Evidence of meeting #99 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Super. Thank you.
There's an innovative solutions program that's been allocated $200,000 in this year's estimates. Innovative solutions can mean a lot of things. I'm wondering what the particular problems are that these funds are looking at. How are they different from what ISED might be working on?
Pierre Corriveau Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Primarily this is in our science branch. In fact, under that umbrella there's a science cluster that touches a number of areas, from beef to canola. It's a partnership with the industry and sometimes the universities and our own research capacity internally. Basically it's to create that esprit de corps of providing a partnership among the private sector, the department, and academia.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Is it associations that are providing the funding, or is it companies that provide that?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Some of it could come from the associations. Basically, it's to create that partnership that can exist between the three levels.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
When our committee travelled to Guelph a few weeks ago, we went to Cargill. We were on the floor there. They showed us the labour-intensive butchering that's going on and how much trouble they're having with it.
They're looking at some types of innovative solutions, but robots can't work very well with carcasses. Trying to tie in some type of science to solve the problems on the floor at Cargill, might that be some example of what we...?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
It's a possibility. We have a research centre in Saint-Hyacinthe, for example, or in Guelph also, where they look at and work with the food industry.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
In the highlights section of the estimates, it mentions six priority areas, one being public trust. When we were looking at the policy framework when we did our study a few years ago, we kept coming back to the issue of public trust: how to build the trust between urban and rural, and how to build up the public trust for people who don't agree with what the agriculture industry is producing in terms of.... We had a bit of a heated discussion in our last session around front-of-package labelling, and that type of thing.
How are the estimates addressing the issue of public trust?
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
We do have the first year's programming under the Canadian agriculture partnership there. As you point out, public trust is a key issue for the sector, I would say, both through some of the federal programming—the agri-assurance program as an example—and also through some of the cost-shared programming that provinces and territories would be delivering.
Certainly we're looking for the projects that industry organizations have to raise the profile and help all Canadians understand the safety, quality, and other attributes of the food they eat.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I, personally, really appreciate what you're doing. The studies we're doing in this committee are actually ending up on budget line items. It's great for us to see that our work is getting somewhere. I appreciate your input today.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Longfield and Mr. Corriveau.
Mr. MacGregor, you have six minutes.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
On page 12 of the departmental plan, at the end of the top paragraph, it mentions the following:
...effective January 2018, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency created a new shared branch focused on international market access and regulatory trade issues to provide more coordinated support to industry in advancing our international trade agenda.
That was a question I had raised with the minister. I know there are some disagreements between the Liberals and the Conservatives about how the CFIA's budget has been used, or the amounts, over the years. I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about this shared initiative, because this was very much a topic that came up repeatedly during our cross-country trip.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Sure, I'm happy to do this.
What we did with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was to agree that we would be better served—it sounds, I would say, in some sense potentially overly simplistic—by having a single assistant deputy minister who was overlooking most of our activities that were related to market access internationally. In the case of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as the minister said, it has a strong role as the competent authority for engaging with some of our international trading partners, to assure them of the nature of our system. On the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada side, of course, we work a lot with stakeholders, and with market promotion and market development. Again, it may sound overly simplistic, but we brought those two groups together under a single assistant deputy minister, which is allowing us to do a better job of making sure our priorities are effectively lined up, and that, hopefully, we're more efficient and effective as we engage internationally.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
On practical levels, what's this going to look like in terms of staffing overseas? Are there particular countries that you're targeting first? How are you envisioning rolling this out?
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
In some sense it already is rolled out. A big chunk of it is actually our presence here in Ottawa. It is already rolled out.
What it might do abroad, and we generally tend to post people abroad for three- to four-year terms, is that as people are renewed, we'd look to make sure we have the right complement in the right places over time, that we're not duplicating each other's work between CFIA and AAFC. There's no change in resources. We're trying to be more efficient by working together, so that should, hopefully, allow us to do more with the same.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Okay. Thank you.
I want to move to the organics sector. At the tail end of our trip, we visited the University of British Columbia's experimental farm. They're really doing some incredible work. They were very much hammering home the message with us that they hope the work they are doing will move on to all agricultural sectors and that everyone will benefit, not just those in organics.
We've also heard from witnesses from the Canadian Organic Trade Alliance and from Organic Growers of Canada that their share of research dollars just does not really keep pace with the growing sector that they are. I'm just wondering, in looking ahead, does your department have plans to address this shortfall?
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I don't have a proportionate number in front of me, but I would say I'm not sure that.... I don't have the evidence one way or the other in front of me. We do dedicate.... The minister mentioned, certainly, the support we've provided on the standards side and the renewal of the standards.
On the research side, we do have dedicated research folks who are looking at organic production systems and doing research in that area. Do we have enough or not enough? It's always a bit of a balance on where the priorities of the sector are. We do have a new round, as the minister talked about, the Canadian agricultural partnership, obviously under the agriscience program, we will have new clusters of research that come out. Some of those should be of some benefit to the organics sector.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you.
In the 2018-19 main estimates, I think there was some mention of some of the business risk initiatives getting an increase in funding. I just want to put this in the context of what our grain producers just went through with their transportation problems. Did you see a spike in demand? Is our current suite of programs adequate? Did we meet the demand for the crisis that just occurred?
I know that Bill C-49 has just passed, but I just want to ensure that we're actually there for our producers. We've heard a lot of very gut-wrenching testimony, that they were in a pretty bad spot.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
There are a couple of things. In the short term, where we would look to see if we were meeting the demand of producers would be in programs like the advance payment program and also through the Farm Credit Corporation. Were we seeing a big uptick in demand? I would say we managed. We didn't see major shifts in demand. I can't speak for FCC in great detail, but it is my understanding that they didn't see any great change from their side. I would say, certainly under our advance payment program, I don't think we saw major shifts, which would suggest that there's room in that program should producers need it, for sure.
The second part's all divvied up, on the BRM and the main estimates. This is really a projection we do to give folks a sense. It is demand-dependent, so obviously if situations were different, better or worse, then we would expect to see lower or higher BRM program dollar costs. That projection is there based on our forward look at the sector.
I know I'm probably running out of time on this, but I'd just say we're coming off, pretty much, a record year in terms of net income. We think this year coming up or this current year will be about the second-highest on record. That largely reflects a slight downtick in net income and the program responding to that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.
Mr. Poissant, the floor is yours.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Thank you, Mr. Corriveau and Mr. Forbes.
The latest budget includes $4.5 million in contributions to support the agriculture clean technology program.
What types of technologies or projects do you receive under this program?
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I will answer your question in English, if you don't mind.
On the clean technology program I think the $4.5 million is the first phrase of the $25 million. We have $4.5 million in the main estimates and it will be a $25-million program over the five years of the program. We expect it certainly to look at precision agriculture in one area, and I forget the second. I'll remember the second in a second.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I can give you more detail right now. We haven't received any applications yet but we expect to be receiving them from the provinces sometime over the summer and those will be evaluated. We know the program has been launched and now we're seeking interest from the various provinces. We know some of them have already identified interest in submitting various projects.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The second area will be new technology like clean technology, and then precision agriculture. It will be in partnership with the provinces and territories. They would have to match at least 50%, so we're leveraging provincial-territorial dollars on top of that. Sorry for the delay there.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Thank you.
In processing companies and farms, the workforce is constantly being discussed. In addition, there is a labour shortage in all areas.
Are there discussions about this in the other departments, such as Citizenship and Immigration and Employment and Social Development Canada, for example?
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Yes, of course. We communicate with them on a regular basis. This is sort of consistent with the response to the healthy eating strategy. We make sure that our colleagues get good information about the current situation on farms and in factories, so that they understand our stakeholders' situation.
In addition, we ensure that our stakeholders are aware of priorities and ongoing revisions. We communicate regularly with each other to make sure that the system is working well.