Agriculture Committee on Oct. 17th, 2017

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

I was so impressed with the reach, as you said, nationally, but also across the whole sector. At this committee we have studied the emergency management problems that we have had with different outbreaks. We have looked at safe transport of animals. We really could have just gone to them, and they could have provided the whole background for our studies.

[Casey Vander Ploeg]

One of the interesting things we did was develop an emergency plan two years ago for feedlots in Canada. That material exists.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. We need to make sure that we're tied in, and I really appreciate your being online with us.

On the fairs and exhibitions, I was also out to the Ontario Plowmen's Association show, organized out of Guelph but located around Ontario, and I was at Ag in Motion in Saskatoon this summer.

I went to the plowmen's match looking specifically at soil management, because we have a study coming up on soil management. I wanted to know which businesses were involved and what the current state of technology was.

In your fairs and exhibitions, do you do a lot of business to business, or is it mostly business to public? Is there an opportunity for more business-to-business work that the federal government could help with?

[Christina Franc]

Currently, it is more business to public, but there is definitely an opportunity to do business to business. I think it happens on a bit of an ad hoc basis, because you have all those businesses vending and exhibiting and they're going to talk and network while they're there.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I found that when I came back from Ag in Motion, I was telling people at the plowmen's match that they should have seen the tractor I saw out west. It would be nice to get them all together somehow.

[Christina Franc]

Absolutely, and hopefully that's something that CAFE is looking to develop, the national component of how we can get across from Saskatchewan to Guelph and share that information.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

It would be interesting to see how we could help with that. Thank you.

Finally, going out to Turkey, thank you, Ms. Elver, for staying up and staying online with us. That's tremendous. It shows how the ag industry has volunteers everywhere in the world who help us to develop policy.

We had a few witnesses in previous meetings who talked about governance. When I think of the United Nations, I always think of governance. I wonder whether you know of any governance models for food policy. Once it has been introduced, how is it maintained? What types of committees exist at the United Nations or in other countries that we might draw from for our report?

[Hilal Elver]

Thank you for this question. It's important, because there is global governance around food security. It is very recent. Maybe you remember in 2008 there was a big food prices crisis around the world and there was lots of rioting.

It happened in the developing countries, and suddenly the United Nations Security Council decided it should do something about it. The food system is very important and especially connected with our security. Under the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations body in Rome....

Actually, Rome is a very important city. We have four different UN organizations. There is the FAO, the World Food Programme, and IFAD, which includes financial activities across the agriculture process, and they established the Committee on World Food Security.

The Committee on World Food Security is a very interesting global governance model. It's the only UN model that includes private sector and civil society mechanisms, which is very interesting.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you, Ms. Elver.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Could you send us a link on that?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Mr. Longfield, unfortunately, you are out of time.

Thank you, Ms. Elver.

Ms. Boucher, you have time for a short question.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Vander Ploeg, earlier, you mentioned a program to facilitate self-sufficiency in farming.

Could you kindly explain what that program entails?

[Casey Vander Ploeg]

The program I was referring to was one that we developed at the National Cattle Feeders' Association that sets the standard for caring for animals on Canadian feedlots so that consumers can be confident when they're eating beef products from Canada that the animals have been treated well and properly cared for on farming operations in Canada. That's the program we've been involved in developing in conjunction with the federal government.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vander Ploeg.

Ms. Franc and Ms. Elver, thank you very much for appearing before the committee today.

We are going to take a quick break, because we have a very full second hour.

The committee will resume in a few moments.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Order, please.

We will now continue this meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

In our next panel of witnesses, we are pleased to have joining us Tia Loftsgard, executive director, Canada Organic Trade Association, and Dag Falck, organic program manager, Nature's Path Organic Foods. We will also be hearing from Marc Allain, chief executive officer, Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick, and Natan Obed, president, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

I would remind you that each group has seven minutes for their presentation.

I will now ask Ms. Loftsgard to begin this round of presentations.

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

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me and my colleague Dag Falck from Nature's Path Foods to present today.

The Canada Organic Trade Association is a membership-based trade association for the organic sector in Canada. We do support the development of a food policy for Canada and applaud the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food for leading this important initiative.

[Dag Falck, Organic Program Manager, Nature's Path Foods, Canada Organic Trade Association]

I am Dag Falck. I represent Nature's Path, a privately held, family-owned producer of all-certified organic foods. We are North America's largest organic breakfast and snack food company and are committed to triple bottom-line social enterprise. Our company is regularly named one of Canada's best employers, and we export to over 40 countries. We own 6,500 acres of organic farmland in Saskatchewan and Montana. Nature's Path also serves as an outlet processor for many independent organic family farmers, representing approximately 100,000 organic acres.

Food plays a critical role in the health and well-being of Canadians, while also having a direct impact on our environment, economy, and communities. A food policy that incorporates organic principles is a way to address issues related to production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food. A food policy that mimics our ethics at Nature's Path, which means always leaving the earth better than we found it, would help Canada advance the cause of people on the planet along the path to sustainability.

Canada's organic food market share has grown to 2.6% of the overall food and beverage category in mainstream retail, up from 1.7% in 2012. Also, 66% of Canadians purchase organic food weekly, and 88% say they will continue to maintain or increase their purchases in the coming year. As a producer and importer of organic raw ingredients and the company that sells domestically and abroad, Canada organics' 8.7% market share growth since 2012 is only going to grow as Canadians continue to demand food that meets their values and lifestyles, and as it becomes increasingly available in all communities across the country.

Canada has an opportunity to be a leader by embracing organic production and creating domestic and international opportunities with a triple bottom-line return to the environment, the economy, and health, as part of the food policy for Canada.

Global hunger is rising for the first time in more than a decade, according to FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Some 815 million people, 11% of the world population—mainly children—are still food insecure, and that difficulty arises from limited access, poor infrastructure, and climate change. The macro-economy and political stability are a big challenge in the achievement of hunger reduction. The increase in food-related diseases, obesity, diabetes, and growing resistance to antibiotics are putting serious pressures on health care systems in developed countries like Canada.

Despite the unpredictability of factors such as climate change, crop losses, and price volatility in agricultural commodities, all of which cannot yet be controlled by any production model, organic farming represents one of the key innovations in the domain of food and agriculture over the last century. It is based on a socially inclusive, economically and ecologically resilient systems approach for the production of foodstuffs and renewable raw materials. Its global success is demonstrated by about 2.4 million operators in 2015 in 179 countries who contribute to food production by using local resources, thus reducing their dependence on external inputs and increasing their own resilience to external shocks, currency fluctuations, oil prices, and natural calamities.

It is time to recognize the organic farming model as an efficient and effective approach to combat climate change, as well as to preserve biodiversity, soil fertility, and public health in our Canadian food system.

[Tia Loftsgard]

A food policy for Canada must support the next generation, promoting a diversity of farming practices, production, and accessibility to healthy food. The national food policy should include and support the development of organic agriculture as a model of sustainable production, which favours resilience of local populations, especially young people and women, to face climate change and food insecurity. As public trust in organics is at an all-time high, 44% of Canadians trust that the Canadian organic standards deliver on their promises.

New farmer entrants—millennials and women in particular—and entrepreneurs are attracted to organic production at a time when we are seeing major labour shortages on conventional farms and in the manufacturing agrifood industry. This is due not only to the higher premiums associated with selling organics, but also to the demand for organics and organic methods often being in line with their ethics. Twenty-nine per cent of Canada's organic farmers make over $500,000 in farm income, according to 2016 census data, offering a viable method to address rural poverty and bring the potential of new organic value-added manufacturing to rural landscapes.

Increasing access to and growing more affordable high-quality food must include organic food. A recent lpsos study demonstrated that Canadians across all income levels are purchasing organics weekly, dispelling the common misperception that organic products are only available to those with higher incomes. Sixty-four per cent of consumers with less than $40,000 in income buy organics weekly, compared to 70% of those with over $100,000 in income. Across all regions of Canada, at least 60% of grocery shoppers are buying organic products weekly, yet organics are still not accessible to all, whether because of production method or unavailability for purchase in their region. Canada needs to adopt policies that ensure that consumers, despite their location or income level, have the option to access organic food.

In order to achieve all of the goals we have set forth today, we are joining our partners in calling for the establishment of a national food policy council to ensure that appropriate approaches and successful implementation of the national food policy occurs. The proposed national food policy council would be a para-governmental agency, where diverse stakeholders from across the food system can work together to oversee the implementation and ongoing evaluation of a food policy for Canada. Working in—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you, Ms. Loftsgard.

We'll have a chance to come back to that later, when my colleagues ask their questions.

We will now hear from Mr. Allain of Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick.

Mr. Allain, you have seven minutes. Please go ahead.

[Marc Allain, Chief Executive Officer, Co-operation Agri-food New Brunswick]

I would like to thank the committee members for the opportunity to share our initiative with you.

My name is Marc Allain, and I am the chief executive officer responsible for the implementation phase of the Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick. My real job is as the executive director of Carrefour communautaire Beausoleil, in Miramichi. I mention that because it's relevant to the experience I'll be sharing with you.

I am going to tell you about something we did in New Brunswick, something that quickly permeated the borders with other provinces. The lessons learned are applicable on a broad scale.

The state of food security in New Brunswick is, to say the least, troubling, if not dire. We currently produce approximately 13% of our agri-food products. Some 40 years ago, we were producing nearly 75%. Clearly, we aren't headed in the right direction.

We face challenges when it comes to product availability, storage, and transportation. In fact, we experience challenges with the entire infrastructure system that transports the food where it needs to go. Collectively, these barriers are enormous, substantial, and difficult to overcome with a single initiative.

Now, I'm going to describe the opposite situation, one involving a number of initiatives that were put in place some time ago to increase consumption of New Brunswick products. These initiatives are focused around schools and are headed almost exclusively by non-profit organizations. The strengths of these experiences were combined to create the initiative I'm describing. It is the result of co-operation between all the partners you see here. I'll leave it to Google to help you become more familiar with our partners, because seven minutes isn't enough time. With a little bit of searching, you'll learn that New Brunswick's three largest farm organizations, together with three food service providers for schools, supply 32 of the province's schools. Thirty-two may not seem like very many, but it means that 10% of New Brunswick schools are members of the co-operative.

Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick's objective is to solve the problems I mentioned earlier. The organization is incorporated as a non-profit co-operative, and voting members are all non-profit organizations. Membership is not required in order to do business with the co-operative. The only privilege members enjoy is the right to pay dues and sit on the board of directors. Members and non-members dealing with the co-operative are treated the same.

Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick's mandate is to supply local food products to meet market demand, grow existing and new markets, and ensure infrastructure development. In terms of schools, to paraphrase the song New York, New York,

“If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”.

Our meals sell for $5 to $5.50 a plate, but if we tried to sell them for $6, we'd have a mob of angry parents after us. If we can do it in schools, we can do it anywhere. We are currently in 32 schools and will be supplying 60 more schools by the end of the fall. That means our co-operative will be supplying 92 of New Brunswick's schools while redefining the entire approach to agri-food products.

We started with schools, but we did not stop there. Our goal for the second year was to penetrate the restaurant, cafeteria, and catering market, but those businesses came knocking on our door the first year.

The other day, our manager and I realized that the co-operative had been in operation for 45,000 minutes. We received the funding on August 31, 2017, and two weeks later, the school year began. Right now, we're playing a bit of catch-up. Nevertheless, this week, we delivered food to 32 schools, and that food comes from New Brunswick.

Now, I'll put on my other hat, as executive director of Carrefour communautaire Beausoleil, in Miramichi. Last year, we purchased 1,500 pounds of tomatoes and around 500 pounds of mixed vegetables from Green Thumb Farm, about 30 kilometres away. This year, we bought 15,000 pounds of tomatoes and 5,000 pounds of mixed vegetables from the farm.

Last year, Mr. Richard, the owner, was very pleased with our order. This year, our order changed the scale of his production. Now, we are able to distribute those products, process them, and make them available to our partners, who are doing the exact same thing with the products they specialize in. We have a terrific chef whose specialty is preparing tomato sauce and frozen vegetables.

In September, everyone can buy products from New Brunswick, but it's a bit more challenging in January. To overcome that, we freeze the foods so that they are available in January. We are doing our part, just like the Early Childhood Community Development Centre, in Fredericton, which has four schools and one cafeteria, so five commercial kitchens in all.

One of our schools has 279 students, and last year, it made $193,000. It wasn't the children who ate all that food. Cafeterias and restaurants in Miramichi served our food. During a single catering event in September of last year, we took in as much as the cafeteria makes all month long.

The markets exist, and they are accessible. It's simply a matter of removing the barriers, and Co-operation Agri-Food New Brunswick is there to do just that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Allain. You live in the riding of our committee chair, Mr. Finnigan. I am certain he would be very proud of the passion you demonstrated today. We'll tell him all about it.

[Marc Allain]

He's very familiar with it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

I have no doubt.

Mr. Obed, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Natan Obed, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami]

Nakurmiik. It's an honour to address you here as a national Inuit leader on this very important topic of food policy for Canada.

As Inuit, we often are seen as very exotic, whether it's where we live in Inuit Nunangat, the Canadian Arctic, or the foods that we eat: beluga, narwhal, bowhead whale, Arctic char. These capture the imaginations of Canadians and the world. Unfortunately, in the last generation, the last 20 and 30 years, we've had a number of challenges in continuing to eat our traditional foods, our country foods, and have huge inequity when it comes to food insecurity in our communities.

We have a whole host of different, sometimes conflicting sets of research findings around our food insecurity rates. Depending upon the type of study and where it happened and the different populations, it can range anywhere from 24% in Nunavik in northern Quebec, based on specific questions and different methodologies, to 70% in Nunavut, which is the Inuit health survey, children's survey. Broadly, for 2012 APS data, it's about 52% of Inuit in Canada who report regular household food insecurity. That is a massive difference in relation to food insecurity for non-Inuit Canadians.

Among the numbers that drive that are our median income gap. Our median income gap in Inuit Nunangat is $60,000, $18,000 for Inuit and $78,000 for non-Inuit who live in Inuit Nunangat, which is the Inuit homeland, the combination of the four settlement areas of our modern treaties or comprehensive land claim agreements.

The challenge that we have just to go to the store and buy food when we have a median income that is below the poverty level is striking. Also, there's the fact that we have a traditional diet that depends upon the environment and depends upon our interaction with the environment in the face of climate change, and also in the face of a changing social environment where we are more dependent now on Ski-Doos and boats, and all of the money that it takes to operate new ways of harvesting. Our traditional ways of living and our traditional links to the environment are being undercut. A Canada food policy doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to change all of that within the policy but I think we need to take the steps in the right direction.

There are billions of dollars of subsidies that happen in this country every year in relation to how food gets on the plate of Canadians, but there hasn't been, to date, a comprehensive discussion about how to ensure that Inuit have food security and that there's a food security that fits within our world view and our lens, and also our realities. We have certain subsidy programs, such as nutrition north Canada, that attempt to drive down some of the market food costs within our communities, but we still have massive infrastructure gaps.

Much of the food that arrives in our communities doesn't come fresh. A lot of the food is partially spoiled or is almost inedible by the time that it reaches our communities because of the staging and the way in which, due to the lack of infrastructure for getting produce from Ottawa to Rankin Inlet or to Pond Inlet, it has to go through multiple stages of airports without refrigeration units. The fact that some of our produce might end up on a komatik or in the back of a flatbed truck at -40°C just isn't something that many other Canadians and many other retailers have to ever deal with.

We also have a strong desire to keep our traditions alive. In the past, even in the present, there are subsidies that provinces and territories in which Inuit live provide for a new way of harvesting our traditional species to ensure that the sustainable resources we have in our lands can be then utilized to the greatest of our abilities.

We have had caribou harvests. We have seal and muskox harvests, and the char fisheries. But they all struggle, and they struggle largely because of the lack of a clear policy around how subsidies can work. It isn't as if we were ever going to have profitable country food markets across Inuit Nunangat considering the size and scope of our land, 3.3 million square kilometres, our small population, 60,000 for all our 53 communities, and the fact that it is very expensive for any operation, maintenance, or bricks and mortar facilities within our communities.

There are community-based solutions, but there also has to be imagination. To operate in Inuit Nunangat, you have to think differently about programs, terms and conditions, the funding and subsidies, and why they're there.

We don't have wheat-producing parts of Inuit Nunangat. We don't have a number of the different key crops that you are going to consider within your work, but we do have a homogenous space that constitutes 33% of our land mass, 50% of its coastline, and one indigenous group of people who are looking for this new path and want food that comes from the south but also want to protect our way of life, our society, and our culture.

Nakurmiik.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Mr. Obed, your presentation was very enlightening. Thank you very much. It's good to to hear the perspective you bring, as we don't often get that opportunity here.

I will now turn the floor over to Ms. Boucher for six minutes.