Agriculture Committee on March 7th, 2018

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

I understand that the ministers have very busy schedules. Maybe it could be at their earliest convenience if they can't make it on the 19th. Whenever they're available, I think they should come before the agriculture committee to talk about the situation and what their plan is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

If not the 19th—

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

Yes, just as soon as they are available.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay, you have heard the amendment to the amendment. We shall take a vote.

If no one else wants to speak, we will vote.

All in favour of the subamendment of Ms. Brosseau to invite both ministers?

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

A recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay.

(Subamendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now for comments, we will go to the amendment proposed by Monsieur Breton.

The amendment asks that this meeting be televised, that it take place on Monday, March 19, and last four hours. The amendment also asks the members of the committee to submit their lists of witnesses, including coordinates, to the clerk by March 12, 2018, 5:00 p.m., at the latest.

You have heard the amendment. Are we ready to hear the question?

(Amendment agreed to)

That has been decided. Now we have to vote on the original motion as amended.

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

That's all I have.

Do you have a comment, Mr. Longfield?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

There was discussion earlier about sending a note to the Senate. Are we dealing with that now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We....

Did you want to make that a motion, Mr. Drouin?

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

No. In fact, I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Drouin asks for the committee's unanimous consent to send a letter to the Senate.

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

I'm asking that we send a letter to Senator Tkachuk, chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, so that the Senate may finish its work. The Senate committee has already held nine meetings on this topic. The House concluded its study of the bill in two months, and so I'm sure the Senate will be able to study it at all stages up to third reading within the same timeframe.

I believe it is essential that we send a letter from the committee and that we send a copy to Mr. Peter Harder, the government representative in the Senate, to Mr. Larry Smith, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, to Mr. Joseph Day, leader of the Liberals in the Senate, and to Mr. Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Official Opposition in the House. Indeed, as you know, some senators are still part of the Conservative Party and I am sure that my colleagues will exert pressure within their caucus as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Are there any comments?

Mr. Longfield, you have the floor.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

There were some comments from the other side around the word “omnibus”. As I said earlier, I have spoken to this in the House. It's a comprehensive bill. It deals with an integrated transportation network, so several departments are involved with the bill. It's not like a budget bill that also has environmental aspects to it; everything in this bill has to do with transportation. It's an integrated transportation bill, a comprehensive bill. I think that getting the bill in its entirety through the Senate is important so that we can move forward to support the farmers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Ms. Brosseau, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Chair. I hope that the letters the agriculture committee sends bring action.

I think back to all of the numerous letters on PACA that we wrote recently to the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Innovation. It took us many months to get a response. Finally, we did get a response. I've found it very frustrating and almost insulting that our committee wrote letters and didn't even get notification to say that they got the letter, they're looking at it, and they'll eventually get back to us. Our letters were completely ignored.

I think Bill C-49 is going to be part of the solution. Once again, I think everybody wants to see the portion of Bill C-49 on grain passed, and passed quickly, but it has to be done right. A lot of groups, a lot of farmers, and a lot of our stakeholders have said that it needs to be fixed. It needs to be amended. Once again, I think we have to make sure that we get it right.

As for Bill C-49, we could debate ad nauseam what is an omnibus bill and what is not, but when there is a piece of legislation that changes 13 other pieces of legislation, even though they might have some kind of link, it is an omnibus bill. We're not going to have that debate right now at committee.

I've said before—and I've been thinking about this for a while because Bill C-49 is in the other place—we're looking at ways to get the grain part carved out and expedited. When we get back to the House, I will be asking for unanimous consent to have that done in the Senate. Maybe you guys could look at it. We've been talking to the clerks. We're going to draft a motion. Hopefully, we'll get all-party support to ask the Senate to carve out the grain portion.

I'm not against writing a letter. I think what we should also be writing a letter to the Minister of Agriculture and, notably, the Minister of Transport asking him to act, asking him to look back. He was in the House in 2013-14 in the second opposition party. He needs to look at the measures that were taken by the Conservative government. There are tools he could be using that he isn't using right now.

As the agriculture committee, we have decided to look at this on the 19th, but I think what we need to do is write to the Minister of Transport and ask him to move forward with an order in council. I think we need to ask him to pull out the big stick. Hopefully, the Minister of Agriculture is putting pressure on and working with the Minister of Transport, but we need to be standing up for farmers.

Bill C-49 is one thing, and obviously we're going to do our best to see that the grain portion gets carved out and moved forward with in a decent manner in the Senate, but I think there's something we could do now. We could be putting pressure on the Minister of Transport and asking him to take all the tools available to get grain moving. We can have all the trade deals in the world, but it doesn't matter if we can't get the grain out. The perception of us on the international scene is being tarnished once again because we can't get our shit together, so I'm really hoping that we could all come together. Why don't we put a letter together for the Minister of Transport—and cc it to the Minister of Agriculture—asking him to use all of the tools in the tool box?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Brosseau.

Mr. Hoback, you have the floor.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I have mixed feelings about writing a letter to the Senate. I want to see action. I can count, and I realize that we don't have a majority. You have the majority, so whatever happens here will be the Liberal will. As for whether we should write a letter to encourage the Senate to pass a piece of legislation fast, just for one part of the legislation, to deal with a crisis, I'd rather go the other route and split it apart, to do the appropriate study on the entire legislation in the Senate and then do the appropriate study on Bill C-49 on the rail aspect of it. Then you would actually be bringing forward good legislation, not rushed legislation. In the meantime, the minister has the ability to issue an order in council to backstop farmers right now, to have an impact right now, and to see that as Bill C-49 chugs through and perhaps gets amended, it actually comes out as a reasonably good piece of legislation instead of a rupt piece of legislation.

I guess I'm kind of disappointed. If you're going to write a letter, the persons who can have the most impact right now are the ministers and the Prime Minister, not the Senate. The Senate does what the Senate does, in the Senate's time. From talking to the chair of the transportation committee in the Senate, I see that he tried to include more meetings. It was the Liberal independent senators who would not agree to extra meetings. So if you're going to write a letter, I would maybe suggest that you write a letter to the whip of the Liberal senators and ask him why he wouldn't be willing to hold more meetings.

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

They're not in our caucus.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Well, you know who it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

The independent senator whip? You do know who it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Hoback.

Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I could not agree more with my two colleagues than I do at this time.

As I said already in my introduction, we offered to split Bill C-49 countless times in order that certain measures be adopted more quickly; we suggested it to the Liberals. We agreed and would have provided our unanimous consent to adopt it at the right time. We said this several times in speeches, as did the other opposition parties. We were ready to have certain parts of Bill C-49 passed quickly because we knew that a crisis was imminent, since this has happened before.

Even though some want to present Bill C-49 as an omnibus bill, in my opinion it is rather inconceivable to amalgamate the rights of airline passengers with the settlement of a grain crisis in the West. Explain to me how those two topics can be related, Mr. Chair. It's incredible.

Now they would like our committee to ask the Senate to accelerate its study of the bill to solve the grain crisis, at the risk of adopting, at the same time, provisions that would have disastrous consequences on the rights of airline passengers. That is not my role.

Some suggestions have already been made. If the Senate wants to split the bill on its own initiative, the opposition will commit to having things move very quickly so that...

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

On a point of order, I assume that we don't have unanimous consent. I didn't want to get into a debate. I can feel from the other side that we don't have unanimous consent, so we can end this right now.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Very good. So, Mr. Drouin withdraws his motion.

In that case, I will go back to my proposal that we write a letter to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and to the Minister of Transport. I request the unanimous consent of the committee to do that. As Mr. Hoback and Ms. Brosseau said, the only two people who can act immediately and find a solution are those ministers.