Good morning.
I'd like to thank the committee once again for offering Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada the opportunity to come to discuss the next policy framework.
We've achieved a number of significant things since the assistant deputy minister, Greg Meredith, spoke with you in June.
One of the first key milestones reached in developing the next framework was the endorsement of the Calgary Statement.
During their annual conference in July, Canada's agriculture ministers unanimously agreed to release the Calgary Statement. This statement highlights the overarching objectives, principles, and priority areas, and really provides direction to federal-provincial officials to ensure that the next policy framework focuses on six key areas, those being markets and trade; science, research, and innovation; risk management; environment, sustainability, and climate change; value-added agriculture and agrifood processing; and public trust.
I think it's also important to note that the Calgary Statement also highlights the federal-provincial ministers' commitment to focus on results and demonstrate the value of the investments made in the agriculture sector to all Canadians.
Our policy development has been informed by significant engagement with stakeholders.
To date, Minister MacAulay has hosted a number of round tables to hear first-hand about specific regional issues and learn from stakeholders about their thoughts on how the current framework is working as well as what they'd like to see in the next policy framework.
In that regard, he's met with young farmers; industry stakeholders, to discuss the role of innovation in the sector; the Canadian Federation of Agriculture; and leaders of the value chain round tables, to name just a few.
To complement the minister's engagement efforts, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has developed a comprehensive engagement plan that includes face-to-face meetings, online engagement, and direct mail consultations.
In advance of the Calgary Statement in June, we held a national engagement session with producers and industry groups to get their feedback on what's working well with the existing policy framework as well as where the challenges are, and to start to get a sense of what they'd like to see in the next policy framework. That informed the content of the Calgary Statement.
Following the Calgary Statement, we've been engaging more in depth with stakeholders. Just last week, on October 13 and 14, we had an engagement session where national stakeholder organizations provided their perspectives on public trust; science and innovation; environment, sustainability, and climate change; and the role that regulations, labour, and business development initiatives have in the competitiveness of the sector.
We will be holding a second two-day session on November 1 and 2 to hear stakeholders' views on risk management, markets and trade, and agrifood processing. We're really spending a lot of time with the industry and delving in depth into their views on those six priority areas.
The department is also surveying Canadians to hear their perspectives on priorities identified in the Calgary Statement, and to date nearly 5,000 people have participated in our online survey in looking at those issues.
In addition to that, we've also directly mailed 180,000 households to request that they provide their views on what the next policy framework should look like.
Throughout all those consultations, we've heard a number of interesting comments from all parties. I'm going to give you a quick snapshot of some of the highlights.
The first thing is that stakeholders really want to have clarity on how new and emerging priorities outlined in the Calgary Statement will fit within the existing programming and funding.
There are concerns that stakeholders have raised around the timeliness, predictability, and coverage levels of our business risk management programs.
While stakeholders are appreciative of a lot of the programming that we provide under the current Growing Forward 2 framework, they do highlight some program delivery issues that could be improved on, including improved transparency in decision-making and streamlining the application process to ensure program continuity among frameworks.
We will have a report published on our website shortly that elaborates in more detail on what we've heard to date through our consultations.
With Growing Forward 2 set to expire in March 2018, we have a number of key milestones that need to be met before we can usher in the successor framework.
First, developing the agricultural policy framework is a multi-year process. It requires the negotiation of one multilateral agreement between the federal government and the provincial governments as well as of 13 bilateral agreements.
The multilateral framework agreement is a federal-provincial-territorial agreement that provides high-level policy directions and framework implementation guidance in areas such as the overall funding level, performance reporting, communication, and other administrative issues to manage the relationship. This is a document that is signed by all ministers of agriculture. We aim to have the negotiations completed in time so that ministers can sign the multilateral framework agreement at their annual conference in July of 2017.
In addition to the multilateral agreement, bilateral agreements between Canada and each of the provincial and territorial governments will need to be negotiated once this multilateral agreement is signed. We expect and hope that these will be completed later in 2017 or perhaps in early 2018. These bilateral agreements will clearly define the cost-sharing program and arrangements that the provincial governments will implement, as well as provide more detailed reporting and performance criteria. These allow for the federal government to transfer the funding under the framework to the provincial governments.
The final area I'd like to talk about in my opening remarks is our business risk management programming. The BRM programming is expected to be a significant component of the next policy framework, as governments will continue to support producers with a suite of programs that are comprehensive in scope and that assist in managing the impact of severe events that affect the profitability and income of farmers.
Under Growing Forward 2, the BRM suite was rebalanced to target financial support more towards greater losses in income and less towards the normal risk that producers face on a regular basis. It also promoted a more insurance-based type of programming. A reduction in the overall coverage level allowed for reinvestment into strategic initiatives that were priorities to the sector, such as innovation and market development.
Additionally, the AgriRisk program was created to provide financial assistance to help develop and implement tailored, industry-led insurance products and risk management tools that help meet the sector's needs beyond the government-administered business risk management suite.
Despite these changes, the programs have remained highly responsive and paid nearly $4 billion since 2013, during a period of record high income.
Federal and provincial governments continue to assess the BRM program performance to ensure that they are meeting producers' needs when faced with severe losses. For the next policy framework, governments will be considering potential options to improve the BRM suite, with a particular focus on participation but also addressing concerns around simplicity and predictability.
My colleague Rosser Lloyd has deep knowledge on the business risk management program and would be happy to answer any of your questions.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the next policy framework with you today. We look forward to your thoughts and questions.