Agriculture Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Here's the Canadian moment: “No, after you. No, after you.”

Thank you for letting me do this. I'm really interested in measuring the impact of the framework going forward. One of the things that brought me into politics was the continuing decline in our balance of trade. We weren't getting trade results, and agriculture has massive potential for Canada.

In the discussions you're having around the new framework, I think it's so important that we get some numbers there to show balance of trade in the AgriMarketing results.

Are you looking at the different sections and thinking of what those numbers might be that you're going towards? Is that something we can help with through committee work?

[Andrew Goldstein]

Absolutely. In terms of measuring impact in the markets and trade, we are investing in helping the sector to improve its export capacity. We have trade commissioners abroad to help facilitate those relationships. I think the ultimate measure of success in that area is how much we have increased exports, That's going to be a key indicator in terms of how we look over the longer term.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Maybe another one would be productivity on the farms. Because of Monsanto and Syngenta and some of the companies that are developing new seed technology, we're getting more production from farms. They're buying more expensive seed because it gives better yields.

Is that also part of it as we're working with the scientific community to bring forward more productivity to the farms?

[Andrew Goldstein]

Absolutely. I think one of the key things. Our innovation spending and our research agenda in the department, as well as with the provinces, is about ensuring that kind of ongoing productivity, because that leads to competitiveness.

Looking even at Ontario over this past summer, with the tough growing conditions, we continued to have very good crop production. I think that's due in part to the varieties of seeds that have been developed over the years to be resistant to those drought conditions. That's another aspect of achieving productivity over the longer term.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

With Ontario having a bumper crop in wheat and with high-yield, high-quality wheat coming forward, the successes don't hit the newspaper all the time. Is communication in terms of public trust part of this as well?

[Andrew Goldstein]

Absolutely. I think public trust is another key element of the competitiveness of the sector. I think that will be a critical element going forward.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Longfield.

Go ahead, Mr. Anderson, for three minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to come back to the decreasing participation in AgriStability and concerns that have been raised here about smaller farmers.

Do you know the percentage of farmers actually involved in AgriStability now?

[Rosser Lloyd]

We have about 30% of the producers out there who are earning incomes over $10,000, but they represent about 60% of the market receipts through the program.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Your bigger farmers are participating, but the smaller ones aren't. Again, this comes back to when prices drop off and we have a crisis situation. Typically, governments are called on to come up with some ad hoc payments or whatever, and it usually is to protect that sector of smaller producers. Are your talks preparing you for a situation like that, or do you feel that it's adequate for AgriStability to cover that 30% of farmers who have 60% of the receipts?

[Rosser Lloyd]

Our focus on participation is driven by exactly the concern you've just raised. Our hope is that we can take some measures to increase AgriStability participation so that we don't end up in that ad hoc type of approach. Ad hoc approaches tend to be not very efficient in terms of getting the dollars into the right hands.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can you give me, then, any specifics about how you might increase that participation? I am asking because concerns have been raised about the expense for smaller farmers in particular. The cost of administering the program compared to the reward from it has also been a challenge with AgriInvest as well. There would have to be benefits for those smaller producers that outweigh those costs and that administrative effort. What are you planning on doing?

[Rosser Lloyd]

We certainly have to look at the information we're collecting. AgriStability is very targeted to the specific situation on a specific farm. It takes a lot of information to do that, and it takes a lot of manipulation of that information. We need to take a look at that information we're collecting—how often we're collecting, when we're collecting it—and see if there are better ways of doing that to cut the costs to producers. At the same time, we need to look at the perceived benefit. Can we increase the perceived benefit of the program?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay, so AgriInvest provides a bit of that.

I also wanted to ask about insurance. There are a lot of options that are now being developed out there, things like production insurance that you can buy privately. In your APF discussions with provinces, are you supporting those kinds of developments the way you would support, for example, private research and innovation? Insurance is a very good component of trying to protect farm income and a good way to protect the taxpayers from having to be involved in that as well.

[Rosser Lloyd]

Definitely. In fact, we have a program called AgriRisk that is specifically designed to assist the industry in creating private sector products to address risk. Will they get all the way to creating a production insurance program similar to we have with AgriInsurance? Likely not, given the risk structure there, but they can certainly tackle specific risks on the side in an effective manner.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

Ms. Brosseau, do you want three more minutes?

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

I think we've had a really great discussion, and I'm really happy that we started this study.

One thing that I hear often is labour shortages. Whether it's on the farm or in value-added transformation or at abattoirs, it's a big issue. In my riding, I represent 37 municipalities. There are a lot of farms, but there are a lot of manufacturing businesses too. We've had some investments, but we always have a problem finding skilled workers.

There have been some recommendations from different groups on how to deal with finding those skilled workers, and there has also been talk of issues with temporary foreign workers. I'm sure you've had many recommendations from different groups across Canada. I know a recommendation from the CFA was to establish an interdepartmental federal-provincial-territorial working group comprising representatives from labour and agricultural ministries to ensure that agricultural issues are taken into consideration in the development of joint provincial-federal-territorial labour policy frameworks.

I was wondering if you could speak to the importance of making sure that we do have a strategy to deal with labour shortages across Canada, especially when it comes to agriculture, because we've heard about it many times. The temporary foreign worker program was basically created to make sure that we had some people to help us out on the farms. We know that every once in a while there have been great shortages and issues with that. I was wondering if you could talk of the importance of having a multi-level strategy to work past this program.

I don't know if I'll have three minutes there.

[Andrew Goldstein]

It would probably take 30 minutes to talk about it.

Labour is a critical issue for the sector. We hear it from primary agriculture and we hear it's particularly acute in the value-added processing side of things. I think there was a lot of use of the temporary foreign worker program to fill the gaps, but one of the challenges is that there are permanent issues, particularly in the food processing side of things. The sector's been advocating that we look at how we transition those temporary foreign workers into residency and then into permanent citizenship.

There are a lot of issues there, I think. There's a challenge in attracting labour into the sector. It's not always seen as a desirable place. One of the things we need to work on through our public trust is drawing attention to the great opportunities for employment within the sector across the country, both on-farm and in the food processing sector, and also in the innovation side of things. We need highly skilled researchers as well to address those scientific issues that we're facing.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Was this brought up in the discussions? Will this be ongoing?

[Andrew Goldstein]

Yes, absolutely, and I think that's one of the things—

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

[Andrew Goldstein]

—that is part of this, but it extends well beyond the next policy framework as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you so much. This will end our question period.

I want to thank both Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Lloyd for coming here today to enlighten us on the past and how we can move forward.

At this time we will break, and we will return in approximately five minutes, in camera, to do the business portion of this study.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]