Agriculture Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Scott Ross]

We have seen a couple of tools developed, GARS being one, that are available in certain provinces in Canada.

One of the challenges is that for any insurance product, every province is regulated separately, so they need to get regulatory approval to operate in every single province. Thus, even where there are some services available, it takes time to make that widely available. Similarly, they have designed a product that works for certain crop types and is not available to all forms of production, which is again one of the issues.

However, to your question, systemic risk is a big issue in agriculture. Usually when there's a situation, it's not one farm that's affected, but the entire region and that entire area. That tends to drive the cost up exorbitantly. Therefore, what we've seen in the past is farmers typically suggesting that the products just aren't cost-effective, and certainly it's tied to that systemic risk issue.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Lipari, you made mention of the fact that you would like to see a comprehensive approach to this. It's about capacity building, planning and making sure that farmers have that solid kind of a business plan. Ultimately, we wanted to do this study first because we want to produce a report and recommendations in advance of the federal, provincial, territorial meeting happening in July.

Those were some very general things that you mentioned. Are there any specific recommendations you would like to see in our report directly to the minister?

[Mathieu Lipari]

Generally speaking, we always promote capacity building in business management. That's not a popular topic, but the reason we were put together in the first place was that producers were not prepared from a business standpoint and were having to face some very difficult situations in the past, in the 1980s. That's why we came about. Definitely, there's a whole suite of different options that we can explore and help to build on, some of which are very straightforward actions that can be taken directly from farm to farm.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Would you be willing to submit those to the committee as a document?

[Mathieu Lipari]

Certainly.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

That would be helpful to us.

As a final question for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, when you look at the abundant risks from the high cost of international trading, the market, climate change, what are all of these doing to young farmers and their prospects of joining? Is it really discouraging a lot of them? I'd like to hear your comments on the real consequences of not having these programs up to snuff.

[Chris van den Heuvel]

Absolutely. The effect is not just on young farmers, but on the industry as a whole. When you look at the mental health of our farmers, you see that we're facing increasing stress levels. Farmers have to plant crops in the ground in a couple weeks time, but their bins are full from this past season. Where is that product going to go? CN has told us that it could potentially take weeks or months to get rid of that backlog. It's a huge stress level, and it needs to be addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

Now it's Ms. Rood for up to five minutes.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. You've given us some great information.

Chris, I have a couple questions for you. I know you mentioned that one of your priorities was improving the programs for horticulture and livestock farmers. Can you touch a bit on what is or isn't covered now, what you'd like to see going forward, and why that's one of your priorities?

[Chris van den Heuvel]

Our industry is multi-commodity. When you have a suite of programs targeting certain commodities within that, it makes it difficult for the rest of the commodities to compete in their marketplace. Livestock simply isn't covered at all. Horticultural crops that aren't covered are subject to the exact same stresses—whether it's weather, trade disruptions or whatever—as the commodities that are covered.

We feel there's an intrinsic unfairness in that, and we would like to see it expanded so that all commodities and sectors are covered.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

In my riding and, I think, across Ontario, we're seeing a crisis with our beef producers, our cattle farmers, right now. We see a lack of processing. We've seen the rail blockades, which have caused issues. The carbon tax and trade disruptions are out there now. It's costing all of these producers money.

How would you like to see the programs, specifically when we're talking about livestock? How can we help them going forward with these programs, with changes?

[Chris van den Heuvel]

Starting the dialogue is key. We're at this point here right now. We appreciate the opportunity to have the dialogue. That's a key first step. That's one that we're certainly appreciative of. Successive reviews in the past haven't come to the root of the problem. The devil is going to be in the details. I don't think we're at a point right now where we can definitively say that this is what we would like to see. But that just gets back to the issues of having access to the data, to be able to make those informed decisions.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You're talking about grain farmers with their bins full, a crisis, and that it's a harvest from hell out west. The deadline for the advance payments programs has been extended. Obviously, that is something we want to have happen. How is that impacting the farmers with all the grain in the bins right now?

[Chris van den Heuvel]

Certainly, deferring the payments under the advance payments program has been a welcome relief for our farmers, but we continue to see that we can't borrow our way out this. This is not what we want to do. We want to have a suite of programs in place that are effective, timely and that make sense, so that we can have peace of mind, knowing when we go to sleep at night that, when we're at the point at which we need to pay our bills, we have avenues there for us.

Moving that particular portion of it forward is key and is welcome, but more work needs to be done.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Sure enough.

I'm going to switch gears here, because I know of an impact will be coming upon prairie farmers. You mentioned Saskatchewan's banning of strychnine for use with Richardson's ground squirrels, the gophers. I know it's a tool in the tool box for farmers, and I saw the impact back in 2007, when there was an over-abundance of the gophers and it came back into use.

Do you have any numbers on the potential financial impact on farmers out on the Prairies from not being able to use this tool?

[Chris van den Heuvel]

I can't address that myself. I don't know, Scott, whether you have anything to—

[Scott Ross]

We don't have any numbers on it currently. Certainly we've heard concern about it, and there will be a material impact, but we don't have any analysis of it to date.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Candace, I'm not sure whether you have any numbers or have heard from your farmers how this might affect them.

[Candace Roberts]

I don't have any numbers, but I can speak in general terms. The Richardson's ground squirrels are a problem, especially where I grew up in eastern Alberta. They take the crop away, and it's going to have a huge impact, especially if the Richardson's ground squirrel populations are up. It's definitely a concern at the farm level.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Rood.

Mr. Blois, you may take five minutes, please.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for their testimony.

I'm going to start with Ms. Roberts. Thank you for your witness testimony today. You talked about how you have a very close relationship with the farmers, particularly in western Canada.

We have heard a lot about the advance payments program. It was discussed last time at committee and, of course, some information was put forward about trying to extend the stay of default.

Have you heard from your farmers about some of the measures that have already been taken by the government? We've increased the loan limit up to $1 million. The interest-free portion that used to be part of the advance payments program has gone from $100,000 to $400,000. There was a stay of default.

Have you heard from some of your farmers about any of the things that have happened under that program? We know there are challenges for farmers, but what kind of feedback are you getting in relation to these changes?

[Candace Roberts]

I haven't received a lot of feedback from the farmers per se, but I'm involved with the Alberta Wheat Commission through my leadership program. They're one of the commissions that offer the advance payments program, and I believe there has been more uptake of the program.

The complexity with the advance payments program is integrating it with debt from other lenders and having the other lenders be okay with doing so. If the other lender is okay with doing so, it provides options, but farmers have high debt levels. We always need to keep that in mind.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Absolutely. We heard last time at this committee that the Minister of Agriculture can't actually contemplate the advance payments program until the APP administrator puts the request forward. We look forward to seeing the minister able to make a request on the merits of the application.

I want to turn to Mr. van den Heuvel.

It's great to see a fellow Nova Scotian here in the room. Certainly in my riding of Kings—Hants we know about the importance of agriculture.

You talked about the fact that we don't necessarily want to go back to the program of 10 years ago. You said what worked 10 years ago does not necessarily work now. We've heard a lot about going back to the 85%, after it was cut under the Harper government in 2013. What, beyond that...? There are some provinces that have an 85% reference margin. Quebec has one now. British Columbia has 80%. It hasn't really resulted in a major uptick.

Can you speak to that? Again, obviously, it would be important to get it back to 85%. We know that; we've heard it. But what about the fact that there hasn't been an uptick in other provinces that have done the exact measures that are being recommended by some of our witnesses?

[Chris van den Heuvel]

I go back to the point that returning to the 85% is a short-term measure that will hopefully provide some relief to our farmers. Is it going to be the ultimate answer to the problem we're facing? It probably is not. Again, we have to do a deep dive into the issues and the programs to come up with a program that makes sense.

Yes, some provinces have done top-ups, and those are appreciated, but not all provinces are in the situation to be able to do them. We need the federal government to take some leadership on this to come up with some programming to help mitigate—