Agriculture Committee on Nov. 24th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Hello everyone and welcome to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Mr. Anderson, you have the floor.

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

Mr. Chair, if I may interrupt for just one minute, we've had some discussions and I would like to suggest that the committee revisit the motion from the other day. I think there was some misunderstanding when the motion was made. I need unanimous consent of the committee to bring forward this motion. Everyone has a copy of it. It reads:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food hear from Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) officials on the Bovine Tuberculosis situation.

I would like to present that. I believe that perhaps the government has some options or suggestions for us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Have you read the motion, Mr. Drouin?

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

Yes. I just have a small amendment, so we can be even more precise. We request CFIA officials to come on November 29, with the minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay. The amendment would be that we also invite CFIA to be present on November 29, with the minister.

Do you have a question, Ms. Brosseau?

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

Is it going to be a two-hour meeting? We want to make sure the minister has adequate time. I'm just wondering how much time we need—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Right now, we have a one-hour meeting and then we have the GMO. We're supposed to do that. That's what's on the books right now. It can be changed, but that's what we have. If we do, we're going to push back the GMO and we're getting dangerously close to December 8, but it's up to the committee to decide.

Mr. Anderson.

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

Mr. Chair, we'd certainly like to hear from the officials for two hours. I understand how rare it is to get a minister for two hours, but if they would come with him, we could have them for the other hour. We would try to make the adjustment on the GMO report, whatever that needs to be, in order to get that done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Also, we're not sure that the minister is available for two hours. We'd have to check that. We know that we have him for one.

I understand that you would like to check if he's available for two and I ask that [Inaudible--Editor].

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

Mr. Chair, we'd love to ask that question, but we know the answer to that.

We're wondering if we can have the officials for two hours and the minister with them for the one hour that he's here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Yes, Mr. Drouin.

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

We don't know if the officials are available for two hours, but if the clerk asks the question and if they are, they are, and if they're not, they're not.

I just want to make sure that you provide us with the impact of this on what's going to happen with the GMO report. Are we going to be able to submit it in time? We do have a hard date on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I think that there is a possibility, but it all depends how quickly we go through the GMO draft, of course. We'll leave it at that. We'll see if we can get the minister in and CFIA for the full two hours.

We've heard the amendment.

All in favour of the amendment?

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

Mr. Chair, exactly what are we voting on?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

The amendment. The whole motion is that, on November 29, we bring in the Minister of Agriculture and CFIA for, hopefully, two hours, if they're available.

I think that's—

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

How would the report fit in? I actually believe it's important that we spend a lot of time, correctly so, on the GMO issue, since a lot of witnesses came in. We spent many weeks on it, so I think it's important that we do both.

Absolutely, we need to have the officials in, from what we heard from the farmers last time. However, we also have to make sure that we get the report done because that's also important and there's a timeline on both of these issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I do hear what you're saying.

We're going to vote on the motion, as amended.

(Motion, as amended, agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Let us get back to our groups of witnesses.

Thank you for being here this morning.

In the first hour, we welcome representatives from the Canada Organic Trade Association: Tia Loftsgard, executive director, and Marie-Ève Levert, director of international and regulatory affairs.

We also welcome Guenette Bautz, general manager of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum, and its Chair, Paul Glenn.

Welcome everyone.

We will begin with Ms. Loftsgard for a maximum of 10 minutes.

Thank you.

[Tia Loftsgard, Executive Director, Canada Organic Trade Association]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of this committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak today to share our organization's perspective on Canada's next agricultural framework.

My name is Tia Loftsgard. I am the executive director of the Canada Organic Trade Association. I am joined by my colleague Andrew Hammermeister, who is the director of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada and an assistant professor at Dalhousie University in the faculty of agriculture. Following my presentation, he will present on key policy needs for organic innovation in Canada.

I'll just describe who we are. The Canada Organic Trade Association, or COTA, as we are known, is a member-based organization that represents the entire organic value chain, including farmers, manufacturers, exporters, distributors, and provincial organizations.

Our mandate is to promote and protect the growth of organic trade to benefit farmers, the economy, the public, and the environment. COTA is the voice of organic trade. We work on market access via international trade missions. We have also been involved with the federal government on assessments of foreign organic standards. We also lead on industry and consumer awareness initiatives, as well as data collection for the organic value chain round table and on behalf of the Canadian organic sector.

Currently, organic is a booming business. It is an $80-billion industry worldwide, in U.S. dollars, and it's estimated to grow between 16% and 25% by 2020. In Canada, we are the fifth largest organic market, at $4.7 billion in sales. With more than 22 million Canadians buying organic food weekly, and with 5% of global food sales being organic, there are opportunities for Canada to take advantage of this emerging market at the domestic and international levels, adapt to this changing global environment, and stay ahead of its competitors.

Canada can stimulate clean and inclusive economic growth and take immediate action on climate change through signature investments in organic agriculture in Canada. The new agricultural policy framework could foster the growth of organic by providing tools to grow our supply chain across the country, supporting organic processors and developing programs for industry entrants.

There are two key components to ensuring that sustainable improvement of our production capabilities in Canada is fostered. First, the government should maintain its support for organic to develop new markets and trade opportunities for the sector. For example, the AgriMarketing program is valuable to our sector and our value-added processors. In the last three years, COTA has been using the AgriMarketing program funding to promote the Canadian organic brand abroad and to create export opportunities for more than 100 processors, traders, and growers across the country.

The next market development program should be as flexible as the present one in order to enable each agricultural sector to target specific markets and develop programs that are appropriate for its long-term international strategies.

To gain international market access, Canada has been working on equivalency agreements with other countries, our trade partners. These bilateral agreements are based on the mutual recognition of organic standards and reciprocity. We now have agreements with the U.S., the EU, Switzerland, Costa Rica, and Japan, and we are currently negotiating with Mexico and South Korea.

Organic trade is rooted in the industry's capacity to preserve the integrity of organic standards and to develop and maintain multilateral and bilateral equivalency agreements that benefit the entire organic sector.

Without timely maintenance of the Canadian standards and support for their enforcement and integrity, Canadian growers and processors are placed at a disadvantage in regard to their competitors. The next market development program should be flexible and support the tools developed by the industry to maintain the integrity of organic and facilitate its trade, notably the role that we play on the technical advisory committee for international trade equivalencies.

Second, as we showcased earlier, the demand for organic in Canada is growing, and in the next five years it's going to increase at a double-digit rate. Our biggest challenge, though, continues to be inadequate supply. We need more growers and more acres to be able to supply our manufacturers and processors.

In order to incentivize farmers to take advantage of the opportunities for higher incomes through organic premiums, mitigate risk by diversifying their production, and reduce their carbon and environmental footprint, policies need to be put in place to encourage more domestic production and sales.

We recommend that the next policy framework support the following:

A national organic certification cost share program should be in place. The organic industry development programs developed at the provincial level by Quebec and Prince Edward Island are models that could be adopted federally. These models include financial assistance for up to 50% of eligible expenses for transition, which is for pre-certification and post-certification costs to organic, up to a maximum of $40,000. Ideally we would have what our U.S. trade partner has, which is an organic certification cost share program that provides 75% reimbursement for certification costs up to a limit of $750 per certification scope.

Our sector needs the development of organic production insurance products that recognize premiums for organic and products that are transitioning to organic, and make these available in all provinces and territories. Currently in Canada we only have it offered in six provinces and does not cover all product categories.

We also need the development of incentive programs that encourage best management practices to support all farmers—not just organic farmers, but conventional and organic farmers—to meet the needs of soil and water quality, biodiversity, and climate change. We recommend that 30% of the budget for rural development programs be allocated to greening through agri-environmental measures and support for organic farming or projects with an environmentally friendly investment or innovation measure.

Finally, COTA strongly endorses the new addition that you put into the next policy framework, which is the value-added agriculture and agrifood processing priority area. We have more than 1,500 organic producers, processors, and handlers in the country. They play a pivotal role in supporting the local economy, and they should benefit as well from targeted support to increase their productivity and competitiveness.

I'll hand it over to Andy now.

[Andrew Hammermeister, Representative, Canada Organic Trade Association]

Thank you, Tia.

Thank you all for this opportunity.

The Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada is the national leader and facilitator of science related to organic in Canada. Our primary role is to lead the national organic science cluster program in collaboration with the Organic Federation of Canada.

Today I'll briefly introduce how the science of organic agriculture contributes to increasing environmental sustainability and improved business risk management, which ultimately can lead to high public trust.

We need to recognize that agriculture is multi-functional. It goes beyond just being a business case. Our current science cluster includes over 200 scientists working on projects at 36 institutions across Canada. What is clear from research in Canada and from around the world is that production practices that are emphasized within organic agriculture can contribute to addressing many of the issues that our country faces, as well as around the world, including climate change, biodiversity, water quality, and soil conservation.

Organic standards specifically emphasize practices that maintain a healthy soil, and healthy soils are critical for organic farming systems to maintain productivity and sustainability. That's why organic farmers pay particular attention to this. Healthy soils hold more carbon, which is helping to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. They help to reduce pressure from drought or excess water, which is a common issue in agriculture these days. Healthy soils also have an abundance of micro-organisms in them that hold nutrients in the soil and cycle them so that they're available for future crops and prevent them from being lost from the ecosystem and contaminating water supply.

The benefits of expanding crop rotations are widely recognized by organic and non-organic scientists alike, but in organic agriculture, farmers are heavily dependent upon crop rotations to build healthy soils, minimize pest pressure, and promote biodiversity. This means that organic farmers are strategically designing the sequence of crops grown on a field to maximize the efficient use of nutrients, to minimize risk from weeds, insects, and diseases, and to promote income stability.

Nitrogen fertilizers are an essential part of non-organic agriculture to achieve really high yields, but in organic farming systems we don't have access to these nitrogen fertilizers. We rely on manure and legumes like alfalfa and peas to capture the nitrogen naturally from the atmosphere. This nitrogen accounts for about 50% of the energy costs in crop production in conventional agriculture. Replacing that nitrogen by using legumes and manures, and recycling those nutrients is really important, and it can contribute substantially to climate change emissions.

Perennial legumes like clover and alfalfa are really important, and they can achieve these benefits, as well as add diversity to the landscape and build soil quality. As an international leader, Canadian agriculture should be constantly endeavouring to improve practices and minimize the risk and the burden to society. This is essential for maintaining public trust.

Organic agriculture is a model of production that is developing unique solutions that benefit all of agriculture. For the next policy framework, I would encourage programs that support science related to soil health and crop rotations; long-term studies; programs that transfer the science of agriculture to practice, so taking that science and translating it into something that can be used; research that quantifies and compares the carbon balance in whole agriculture systems; incentive programs that encourage the use of legumes; perennial forages; and cropping systems that have long rotations. We also encourage policies that encourage transparency as to where the agricultural issues are in the science and practice that are proactively addressing these issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Hammermeister. I have to cut off your time.

[Andrew Hammermeister]

Thank you. It's perfect timing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I was following, so I knew you had the best of your message there.

Next is the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum.

Ms. Bautz, you have 10 minutes.

[Guenette Bautz, General Manager, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the invitation and the opportunity to share our opinion with you today.

I am Guenette Bautz, the general manager for the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. We were established in 1997, and we will celebrate 20 years next year.

Our organization has 11 young farmer provincial organizations from coast to coast. We represent young farmers age 18 to 40. Our role with the youth and young farmers falls between 4-H and the Outstanding Young Farmers Program. The 4-H program starts youth in agriculture; the CYFF builds them, giving them the tools and education and training; the Outstanding Young Farmers Program celebrates their success.

Our focus and activities include providing education on various topics, through various methods. Our goal is to build leaders, to represent young farmers of Canada, to provide networking and mentorship opportunities, to connect young farmers to peers and mentors, and address industry issues, most recently, succession planning, business management, and any other relevant topic.

We work on social media outreach, educating consumers, speaking positively for the agriculture industry and representing young farmers on various agriculture boards across Canada. We have also been involved in international collaborations, and have been called upon by various agriculture and agrifood organizations to help lead and be active in international projects with the U.S., Mexico, and recently an outreach from Nigeria. The work that we do as the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum is very important. We focus on working towards the future in agriculture.

Our ultimate goals are to help young farmers be successful by providing the necessary training and education, connecting producers to create those peer-to-peer support relationships, and building our international trade partners. How do we do this? The CYFF relies on support from AAFC through the AgriCompetitiveness fostering business development stream, as well as through industry, support either by funding or in-kind contributions, and collaboration.

We were asked to come and speak about recommendations to consider for the next policy framework, so I welcome the opportunity to share with you our comments on that.

While the CYFF and many other national organizations are very thankful for the support that we receive, the CYFF believes that through working together we can achieve greater success, and that we are ultimately a team, as a not-for-profit organization, working with our government representatives for the betterment of agriculture and the future of young farmers in our country.

I'd like to recommend for consideration for future funding on the federal and provincial initiative that the committee think about the reporting of value for in-kind contributions of recognition. At this point, under the funding module, in-kind contributions are not considered, and we would ask that this be a consideration moving forward.

We would ask for support that would enable projects and programs to advance when the opportunities arise even during a mid-agreement or contract. At times we get into a five-year agreement for funding, and as we go about our business and activities, opportunities will arise for us. We become restricted within our current agreement, and we have a bit of an inability to grow and change the course and meet some of the new opportunities that arise among the work that we're doing throughout our programming.

We would also ask that there be some consideration on the administration requirements. Going from GF1 to GF2, there was a huge shift in administration requirements and demands, which enabled the organization, in some capacities, to focus on the work of the activity versus the reporting of the activity.

Other considerations would be the flow of funds for the agreement. Sometimes there's a delay in the allocated funds being distributed, which causes a bit of a hiccup in executing our activities and keeping our activities on track because of cash flow.

We would like a reduction in matching requirements. Right now it's a 50:50 matching requirement, and we would look for your support to help us advance the agriculture industry by reducing the requirement of 50% cash to 50% matching.

Further, we would just look for some support to give us the ability to make adjustments to our projects as they arise, and support for emerging opportunities that do come about in our work throughout our contract agreement.

I will turn this over to my chair, Mr. Paul Glenn, to speak on our behalf as a young farmer.

[Paul Glenn, Chair, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this great opportunity to present in front of you.

I'm Paul Glenn, chair of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. There's been no greater need to encourage and support our young farmers. Stats Canada has found that there are fewer young people going into agriculture compared to every other sector. The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council has found that the shortage of Canadians working in agriculture is going to double by the year 2025, a very short time. This is going to create a lot of challenges for our young farmers in the future.

There's a need to increase funding federally and provincially to support young farmer initiatives. This needs to be a priority under the next policy framework. We need to create a solid foundation for our young farmers and to encourage new entrants as well.

On the business risk management side, if AgriStability was restored as an income stabilization program, I think that would have a great impact on participation from young farmers, especially the small producers.

We have identified access to land, access to capital, and access to labour as our main hurdles for many young farmers. Programs to overcome these hurdles should be a priority in the next policy framework.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you so much. We'll start the question round.

Mr. Gourde, you have six minutes.