canada do to work with you on closing, or at least narrowing, this wide gap?

Let's start with you, Mr. Gros Louis.

[Michel Gros Louis]

I've never taken an in-depth look at family or farm income. If I understood you correctly, non-indigenous farmers earn higher incomes than indigenous farmers.

When it comes to indigenous farmers, I think part of the answer lies in the absence of large-scale intensive farming operations. What we often see in Quebec is multinational companies working together. A person will buy their neighbour's farm and eventually the operation grows. An indigenous person, however, will never have the funding to take that same step or even access to those funding mechanisms. Quebec farmers have the support of quite a powerful organization with the capacity to help them. It's a matter of logistics. An indigenous person, though, could never undertake such a large-scale endeavour.

Coming back to Mr. Lévesque's situation, I would say he will likely get his larger production given what a resourceful person he is.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Sorry to cut you off, but I gather that you aren't able to join unions like the UPA? Is that correct?

[Michel Gros Louis]

That's a good question. I've never thought about it. I think, though, you first have to be a farmer. In Quebec, we are still in the start-up phase, but in order to apply for funding or join a union, you have to be a farmer already. It's a bit like the chicken and the egg scenario. It's a challenge.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Lévesque, would you care to comment?

[Vincent Lévesque]

I would add that first nations farmers are usually located in remote areas. They have a smaller market and can't afford to promote themselves or grow their business. That may be one of the reasons why they have smaller incomes. One of the things I'd like the Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products to do is promote who does what, establish a network to help those with a product to sell make that product, build relationships with big companies to land major orders and thus help farmers earn better incomes.

[Michel Gros Louis]

May I say something?

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Go ahead.

[Michel Gros Louis]

In Quebec, obtaining grants and financial assistance, in general, is a problem, and that applies to the agricultural sector as well. In many cases, in order to obtain funding from the Secrétariat aux affaires autochtones, you need a letter of support from the band council. Take, for example, the case involving the band council and Maria's Mi'kmaw community farm in Gaspésie, which had employees and summer students. Today, despite the funding she received, nothing is working anymore. The tractors sit abandoned in the fields. The same goes for the rice. In Quebec, if individuals want to receive funding, they have to deal with the issue of getting the band council's support, and the band council is a political body. I could give you other examples. People who don't have a letter from the band council can run into problems. The whole thing is quite the challenge.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

It's yet another factor that has to be taken into account.

Ms. Milne, is there anything you'd like to add?

[Jackoline Milne]

Yes. It's kind of contentious, but there's a split system. The more isolated and remote the community, the more socialist the system is. More and more, the different funders are forcing the people to be administered through the band.

For example, in the community I live in, if I wanted to apply to a fund, I would apply directly. I would never go to my town council and ask them to apply on my behalf because then the town council would receive the funds and choose the recipient. This is the model that is in many indigenous.... There's this disproportionate problem where the individual is not being recognized. The capacity for food must be owned at the individual level. I could tell you a lot about that. We do need to address it.

There are different systems. In the north, food is very expensive, so it's actually more profitable. We can make an income from small pieces of land, especially if we live anywhere near a larger community because the food can be 50% more expensive here, so we can create business.