Evidence of meeting #136 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was trade.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
That's right. I think that's the point. It was to help alleviate some of the cost pressures.
12:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Alberta, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association
If the markets aren't there, all you've done is take on more debt that you can't pay back.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
Canola Producer, As an Individual
Yes, in my mind that's just a band-aid effect. As Stephen said, you're just digging yourself into a deeper hole. It's nothing that I would do because I try to stay as far away from debt as I possibly can.
I think if this gets hung out to dry much longer, I'm going to cut to the chase and take my losses. That affects what I buy next year or what I don't buy.
At present, if I get through this year, I doubt that I'll really see anything in the black. When you take 10% of my canola price away, that's the cream of the crop and that's what I sometimes have to live on. It's kind of a double negative: I have $25,000 of seed sitting there to pay for and I'm minus $25,000. When I went to school, that was $50,000. I'm basically a small farmer, so no, that's not the way I'd like to do it.
12:10 p.m.
Invernorth Ltd., As an Individual
Yes, I would echo what the other guys said.
Personally, I wouldn't use that money, at least not this year. I guess it might be a different story if down the road we were actually losing money, but I don't think that's a situation we want to get ourselves into. I think we want to focus more on recovering the trade and on getting the trade somewhere else if we have to. We need a fair world price that's reflected back to us here in western Canada so we can be profitable.
I think if there is a way to give farmers something financially, it's through the agri-stability program.
12:10 p.m.
Vice-President, Alberta, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association
If I may add one comment to that, I think sometimes the numbers are a little behind. I'll give a quick example. We have probably about 600,000 bushels of storage on our farm, times about $2 a bushel; it may be even 700,000 bushels, so just call it 1.4 million dollars' worth of grain storage. That's just bins.
If we're carrying half the crop over, where do you come up with $700,000 to buy new bins?
We're talking about $300 of inputs on 4,500 acres of canola. That's 1.3 million dollars' worth of inputs alone that's not going out into the economy. That's just on my farm, so that gives you some examples of some numbers.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I understand that obviously the ultimate solution and the perfect solution is to get China to buy canola again. Nobody around this table is disputing that, but if it doesn't happen.... In the short term, I know the Canola Council of Canada was asking to increase the biodiesel standard from 2% to 5% to generate more demand locally.
Is that something you see as a good step?
12:10 p.m.
Invernorth Ltd., As an Individual
I don't know the numbers well enough off the top of my head, I guess, to know how much canola that would use up. My gut feeling is that it wouldn't make a huge amount of difference. It can't hurt, I guess, to use more in biodiesel. Again, it's probably going to require help from the government to make that work, but I wouldn't really know if that would be a huge game-changer for us or not.
12:10 p.m.
Vice-President, Alberta, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association
I think it's nice for things like that to be market driven and not be government driven. At the end of the day, we want things to be market driven, so I just worry about what the consequences to that would be later on, but yes, that would help with demand. There's no doubt. It's just nice for things to be market driven.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
12:10 p.m.
Canola Producer, As an Individual
Yes, every little bit helps, but being from an oil province, I don't think my oil counterparts are going to support that either.
The real thing is that we have to get this canola going, and we have to stop the light-footed dance around the subject. We need our current government to pay attention to what's going on with this issue. It is an issue, and it's really concerning to our sector. The lack of interest and the lack of—
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I'm sorry, but how do you say lack of interest? I'm asking you the question, because they've been meeting with—
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to end it here. Your time is up.
We'll move to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.
12:10 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much, Chair
Thank you to the three of you for appearing before our committee today.
I think the level of concern that people have is quite evident from your opening statements, and I hope that we as parliamentarians can find a way to bring this debate to the House of Commons as well. We have a lot of members of Parliament who represent canola-producing regions. I'm not one of them, but I think, as the elected representatives of the people of Canada, that, especially in canola regions, we need to have that ability to focus our attention on this.
I substituted on the international trade committee last week when we heard from Minister Carr and Minister Bibeau. Both explained some of the efforts that the Government of Canada is making, the working groups that have been formed and the need to send a high-level delegation to China.
I want to know, given what you have seen from the Government of Canada.... I agree that we need a team Canada approach where we don't make this a partisan issue and where we're all working together because of the value of this crop. It's one of our flagship agricultural exports, but are we doing enough?
I would like to hear from the three of you about your ideas, because you're the producers, and this is your chance to provide testimony on what more you'd like to do. I heard in your opening statement that more forceful pressure is needed. How long do we wait for China to agree to this high-level delegation before we regard it as a loss of face? Furthermore, when we're looking at the size of the Chinese market, are we sometimes blinded by that with regard to how they've dealt with other countries in the past when threats to their national pride have been made? They've dealt quite harshly with other countries before in completely unrelated matters, and now we're suffering this.
Going forward, are we doing enough? How long should we wait before we start looking at other things like the fact that we have a $40-billion trade deficit with China? I'd love to hear some of your comments about that.
12:15 p.m.
Invernorth Ltd., As an Individual
I'll go first.
I think it's tough with China. I don't pretend to be an expert on international trade or negotiations, but I think we may have to send some kind of a message back to them. That's my personal opinion. I don't know. If they won't have us over there, then that's a problem. We either have to find another market or we have to find a way to get back in there. As I said, I don't really think I'm qualified to say how that should be done, but it would be nice to see something done.
12:15 p.m.
Canola Producer, As an Individual
As I said before, I think it's time to start playing hardball. There's a pile of imports coming into this country from China. Maybe some of their ships should also sit and wait in the water while we decide to unload them. Two can play the game. I don't think the way the situation is being dealt with right now is really getting us anywhere, so what's next?
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Alberta, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association
I can speak as a farmer; that's my expertise. I'm not an international trade lawyer or a politician. It seems that they would have more to lose than we would if we have a trade deficit.
With respect to putting more pressure on them, I don't know what the answer is to that. That's what we lean on you guys to do. It seems that what we're doing isn't working. Their not even entertaining the idea of having a delegation come is probably the place to start. Why is that the case? Has the relationship broken down that much or is this just part of their negotiation tactic? We all know they've done it before.
At the end of the day, I can speak as an expert in agriculture that we just need this problem fixed. We need to figure that out. That's your job, right? I know it's not easy. It's not easy just to say, “Put more pressure on.” I get that. It's just not that simple, but there have to be ways. This has happened before. We have to know what the solution is and we just have to get to it. It can't be a year from now. I get that it's not going to be next week, but....
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
As part of the conversation over diversifying our markets, I note the Canola Council of Canada, in its 2018 report, states that it wants to increase our oil processing capacity to 14 million metric tons. Of course, there's quite a big differential in the value of oil compared to seed. Do you think we need to pay more attention to increasing our refining capacity? When it comes to phytosanitary concerns with oil, it's hard to make the same kind of argument.
12:15 p.m.
Canola Producer, As an Individual
I would agree with that.
I personally haul my canola to a crush plant. That way I don't have to wait for the trains to show up at the grain elevators. Approximately 10 days after I've signed a contract, I'm hauling. They give you a day to haul and a time to be there.
In dealing with other inland terminals, the lack of rail space or railcars showing up has caused grief. Two or three years ago, I recall signing a contract in February and getting to haul in May, when I should have been seeding. Crush plants are the end users. They need product. If I go home and I want to sell my canola, I know which facility I'm going to phone.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Kaun.
That will be all the time we have for this panel. I want to thank you, Mr. Vandervalk, Mr. Kaun and Mr. Gerrard, for taking the time to come and express how it is down on the farm.
That will be all. We shall break for two minutes to get the other panel in, and then we shall....
Monsieur Berthold.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Mr. Chair, I simply wanted to ask the question one last time. I am certain people have had time to consult their agendas. I would like to know if it's possible to prolong the meeting by 30 minutes. If we do that, each of the two groups would have an extra 15 minutes.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
