Agriculture Committee on April 20th, 2021

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr Chair.

I had one final question for Mr. Viau.

Mr. Viau, we are more or less on the same wavelength. The producers don't want to depend on the government. They would rather have an exemption at the source and a transition incentive that would make for more innovations.

I have a question for you. It does not necessarily represent my position. If we tax producers, we reduce their financial and investment capacity. Rather than tax them, we could allow them a temporary exemption, as allowed in Bill C-206, which would give them a little more financial leeway. We could add an incentive, such as a modernization investment program.

As you mentioned, the budget announced yesterday includes a plan to invest $50 million on dryers. That's wonderful, but it's not much for all of Canada. That's often the problem with politicians. There's a lot of fine talk, but the amounts are minimal and rapidly run out. More resources would therefore be needed.

What do you think of this option?

[Marc-André Viau]

My colleague from Farmers for Climate Solutions could speak to you for hours about ways of enhancing innovation programs and energy-efficiency measures. If you were to ask her again to discuss these issues, she'd be glad to answer them.

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

She could also expand on your reply.

[Marc-André Viau]

I'm sure that she could.

It's definitely a good idea to be less dependent, but producers will always be dependent on government assistance when there are extreme weather events or climate crises, to be able to restart their businesses.

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

They'll remain dependent, unless we review the farm support programs instead of simply waiting for disasters to happen before promoting them.

[Marc-André Viau]

Yes.

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

I'd like to give Ms. Ross a few seconds to flesh out your answer.

[Karen Ross]

Thank you, Mr. Perron.

I'll say it in English.

Listen, $50 million is likely not enough. It is a wonderful start. From conversations with Agriculture Canada, I understand that, on average, retrofitting a grain dryer would cost about $25,000. With that amount, we could do 4,000 in one year. That's not bad.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Ross. Unfortunately, I have to move to the next one.

We're a little bit over time. I'm hoping the committee will indulge me. We just want to complete the rounds.

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

Go ahead, Mr. MacGregor.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Ross, I have two questions.

First, can you provide a little bit more detail on those retrofits you mentioned, if you know what they involved and maybe some of the efficiencies that were achieved? If you don't know, that's okay.

As for the other part of my question, you made reference in your opening statement to the other parts of the budget that were mentioned: helping accelerate emission reductions through nitrogen management, the adoption of cover cropping, rotational grazing, etc. In your view, looking at the critical next 10 years, what other policy areas can we be engaging in, particularly with regard to carbon sequestration? In your view, is there some kind of a reward system whereby we can analyze the status of Canada's soils, look at the techniques farmers are employing, and maybe give them a credit for the good job they are doing putting carbon in the soil, where we want it to be, and not in the atmosphere, where it's causing all this havoc?

[Karen Ross]

Those are great questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

You have probably around two minutes left.

[Karen Ross]

For the first one, I don't know the technical answer. I can just say that for the Alberta program I flagged earlier, the average grant size was $6,000 for retrofits, and that led to about 40 retrofits in Alberta. That's different from the $25,000 I mentioned. I don't know if that means the technology was different, but it's something we should all look into, I suppose, me included.

For the second question, there is so much more to do. You're flagging soil carbons, so I'll go with that one. Absolutely, that's an incredible resource that farmers are responsible for protecting on millions of acres across Canada. It's better for production if we have better soil health; it's better for the climate; it's better for water and for biodiversity. There are so many great reasons.

Other folks here, including Fawn, have talked about the potential of offsets. This is an important opportunity on the horizon. I understand that two protocols are at least being prioritized. What we want to remember about offset protocols, though, and payments is that we want to be sure they're changing the status quo. Ultimately, to lead to real emission reductions, we need to be sure offset payments are actually generating new emission reductions. The investment we saw in the budget yesterday is so important if for no reason other than to create an important public bridge to incent behaviour change on our farms and to help share that upfront cost, so that if offset markets come into place, we'll be well supported to really scale up a transition to improve soil health.

You mentioned mapping. I think that's so important. We need to understand better the potential of our soil to sequester carbon as well as which practices have the highest impact. In our work for the budget submission, even though we worked with some of the best GHG scientists in Canadian agriculture, who have participated in the Kyoto protocol and who have been at this for decades, we still struggled to find enough data to be very, very confident in the megatonne reductions on parts. So more research is needed, paired with more incentives direct to farmers to adopt these practices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor, and Ms. Ross.

That concludes our second panel. These were very interesting conversations.

I want to thank the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, Mr. Bob Lowe and Ms. Jackson.

I'd like to thank the two Équiterre representatives, Mr. Marc-André Viau and Mr. Émile Boisseau-Bouvier.

Of course, Ms. Ross, thank you so much for your testimony.

[Marc-André Viau]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all the committee members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

With that, we shall adjourn the meeting.

To our committee members, we'll see you again on Thursday.

Thank you so much.