Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food and to be part of the committee's study of processing capacity.
I'm happy to provide some input on how the Alberta government is working to expand value-added agriculture and agri-food processing capacity in the province, and identify some opportunities and challenges for this important sector.
Alberta has also expressed support for the six agri-food sector recommendations of the Barton commission report of 2017, supporting the position that expanding world populations, a rising protein demand in Asia and a need for safe, reliable markets gives Canada and Alberta the opportunity to become trusted global leaders in safe, nutritious and sustainable food in the 21st century.
Alberta is well positioned to help feed the growing global demand for food. We are an export-driven province producing significantly more food than we consume. Agriculture and food processing directly employs more than 77,000 Albertans and creates thousands of indirect jobs. A robust, diverse and thriving agri-food processing industry is essential to our provincial and national economy.
Under Alberta's recovery plan, economic diversification is a key objective. The agriculture sector and agri-food processing in particular are expected to play a significant role in our province's post-pandemic economic recovery, and we're investing in agriculture as a key element of Alberta's recovery.
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed that the strength of the entire food supply chain is only as good as the strength of each segment of the chain. Early on in our pandemic response, we identified agriculture and food processing as an essential service to ensure continuous operation of Alberta's food supply chain. We partnered with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to increase the food inspector capacity, ensuring that our provincial inspectors had the know-how to step in if additional federal inspectors were needed.
In April, through the Canadian agricultural partnership and Labour and Immigration's workforce development agreement with the Government of Canada, we developed a new agriculture training support program to help employers in the food supply chain provide training. This helps ensure the security and sustainability of our food system and is helping to chip away at the increased unemployment that COVID-19 has caused in our province.
Access to capital is another important factor in enabling more food businesses to expand and diversify. Alberta supports Farm and Food Development Canada's capital lending increase by up to $5 billion per year, and in Alberta, Agriculture Financial Services Corporation has also increased its lending portfolio and streamlined the process to get capital into the hands of agri-food businesses quickly and efficiently.
Building agri-food processing capacity is a major focus for Alberta. In about half our provinces, agri-food exports consist of primary agricultural products. The proportion of raw commodity exports is much higher for crops: 97% for wheat, more than 60% of canola, more than 50% of barley and almost all pulse exports.
Processing more of these commodities in Alberta to generate additional value and create jobs inside the province is incredibly important. Expanding value-added processing will help build a resilient primary agriculture as well, reducing our sector's reliance on global commodity markets that are prone to market instabilities. Processed products are subject to fewer trade barriers than primary agricultural commodities.
The Food Processing Development Centre and Agrivalue Processing Business Incubator in Leduc support value-added agri-food business development and are an example of the Alberta government's long-term, continuing support for value-added agriculture in the province. Alberta Agriculture and Forestry also operates the Bio Processing Innovation Centre, which provides product development and scale-up supports for things like fibre decortication and grain fractionation. With a natural health product licence from Health Canada, the facility can also work with cosmetics, personal care products and natural health products.
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry has announced an aggressive investment and growth strategy to attract investment to our province to build and expand value-added processing capacity and create thousands of jobs over the next four years.
We set ambitious targets of attracting $1.4 billion in investment over the next four years, growth of 7.5% per year for primary agriculture exports and growth of 8.5% per year for value-added agriculture exports. The increased investment will directly benefit producers and bolster Alberta's entire economy. To help us hit those targets, new agriculture-specific investment officers will join our international offices in Mexico City, Singapore, United States and the European Union, doubling our international presence.
Securing and improving market access is a critical element of expanding Alberta's value-added processing capacity. A favourable investment environment is key to this investment and export strategy, through low business taxes and red tape reduction, among other measures.
The regulatory environment has been a significant factor in limiting processing growth in Canada and Alberta. Modernizing, aligning and eliminating overlaps and gaps in Canada's regulatory framework is crucial to reducing barriers to interprovincial and international trade. As a co-champion and chair of the regulatory agility subcommittee, Alberta foresees continued collaboration on finalizing the regulatory excellence initiative. A clean, streamlined regulatory food safety framework would benefit both new and existing processors.
Over the past three year years, Alberta spent on average $328 million on BRM programming each year and remains committed to finding more effective ways to support Alberta. At the last FPT conference, it was good to see that long-term options were explored as alternatives to AgriStability to drive predictable, timely and equitable support for the agricultural community.
Alberta continues to support funding to AgriInsurance and is opposed to any potential reduction in federal funding. Our province also acknowledges the importance of immediate, short-term agriculture support provided through AgriRecovery. A good example of AgriRecovery in action was the Alberta government's introduction of the fed cattle set-aside program in the spring to help the industry mitigate processing disruptions from COVID-19.
In Alberta, we look forward to reviewing the findings of the committee on food processing capacity in Canada in the near future. Alberta hopes the study will contain enough provincial content addressing unique challenges and potential solutions.
Thank you again for the opportunity.