Agriculture Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. White, you talked about compensation, and obviously that's important.

A variety of government programs exist right now. There's a CFIA program. There's AgriStability and AgriRecovery and some insurance. Can you comment a little on how you can utilize those programs to be helpful to you?

[Ross White]

They are not useful at all. The AAFC programs are just loans to us. All they're trying to do is lend us money we shouldn't have to be borrowing and then charging us interest.

In our case, I was better off to go to the bank and get a loan. These programs are absolutely no good for us. We don't need a loan; we need money to pay our expenses. We're borrowing money to put out for nothing. These loans are a dead loss.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay.

Would AgriStability be helpful to you, or are you looking for—

[Ross White]

By the time we file for AgriStability, we're looking at year end, so it's probably six months before we'll get any money out of AgriStability. What good is that? That doesn't do us any good right now.

If it pays out, good—

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Obviously, you need to speed up the process.

Going to the point that Mr. Osadczuk made on the vets, the guys on the ground close to you, can you make some suggestions as to what can be done right now to utilize them so we can speed up this process?

[Ross White]

I don't have a full understanding of CFIA's levels of management, but I do know that the vets on the ground who speak to me, the only ones I have contact with, don't have a whole lot of say. I feel they're not allowed to say much to us. There's very limited information.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

So they would want to—

[Ross White]

They would want to, but they have to be careful what they say to us, because they are not allowed to tell us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. White and Mr. Peschisolido.

Ms. Brosseau, you have the floor and you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I thank the witnesses and my colleagues on the Conservative and on the Liberal side for bringing this forward to committee. I think it's really important; we've read about it, and some of it is happening in your hometown. It's good to see your faces and hear your stories, even though you're going through severe hardship.

I think it's important now that the committee is looking to you that we get some answers from CFIA, because there seem to be a lot of problems. I think it's really important that veterinarians from the area are being used. The fact that you're not getting answers is a big concern when a callback from a head vet takes 10 days.

There's the need to have some kind of government support to make sure you guys can pay those bills, not through programs that we have in Growing Forward. What is the number you gave us: you're paying $92,000?

[Brad Osadczuk]

That's to feed a third of my herd for a month.

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

That will probably end up....

It's astounding. After this meeting, I hope to encourage the committee to write a report or maybe a letter to the minister.

I would like to have CFIA at another meeting on this issue, because I don't think an hour is enough time to delve into this. We need to go further and we need to make sure there's compensation, because these people are suffering and we can't lose this industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan; it's too important.

Would I have to put forward a motion that we would have another study day? Can I do that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

You can put forward a motion.

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

I'd like to officially put forward a motion that the agriculture committee have a meeting as soon as possible with government officials and CFIA present to respond to the questions and to this emergency. There are a lot of questions even around the command centres they have. A lot of issues are going on there, so I think we need heads of government.

I know the minister will be coming on the 29th for supplementary estimates, but if he were to come to talk about this, I think it would be really important to have something from him on this issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Is there any...?

Go ahead, Mr. Anderson.

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

I'm not going to drag out the debate, because we want to hear from the witnesses, but I would second the motion from the member.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Are there any comments?

Go ahead, Mr. Drouin.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If the goal is to get the minister to act quickly, I don't think committee is going to get it done by next week or the following week. I think we should just.... You're all going to see the minister at question period. Just walk over afterwards and ask him.

If you want to, I'm open to studying the issue afterwards, but it's not going to help these farmers right now if we hear from CFIA in four days or next week. What we're hearing is that they need help right now.

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

The minister can give help right now, but there are obviously problems—

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm just not sure doing it in committee is the proper vehicle—

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

There are obviously problems with the CFIA, and I think we need them here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Go ahead, Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I agree that we all want to take action, but I don't think the committee, in having CFIA come in.... I think we can request that the CFIA respond to what we're hearing in public. We have brought this group here in public so that we can get everything on the record. That should, in itself, draw some attention to the issue and escalate things.

We are in the middle of the agricultural policy framework, which this certainly feeds into, but we have a very limited time on that as well. Our priority is to get action on today's topic ASAP, within the next days, versus drawing out another study. I don't think we need to study this. I think we need to see action on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

Mr. Peschisolido is next.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

I would agree with Madam Brosseau that we need action on this—this is just awful—but I don't think that the way to do that is to bring in the minister to deal with this issue at committee or to bring in the CFIA. We need some action, and I think the best way forward, as Mr. Longfield and Mr. Drouin have said, is to advise and urge them to act.