Agriculture Committee on Nov. 21st, 2024

[Tom Rosser]

I don't believe there was.

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

Thank you very much.

Those are my questions for now.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Richard Cannings]

Thank you.

We'll now turn to Monsieur Drouin for five minutes.

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

Thanks.

I appreciate Ms. Rood's questions, but we're here for the CBSA. Of course, if we want to talk about canola and whatnot, we can always entertain having a meeting at some point. As she knows, our officials are prepared for these particular questions, though I know Mr. Rosser is adept at responding to any question.

I have a question for Ms. Govier.

Earlier, you alluded to the fact that the Department of Finance could of course review the situation if there were major impacts. Let's take the example of fertilizer prices rising significantly, once again. The decision would obviously have to be made at the political level but, as a department, you would conduct an analysis to figure out whether the decision in question would likely lead to major impacts on the cost of inputs for our farmers, for example. Following this analysis, you would be able to make an appropriate recommendation about a tariff to impose at that point, or to say that one shouldn't be imposed because it would have a major impact on our economy.

Have I understood you correctly? Are you constantly reassessing these things?

[Michèle Govier]

I'll answer in English, if that's okay.

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

Yes.

[Michèle Govier]

Yes, certainly, and it was not just with this type of tariff. With all our tariffs, there can be issues that arise that require the government to look at them. There is the power within the customs tariff to grant remission, which is relief from tariffs, whether retroactively or prospectively, which stakeholders request on a fairly regular basis when they have these situations. Perhaps there is short supply in the market or other situations that might arise. It's the type of thing that we do on a routine basis when there are any market disruptions, and we certainly take those very seriously and give them full consideration.

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

Mr. Chair, in the spirit of co-operation, I know that you've signalled that you wanted to ask some questions and that you ceded your time, so I'm done.

Thank you so much for coming before us.

I will cede my time. We're done on our side. Thank you.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Richard Cannings]

Okay. I was just trying to sort out what was going to happen next.

I'm going to take my time and ask a couple of questions. We've come to the end of the regular rounds.

Many of my questions have already been asked, as you can imagine, but I just want to take a couple of minutes to get some clarification on some of the issues.

I'll turn to Mr. Lawton.

You talked about how you can't answer specific questions about the Sollio case precisely, but from what I understand, you say that Sollio would have self-reported and figured out what they'd have to charge, yet a while later they received a refund for that.

I guess I'm having a hard time realizing that Sollio figured they deserved a refund. Speaking in general now, would companies in general say, “I should get a refund”, and then put in something else, or was that something that came to the industry as a whole? Are there companies other than Sollio that are affected by this situation? I'm having a hard time squaring your testimony with what we heard from Sollio.

[Alexander Lawton]

Speaking in broad general terms, the agency receives thousands of refund requests every year.

Oftentimes, if it's specific to—

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Richard Cannings]

But not for fertilizer.

[Alexander Lawton]

I don't have the exact numbers for fertilizer, but I'm going to assume that it's a subset of those thousands.

With the decision to withdraw the most favoured nation tariff, there was an exception for goods in transit. Depending on when importers would have self-assessed the duties and on their understanding of how that provision for goods in transit was being administered, it's entirely possible that a company or an importer may have self-assessed the 35% duty and then realized subsequently that their goods actually were in transit, in which case that company would have sought a refund.

I'm not speaking to specifics here. That was a very common situation with respect to the timing right around March 2022. That would have been, potentially, a scenario in which a company would have self-assessed and then sought a refund afterward.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Richard Cannings]

Okay. Thank you.

I'll finally turn to Ms. Govier about the law that you said was applied very horizontally and went on quickly, and then we made some adjustments for aluminum, etc.

Can you wrap up by saying what the process now is to look at this situation, when of all the G7 countries, Canada is the only one that is being really impacted by paying higher prices? We aren't using Russian fertilizer, but we're paying maybe 20% more than other countries because of what we've asked our farmers to shoulder, and we're having no effect on Russian exports in general.

What's the process there? What is the prospect for relief from this? Where do we stand? As a final statement to Canadian producers across this country, what can they look forward to?

[Michèle Govier]

I want to make one clarification: There were not exceptions to the most favoured nation withdrawal for titanium, aluminum or other products. Those were sanctions-related exclusions, and they were little bit different. I wanted to make that clear.

In terms of process, though, as I stated, there's a power for the Governor in Council to grant remission on recommendations by the Minister of Finance in exceptional circumstances. If we were to receive the information to bring advice around that, that is something that, as I said, we do on a regular basis at the Department of Finance. There's a high bar, because these types of tariffs are imposed for a valid policy reason. This one, as I mentioned, was endorsed and put into legislation as well, so that reflects a certain will.

There is a high bar for deviations, but we certainly would consider disruptions in the marketplace or what have you. Again, to be able to say, “Yes, please do buy fertilizer from Russia again” is kind of going against the initial reason for not doing so, which is not to say that it wouldn't be considered. I think that it is extremely important to have the market functioning properly, so we would be weighing those considerations.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Richard Cannings]

Thank you.

That brings to an end the question time for this meeting.

The next meeting will be consideration of our draft report on the impact of border carbon adjustments.

I'd like to thank the witnesses again for being here today.

We will see you all on Tuesday. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.