Agriculture Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Chris Forbes]

I tried to explain it, but perhaps I expressed myself poorly.

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

No, it's me who didn't understand.

[Chris Forbes]

There will now be six programs.

We could explain how each program will operate so that you have a better understanding.

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

Yes.

[Chris Forbes]

My colleague Mr. Corriveau could add something.

[Pierre Corriveau]

In the past, some GF2 programs didn't spend all their funds. So we reviewed all of our programs to ensure that the budgets we allocated to the various programs was spent in full or as much as possible. During phase 2 of the policy framework, some programs weren't used. So we lost those funds.

We learned from phase 2 of the policy framework and made some adjustments under the partnership. That said, people will not feel it because they were programs in which all the money wasn't spent.

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

So you simply—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mrs. Boucher.

[Pierre Corriveau]

May I have 30 seconds to explain the cost-shared programs?

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

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Go ahead.

[Pierre Corriveau]

I think it's important.

In the current framework and in the future framework, most of the programs are cost-shared with the provinces. For every dollar going to the producer, 60¢ comes from the federal government and 40¢ from the provinces. Some of these programs are offered by the provinces and others by the federal government. There are also programs that are 100% funded by the federal government

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mrs. Boucher.

Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.

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

Merci.

I'd like to touch on one of the components of the new policy framework, and that is the public trust aspect. We know that more and more Canadians live in urban Canada. I'm very happy that provinces and the federal government have agreed to highlight the importance of the public trust aspect, and I'm just wondering if you could share some details of what the accomplishments of that particular aspect would be. Perhaps it's too soon, but what types of projects would you see in the public trust component of the new CAP?

[Chris Forbes]

Sure, and thanks for that question. That program, agri-assurance, is certainly about allowing industry to make verifiable claims about processes or the nature of their products in terms of the health and safety of them. The goal is to help industry build capacity towards explaining how products are grown and transformed so that Canadians understand what they're eating, and so the industry is meeting consumer demands.

We would expect to have national assurance products. They could be from a commodity group or groups around a process such as environmental sustainability. They could also get into areas like third party certifications: are you letting smaller organizations or producers have their products certified by outsiders having met certain standards? The idea is to help other industry groups or individual producers to market verifiably to consumers how their products are meeting consumers' needs.

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

Obviously, one of the issues we see is that in the fast food industry, for example, some companies—without naming them—use false marketing that essentially says they don't use product X, or that animals haven't been raised with hormones or whatnot, knowing full well that in Canada it's actually illegal to do so. Is it going to be looking at that as well? Or could it potentially look at that?

[Chris Forbes]

If people are making false claims, I think certainly governments or others would want to look at ensuring that if people are making unverifiable claims that are misleading those will be challenged.

These programs would be more about building, if you will, verifiable standards or claims that can be verified by regulators across the country, so that consumers can trust that in some sense, when they read something, they know that it meets a certain commitment or is up to a certain standard in terms of the way the product is produced.

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

The other issue we've heard about at this committee over the past year in numerous studies is in terms of trying to build the capacity within the market access secretariat. The non-trade barriers keep coming up. I know that now we're engaging with renegotiating NAFTA, potentially looking at the TPP, and potentially looking at China very soon. Are we looking at building up capacity within that secretariat so we can get faster approval processes and we can work with other countries? Is that something you guys are looking at?

[Chris Forbes]

Well, we certainly always look at how we can leverage the people we have and the teams we have in terms of how Agriculture Canada, with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Global Affairs Canada, can work together collaboratively with industry to do as much as we can with the assets and resources we have. We're always looking to prioritize and work collaboratively on market access issues to get as much as we can. I don't get to necessarily wave a wand and get more resources, but of the resources we have, we try to use them as effectively as we can and target the sector's priorities as much as we can in terms of market access. We work with the sector to help identify those.

At the same time, you're right to flag trade negotiations and new trade agreements. That is another area that occupies a fair bit of our time. There are a lot of trade discussions ongoing, and certainly we work to open up these markets and then maintain and build access.

I'll say finally that under the partnership there is an ongoing emphasis on trade, particularly with AgriMarketing, which will be there to help small and medium-sized companies in terms of promoting their goods outside of the country.

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

Perhaps the last point is on value-added investments. I'm not sure if that was part of the negotiations with provinces. We know that we do a great job at exporting what farmers produce, but what we are trying to do is transform and process more foods here in Canada.

I'll give you an example. One farmer might say that, yes, he'd love to transform on-farm processing, but then it becomes a tax issue, especially in Ontario. They can't give municipal tax breaks to companies or any of that. In your understanding, are the provinces aware of that?

I know that in Quebec they can give some incentives to attract companies, but I know that in Ontario they can't do that. That was a potential barrier. I know that they could get the funds through the CAP, but their thinking is that if they have 25% of their land dedicated to the house and the farm but then dedicate another 10% to the fields, their tax bill suddenly goes way up. In your understanding, has that been raised at some point, or highlighted?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

A quick response, please.

[Chris Forbes]

I'm not going to answer in terms of Ontario. I'm not familiar with Ontario's policies. I would just say again that value-added processing was a priority when ministers came together to talk the summer before last in Calgary about priorities for this agricultural partnership. Certainly, a lot of the programming, both the cost-shared and the federal-only programming, is accessible to them.

There's also the broader.... The minister mentioned some of this under the innovation and skills agenda from the strategic innovation fund. There's certainly some room there for some financial support from the government, and then there's also the superclusters program, which would really touch the whole value chain—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Forbes.

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

Ms. Brosseau, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thanks to the officials for being with us for the second hour.

I had hoped to have three more minutes back at the minister, but sadly I didn't get any more questions because he had to go. Time always goes fairly quickly. There are a lot of points that I wanted to clarify with the minister.

I asked questions about the Canadian organic standards, but I think there was a little misunderstanding. He said that the federal government does support organics and, as you know, this is a big issue when we look at Canadian organics compared to those of our major trading partners, the U.S. and the European Union. They get a lot of support. To be certified organic, we need to support the industry.

I've had a lot of discussions with people in organics in my riding in Quebec. They were wondering if the federal government will commit to consistent multi-year funding for support for the Canadian organics regime. Can you tell me whether there is any funding for the support of the organics, for the standards?

[Chris Forbes]

We don't set aside specific funding for specific sectors in the programming. The programming I talked about is all application based. In a specific sector or company, it will depend on the application and how it fits in under the programming. In some sense, it's hard for me to answer that question, absent knowing what the specific request was.