Evidence of meeting #32 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 need.
A video is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
With no further debate, we will vote.
All in favour of the motion by Ms. Brosseau, please signify.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
You want it recorded.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 9; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The motion has been carried.
Is there any further discussion? If not, we will move to Mr. Longfield for six minutes.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses for your patience as we're trying to respond quickly to the terrible situation you're all going through and trying to find our role in this as well.
We had a previous situation with BSE in Alberta. There were probably some lessons learned from that on how to involve the provincial government's and the federal government's response times. Do you have any experience with the ranchers who were affected by that crisis and how they went through what they went through?
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Not directly. You're in a different part of Alberta, and there are no real lessons.
10:30 a.m.
Bob Lowe Chair, Alberta Beef Producers
If I can respond to that, every cattle producer in Canada was affected by BSE. In this case it's 36 individuals, so it's totally different from what we faced with BSE.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I'm looking for some type of policy to grab onto. We are in the midst of an agricultural policy review. Our previous witnesses this morning were talking about the changes that had been made to the AgriStability funding, cutting it from 15% losses to 30% losses.
By the numbers being thrown out this morning, it sounds like you're in the 30% range, but it's coming too little, too late. We're looking at the next policy to try and see what is more effective that people could use, and how it could be employed. It's very unusual that in the middle of one of our studies, we're actually dealing with this in real time. We have a long-term decision we're trying to make on how to set up a better policy framework for ranchers, but in the meantime the dike is bursting on us and we're trying to solve an immediate problem.
Have you any comments on the province declaring this a disaster provincially? Are there any comments on what's being done provincially?
10:30 a.m.
Chair, Alberta Beef Producers
The provincial government has initiated the AgriRecovery process, which is a cost-shared thing, but as these guys have said, it's all too slow and a lot of it is based on loans.
I mentioned the BSE thing covered every producer. For these individuals, this is worse, because there is no urgency basically from government, or from anybody, because it's just 36 people, but it's doing exactly the same thing as BSE did for the whole country. In our case it's worse, because the industry goes on and they are forgotten about.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Again, within the policy, it sounds like CFIA will have some process that isn't being communicated. We need to have safe food. We've found a problem within a herd. There's going to be some type of quarantine process, but it's about the communication of what that is and how long it's going to take.
10:35 a.m.
As an Individual
Yes. In my experience with CFIA, this problem we have is much bigger than what the process and the body can handle. They're used to possibly a milk barn or a dairy farm, a chicken barn. We have tens of thousands of head of cattle over hundreds of thousands of acres, and they don't have the people, the resources, in place to handle this situation. Maybe it's just my interpretation, but there just doesn't seem to be any urgency to get things rolling and make this a big deal. It is a big deal.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Ross or Warren, do you have anything to add from out west?
Sorry; we don't have audio. The seconds are ticking by. We'll have to try to get the audio sorted out.
We've agreed that we have to take some action and get a letter to the minister. In terms of what our response is as a committee, the actions that you need are communication with CFIA, you need some timelines, and you need some idea of how compensation will be determined.
There are compensation formulas and there are advance payments within the existing framework. We are working with an existing framework, which again is something we're reviewing, but we have an existing framework that legally we have to be working on as well.
I heard some audio. Sorry; I have about 30 seconds.
10:35 a.m.
As an Individual
Yes, we're back.
The CFIA hasn't realized the urgency on this. We're not getting any compensation unless these animals are killed. There is no compensation for completely taking over herds and shutting down our businesses. We need compensation for this. It's all government action. It's CFIA and the federal government that's controlling this.
Thank you.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Right. The compensation framework is to compensate for the cattle that are destroyed, but the other costs are not part of the standard....
We're trying to draft a letter on the fly here, so by the end of the meeting, hopefully we'll have enough guts put together and enough agreement around the table to do that.
Thank you.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Longfield.
Mr. Breton, you now have the floor and you have six minutes.
November 22nd, 2016 / 10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here with us today.
We are aware that this is not an easy situation for you, nor for your families and loved ones. Such emergency situations are not desirable, neither for you nor for anyone.
You told us clearly that the CFIA does not give you enough information, or that it does not do so fast enough. Over the last 10 days, there has been at least one telephone conference between the CFIA and a certain number of members from the affected regions or sectors. Did you receive any information from your members following this briefing session? Can you give us more information about that?
My question is addressed to Mr. Henry, Mr. White and Mr. Osadczuk.
10:35 a.m.
As an Individual
I have spoken with our MPs over the course of this investigation, but there's been nothing in the last few days prior to this.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
You spoke of financial losses. That is an important aspect. Earlier we adopted a motion to send a letter to the minister. We spoke of this issue prior to that.
What would you specifically like to ask the minister with regard to this urgent situation? Help us to target the urgent and immediate need.
10:40 a.m.
As an Individual
On the compensation aspect, we don't want a handout. We don't want free money. I want you guys to understand that. We don't want anything that we don't deserve.
As Ross said earlier, this is brought on....
I want to back up. I get this. This is important for our industry. This is important for our food safety. I get it. It's important, and we must go to these measures to protect people and our industry, but I'm saying that we need to have something in place and it needs to be better organized. It just seems that our system is too small or too broken to take care of an issue or a disaster this size.
Going back to the compensation, I don't know what it could look like. I feel almost embarrassed to be asking for money, but in saying that, this is costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and in the end they might kill all those cattle.
I don't mind spending money feeding a cow that is productive and taking care of my factory—that's business—but when the factory is going to be gone in the end, that's just money pumped into a dead end. Well, it's pumped into a dead cow.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
10:40 a.m.
As an Individual
It's the feed costs that we're all going to endure, and the extra expenses. I know that some people are going to have to drill wells for water for these cattle because they weren't set up to handle that many. There are the other expenses that are going to occur that we need to recover for this, because it's not a normal expense that we have. Normally, we'd sell all these calves, and the feed wouldn't be our expense.
10:40 a.m.
As an Individual
The CFIA doesn't have enough manpower to look after what they've opened up here now. They just don't have enough people in place to get around to do the checking. All our vets have offered to do it. We could have had half that stuff done by now, but they won't let our own vets do any of the testing. It all has to be CFIA, and they just don't have the people to do it. They don't have a plant to kill the stuff at. They're short-handed.
