Agriculture Committee on March 12th, 2020

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

So I can count on you to do this.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Yes.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

As you know, I'm always interested in finding ways to help the next generation more. I hesitate to say that this is the right way to go about it but, as a matter of principle, it certainly appeals to me.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay.

With regard to mental health, quickly, is consideration being given to increasing the amount given to Quebec and the provinces to fund their innovative programs to support farm support workers, among others? It's mentioned in the document.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Perron, we need to move on.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

We've already transferred $5 billion.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I thought she was going to say yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. MacGregor, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, for allowing us to get through two full round of questions. That's great.

Minister, a report was released by Humane Society International. Over the last five years, the period of 2015 to 2019, 740,000 animals died in barn fires. Not only is that a brutal loss of life, but to a farmer it can be absolutely devastating not only in losing the barn, but also in the horrible way in which the livestock died.

I'm wondering if you can inform the committee whether you are speaking to Minister Bains about revisions to the national building code and maybe putting in additional fire suppression tools into the building code, so that when these devastating barn fires happen there is a better opportunity to snuff them out before such a horrible loss of life.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

No. I haven't had conversations on this subject.

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

Can you say why not? That's a pretty devastating fact.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Yes, I agree with you, but no, I haven't had such a conversation as you were asking for. I could ask—

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

Are you planning to? Is that something you—

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

This is something that you are bringing to my attention, and I'm happy to look into it more.

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

Okay. That's good. Maybe I'll follow up with you and Minister Bains at a later date.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Sure.

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

That was pretty much the only question I had. I think everyone has covered everything else, so I'll leave it there, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

That will conclude the first round.

I'd like to thank the minister for being here.

There are certainly many challenges in agriculture, but there are also many opportunities. We always have to keep eating.

Thank you. Until next time.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you. See you soon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We're going to suspend the meeting to allow our next witnesses to settle in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

In the second half of today's meeting we have with us, again, Mr. Chris Forbes, deputy minister, and also Ms. Christine Walker, assistant deputy minister, corporate management branch.

We'll go right into the question rounds. To start us off is Ms. Lianne Rood.

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

Thank you, Chris and Christine, once again, for being here today.

I want to talk a little about the departmental plan. In the 2018-19 AAFC departmental results report, on page 13.... I'm not sure if you have that there for reference.

On page 13 you're using an average annual growth rate between 2017 and 2025 to calculate the percentage change in the economic performance of the agriculture and agri-food sector as well as the percentage change in agri-food products sold. The same criteria were used in the 2019-20 departmental plan on page 10 of that same report.

However, in the 2020-21 departmental plan report, which was just released, you've changed the criteria on both categories. Specifically, you're now using a compound annual growth rate rather than the average annual growth rate to calculate the targets between 2017 and 2025. Furthermore, this change to using compound annual growth rate changed the actual results for the previous years.

Not only that, but to calculate percentage change in economic performance of the agriculture and agri-food sector, you've now gone back to 2007 as the beginning year rather than 2017. To calculate the percentage change in agri-food products, you've gone back to 2012 as the beginning, rather than 2017.

I'm wondering if you know what the reason was for the change in the department's calculations from using average annual growth rate to compound annual growth rate.

[Chris Forbes, Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

The basic answer on that is that those should be synonyms, basically. It may have been just a clarification language that when we call it a compound annual growth rate.... When we calculated an average before, it should have been the compound annual growth rate—

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

It was calculated differently, though. When you look at it, the numbers are completely different. Why would the average annual growth rates for the percentage change in the economic performance of the agriculture and agri-food sector be different in 2018-19?

[Chris Forbes]

There are a couple of things. To be fair, I'm not looking at the numbers, so I apologize for that. The changes in the numbers could have come about for a couple of reasons. One could be historical revisions to data, like new date that becomes available. Sometimes Statistics Canada will revise back a couple of years.

To be quite honest with you, I'm not sure I can answer the question around the start date, but that may have been about better availability of data. I'm happy to come back if there's more information you'd like on the specifics of the calculation.

I'll just say that overall the average that we were calculating before should have been a compound annual growth rate as well, because that's sort of the way we would try to calculate. There must be, I would think, some data change in there, some historical revisions, that might have driven some of that.