Agriculture Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Guelph is another one.

[Chris Forbes]

Yes, and Guelph. Pardon me.

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

I have one final quick question. Would there be any new specific programs that could be helpful under CAP for our agricultural exporters, particularly for the new markets we were talking about, such as China, Vietnam, and Japan?

[Chris Forbes]

I think the AgriMarketing program is the primary vehicle in terms of promoting our development of international markets for Canadian companies. That, I think, will be the primary program of interest to those who are looking to export, but certainly the other programs on the innovation and competitiveness side will help people capture and gain new markets. I think there's a broad link to the export strategies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Forbes and Mr. Peschisolido.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Simms to get some questions from the east coast, from Newfoundland, if we can squeeze those in as well.

Back in Ontario, we've been working very closely with your department. I have to give a shout-out to two individuals, Adriana Zeleney and Tom Rosser, who are at every agriculture event that I go to. They're always working with the university and with OMAFRA provincially.

One of the many issues that Guelph is working on right now is around sustainability in agriculture. The United Nations International Trade Centre has the sustainable agriculture initiative, the SAI, which awards bronze, silver, or gold to producers based on sustainability initiatives. We have 33,000 environmental farm plans in Ontario, and we have standards we meet that are measured against the SAI. Japan, for instance, told the Grain Farmers of Ontario that they had to show Japan that they were meeting the SAI standards.

We don't have a national coordination of sustainability initiatives between provinces. Could you comment on what we could do around a national environmental farm plan or farm plan summit and what role the government could play in getting us to the SAI approval?

[Chris Forbes]

I think it's something where there are province-by-province approaches to environmental farm plans, so moving to a national...it certainly would have some benefits, as you've outlined.

I think the role of—and the minister, I think, referred to this in his remarks—the federal government, certainly under CAP, is in part just as a convenor and a supporter of how some of this could work, and bringing people together to find solutions. It would, I think.... Consistency and coherence across the country I think in these things can be quite helpful and, as you point out, can bring clarity in export markets, in particular where the distinction between different regions of the country may not be totally obvious to everybody.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Super: they'll be glad to hear that you're interested.

I'll pass it over to Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Let me establish this at the beginning, I'm a temp.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I'm here on a special guest pass, to be quite honest with you, so if I ask something that's apropos of nothing, I apologize in advance.

Throughout my riding I get a lot of interest in the Growing Forward program, and I get a lot of interest not only from the people applying for it but also through the media as they put a spotlight on a growing industry—pardon the expression. I have a lot of great young farmers, and we live on a rock, so that tells you how good they are.

In doing this program, I see with Growing Forward 2, the money apportioned so on and so forth.... What are some of the dynamics of the program that are changing to better suit the needs of, say, the next generation of farming? They seem to be the larger amount of recipients in my area.

[A voice]

And fishing?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Well, aquaculture, too, yes sure.

[Chris Forbes]

Yes. I think the one specific point I would say is there will be a program specifically—the agri-diversity program is what we're calling it—around bringing in people who have not been in farming before or who have been under-represented in the agricultural sector. The examples we provide are often in terms of youth, indigenous people, women, and persons with disabilities, so it's about finding ways to bring them into the agricultural sector.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Was that a challenge? Was it a challenge doing that at the beginning and now you want to expand that...?

[Chris Forbes]

This would be a new program, so I think part of the government's inclusive growth agenda would be to bring this program into play. Again, it would start with education and awareness and building outreach and support, as much as anything else, to make those links and bring people into the sector.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Yes, I think the outreach is a good element of it, more marketing of it, because there are a lot of farmers, and again, there are the younger ones both in that and in aquaculture, who don't know about this, especially in the aquaculture part of it.

Switching gears in the bit of time that I have, these same farmers in my area talk a lot lately about CETA and how they can get involved in that. Not “involved” per se, but where does the opportunity lie? Moving forward on this, what has the department looked at in reaching out to people to say that CETA provides us some very good opportunities? That's a two-part question.

How are we thus far in CETA because there has been some time? Over 95% of it is being applied now, provisionally, so therefore it gives us some gauge. Also, how do we do outreach to say that here's an opportunity?

[Chris Forbes]

On your first part, it's been in place for three months, so I probably can't give you any hard data.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I realize that.

[Chris Forbes]

I would say that there is definitely a lot of interest from across the agricultural sector for the opportunities. I was with the minister in Europe earlier in the fall, and the interest from a range of agricultural sectors for opportunities—

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Can you name one or a couple?

[Chris Forbes]

The meat sector—beef and pork—was a big one, largely, where I was in Italy and looking at opportunities there, but there were others at trade shows. I wasn't at the trade shows, but there is a range, whether it's horticulture or even oils, and beef and pork. I would say that there's a range of sectors.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Forbes.

Thank you, Mr. Simms. Good job.

I'd like to ask the consent of the committee if we could.... I'd like to give a few minutes to Ms. Brosseau. I need five minutes at the end to approve the supplementary (B)s, so if we could do five, five, and three, are we good with that?

[Some hon. members]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We are at Mr. Aboultaif.