Agriculture Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2021

[Serge Buy]

It is obvious that our neighbour to the south poses a problem for us when it comes to investments. We could give you many examples where fantastic research and innovations have been done in Canada, but commercialized in the United States, because that's where the money is.

It is therefore obvious that we need to do better. It is taxation and investment promotion policies that will enable us to do better. To this end, the government could also put in place targeted policies. At conferences with our members, we heard many examples of programs that could be put in place by the government to attract investments on this side.

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

Thank you very much.

I think I only have 10 seconds left, so I'll stop here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin and Mr. Buy.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

Mr. Buy, I thought you were on an interesting track when you mentioned that you had heard relevant examples of potential programs. Could you give us some examples?

[Serge Buy]

Indeed, the government could certainly put in place certain measures. For example, the issue of taxation is important. We have heard several comments in this regard. Tax rebates and investments for research should also be easier to obtain than at present. Canada's Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program should be reviewed and redefined. There should also be more openings for venture capital funds, as we have lost a lot of these types of investment funds. In Canada, they have been replaced by angel investors. We would like the government to pay more attention to that, by promoting those kinds of investments and the industry as well.

Our neighbours to the south have understood that the agro-food sector is a promising sector for the future. We seem to have picked up on that a little bit on the Canadian side in 2018, after the Barton Report of 2017, but we still have a long way to go.

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

You mention that our neighbours to the south have understood the advantage of this sector, but we obviously don't have the same financial means, among others when it comes to direct subsidies.

How could we compensate for this missing contribution? I am thinking of the agri-food industry, but also of our agricultural producers.

[Serge Buy]

We don't have the same means as the United States, but we still have means proportional to the size of our country. We can't always look on the other side and tell ourselves that we can't do anything like them because they are much bigger than we are. We can do things. We can be proud of our future and put in place programs [Editor's Note: Technical Difficulty] that would make it easier for us to invest on this side.

So I think there are things we can do. I have listed some of them. In the report that we sent to you before this presentation, we mention some things that would not cost a lot of money and would already have some appeal.

When investors look at Canada, they look at natural resources. They don't look at agriculture and agri-food. Maybe the Canadian government should do more promotion on this side. These are ideas that we have listed and that don't cost much.

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

So there is an idea of promotion. You have some nice answers, Mr. Buy. I like them.

You mentioned research and development. On more than one occasion, people from universities who testified before the committee have mentioned that the facilities are often outdated.

Wouldn't there be a massive investment to be made on this side as well?

[Serge Buy]

Obviously, there are investments to be made in infrastructure. This is sort of what we are proposing when we talk about broadening the financing with regard to capital investment. This must be done on the side of universities, but it must also be done a great deal on the side of small and medium-sized enterprises and development centres. So it must involve not only the university sector, but several other sectors as well.

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

That’s why you propose the idea of tax credits for innovative companies, isn’t it?

[Serge Buy]

Yes, the only thing I want to mention is that Canada often tends to give tax credits, but we also need direct funding. Many of these companies are going to have a hard time putting money on the table for construction. The government needs to find partnerships with them.

I gave the example of what has just been announced today for vaccines. It is obvious that this is being done in other sectors, for example in the field of transport infrastructure and other areas of infrastructure. But it’s not being done in the agri-food industry, and I think we need to change our approach.

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

All right, thank you very much.

Dr. Mussell, you spoke of an imbalance of market forces between retailers on the one hand, and producers and suppliers on the other, as well as unhealthy relationships. You used a sentence that I liked anyway: nobody benefits if there is no regulation.

In your opinion, the committee that has been set up by the ministers of Agriculture should produce a formal code of conduct based on the model of countries that have done so before us. Is that correct?

[Dr. Al Mussell]

I understand there are some elements of industry that are working on a code of conduct and I'm not sure how that's going to work. That could be a very positive development. There are a number, as I mentioned, of what I'll call procurement tactics that our retailers use that processors simply have to be able to live with. That comes from an imbalance in market power, but I tend to want to focus this, I think, to be more productive on the matter as an issue of inefficiencies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Dr. Mussell. Unfortunately, I have to change questioners.

Mr. MacGregor, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both of our witnesses for their very informative testimony and also the responses they've given to questions so far.

Monsieur Buy, I'll start with you.

In your brief to our committee, you made mention of a few of the incubators and accelerators. One of those, the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre, is a facility that our committee actually got to have a tour of in the previous Parliament. Those of us who were there were quite impressed with what it was able to do to really help young entrepreneurs bring their ideas to fruition. We got to sample some of the products that it made.

You've spoken a lot about what we need to do to attract investment. Can you talk a bit more about some of the success stories that we as a committee could make mention of when we're making our recommendations to the government? Could you expand a bit more on that?

[Serge Buy]

We can certainly provide you a number of success stories for those products and those centres. I don't have success stories at the tips of my fingers here, but I—

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

Is there a common weave through those success stories that we could briefly allude to in our committee report?

I'm not sure if we have Mr. Buy on, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Buy, can you hear us?

Could the clerk verify if we lost Mr. Buy?

It looks like his screen is frozen. There were a few glitches earlier on with him.

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

We need more investments in rural broadband.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Rural Internet. Exactly. That's what I was going to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

That's another study for another day.

Maybe we can pause for a second so they can check if they can retrieve Mr. Buy.

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

The irony is that was one of the recommendations in their brief to our committee.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Alexie Labelle]

I think he left this webinar. Probably he is going to come right back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Is he going to come back?

Mr. MacGregor, were there questions for our other witness also, or do you want to wait?

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

Sure.

Dr. Mussell, did you have any thoughts on the question I was asking Mr. Buy about success stories?