Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks for the invitation to be here this morning. I'm appearing here today to relate the views of the National Farmers Union regarding one of the areas within the national policy framework that is under consideration, specifically the area of social licence or public trust.
A document called the Calgary statement, produced in July of this year, includes the following:
The NPF will continue to encourage and support collaborative sector efforts to enhance public trust by: Examining how government programming can help reinforce confidence and public trust in the sector;...and Sharing the story of the importance of the sector and the modern, responsible and sustainable practices it uses.
The NFU recommends that the Government of Canada be extremely cautious when interpreting these phrases, and even more cautious if considering spending taxpayers' dollars in such efforts. The NFU’s position is that it is better to build confidence and public trust by requiring more independent and government testing of products in order to provide real transparency. Proper regulation is desirable and necessary.
We do not believe it would be in the best interest of the government, farmers, or Canadians if the government were to end up funding efforts that are simply trying to maintain the status quo via public relations campaigns, issuing misleading statements, or undermining other production methods.
The NFU believes that the government has a major role to play in promoting confidence in our food system by providing proper regulation, transparency, and testing. Given, however, the history of groups that have been advocating for their particular version of social licence and the continuous change in what society understands to be best practices, there is an extreme risk that the Calgary statement regarding public trust could lead to the government's funding messages that are not always true and frequently exaggerated. Worse yet, it could lead to the government itself issuing false claims.
First, let’s look at the evolution of best practices.
Our farm in Saskatchewan has been operated by three generations of the same family since 1911. During that time, using what were the best practices of the day, our family has applied to the soil or to the crop many chemicals, including arsenic insecticide, mercury-based insecticide, dieldrin, and lindane, all of which have since been banned. A couple of weeks ago, Health Canada decided to ban one of the neonicotinoid insecticides.
I have included a photograph on page 3 of my submission of one of the best practices common during the 1960s and 1970s.
The reason for the evolution of the status of these chemicals from best practice to controversial to their subsequent banning has in every case been insufficient testing prior to their introduction. For instance, very little testing was done, and apparently done only by the corporate owner, on the recently banned neonicotinoid when it was introduced. With a spike in independent testing in the last couple of years, the insecticide's now documented negative impacts are sufficient for the product to be banned. In many cases, the notion of social licence or public trust is being promoted to blindly protect current practices instead of provide extra transparency and/or safety for the public and the environment.
Those misusing the concept of social licence or public trust make several common claims, such as, “I’m a farmer. I would never do anything that's going to hurt my land or the plants or animals on that land.” Our family would have stood by that claim on every banned substance that was used on our farm over the past 105 years. We trusted the regulations and companies selling them at the time.
Another common claim is, “I need to feed a hungry world.” That rationale has also been found wanting. Inadvertently destroying the natural world undermines our ability to produce in the long run. Currently we, meaning agriculture in general, are producing 3,200 calories per day per person—more than anyone can possibly eat—but we have 1.2 billion people around the world who are food-insecure and 1.5 billion people who are overfed, and too much of our food is nutritionally disfigured.
The third claim I have listed here is, “The current technology—crops and chemicals—allows us to use less chemicals overall.”
The September 29 issue of The Western Producer this year reported that:
A large American study has found genetically modified crops have dramatically increased the amount of herbicides applied to soybeans. As well, data from Alberta suggest that GM crops have had an even greater impact in Western Canada, as the amount of herbicide sold in the province nearly doubled from 2003 to 2013.
As well, at least one group, commonly called SaskCanola, which is the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission, has already used Growing Forward 2, which is taxpayer money, to produce a video that makes false claims, pits farmers against other farmers, and criticizes consumers, all in the name of “social license”. Continuing or increasing the amount of taxpayer money used to fund these activities will not end well.
The government's role in testing, regulating, and ensuring transparency will be undermined, if it adopts a conflicting dual mandate. This dual mandate would mean on the one hand protecting the status quo, which could be the interpretation of the quote from the national policy framework statement from Calgary, “Sharing the story of...modern, responsible and sustainable practices”, while on the other hand trying to engage in meaningful testing and transparency.
I submit this respectfully, as past president of the National Farmers Union.
The picture that's on that last page says a lot, as pictures usually do. This is a common practice used in the 1960s and 1970s. You can see that the farmer is about to get drenched by whatever is coming out of that aircraft, and in the middle of that picture is a dog in the middle of that crop. I interpret that dog as the natural world. That dog doesn't know what's about to happen to him. The farmer does, and the farmer feels confident that everything is fine, but I look at that dog as being part of the natural world, and he's about to get drenched, too.
Thank you very much.