Agriculture Committee on Oct. 19th, 2022

[David Tougas]

: Actually, the biggest recommendation we made recently is more administrative in nature. It would be to streamline the paperwork, the criteria and all that. I don’t have the list in front of me, but it’s mostly administrative. I would say that the pandemic added a layer of complexity to bringing these workers to Canada. So, we need to be vigilant about that complexity and keep it to a minimum for our Canadian farm businesses.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Tougas and Mr. Perron.

I now give the floor to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. MacDonald, I'd like to start with you and CN Rail. I'd like to talk to you about labour. Not having enough of a workforce and so on is a perennial theme at this committee across all sectors.

CN Rail also had a little bit of labour strife over the summer, and I'm wondering if you can comment on your labour gap. Do you have enough employees to satisfy the capacity you would like to be at currently? Looking forward, do you feel that your labour relations are at a pretty good point right now? Do you expect any more strife in the future? Can you comment on that?

[Doug MacDonald]

That's a great question.

Today we think we are fairly staffed up for the upcoming fall peak. We've hired 500 new conductors to help move trains, and conductors become engineers, so it's a progression. We're hiring another 800 in Q4 and Q1, and then we have another 500 coming in Q1 and Q2.

Is it hard to find labour? The answer is absolutely yes. In major centres, it's not so bad. In rural areas where we still move a lot of our freight—places like northern B.C. and other places—it's very hard to attract people. It's very hard to find living accommodations. One of our biggest hubs is Jasper, Alberta, where you're not allowed to build housing unless you have a reason to reside, so people are having to commute for 45 minutes to an hour to get to their jobs. In a big city, we're used to it, but not out in rural Alberta. We'll continue to hire in for that, but we think we're staffed up well enough to do it currently.

From a labour strife standpoint, I think we're all set up. We have some negotiations that are ongoing now with Unifor. I was actually in Montreal this morning kicking that off. We have a lot of things in common, and I think we'll be able to come in and negotiate a solution as we usually do.

We have all the other main unions—the running trades, we call them—and they will start negotiating soon. We expect that to go through winter, and we hope to come to a good solution. It will be contestable a little bit around wages, obviously, because of the inflation. That's the biggest thing.

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

I noted that when you made your opening statement and were talking about disruptions and supply chains, the first thing you cited was climate change.

My home province is British Columbia. In the space of a number of months, we went from raging wildfires that burned some communities to the ground to an atmospheric river, which was not part of our lingo before last year. Parliament is being dominated by a conversation about inflation right now, and we're having conversations about taxes, but I don't think enough parliamentarians are paying enough attention to the inflationary aspects of climate change.

My province of B.C. shelled out more than $10 billion to fix the damage from the atmospheric river. You talked about the stress and threat that climate change poses to our critical infrastructure. You know very well what that atmospheric river did to our rail lines, effectively cutting off the port of Vancouver, our busiest port, from the rest of Canada. Going forward, of course, like any corporation with billions of dollars in assets, you must be mapping out where the greatest threats are.

Have you identified any particular links in your rail lines that are particularly vulnerable at the moment, and that we, as a committee, should be paying attention to within the context of food security—the ability to move food from point A to point B and ship it across the world?

[Doug MacDonald]

We've been mapping those out for years. I'll say right off the bat that B.C. is obviously a hot-button issue these days. It's seen the most volatility. We're very focused on that. We've made a lot of changes in how we operate and what we look for, working with both the B.C. government and all our other partners there. As an example, today it's very dry in southern B.C. We have to control the track more. We do things like that. We're on the lookout for fires all the time. We'll continue to do that and actually run more slowly and do other things when it gets too dry.

We try to do everything according to the guidelines set by Transport Canada, but we also have guidelines internally. It's critical. We are learning as we go, just like everybody else. No one saw an atmospheric river before, and that was devastating. We were out for three weeks. I will say that what we did to get back from that was a feat of engineering, but we expect to see more throughout Canada.

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

Thank you for that.

I'd like to turn to the OFA.

Ms. Brekveld, it's good to see you again.

You took some time in your opening statement to mention a few things that are key to this study on food security and combatting food insecurity. You took the time to mention soil health and its importance. It's no surprise to people around this that it's also a very big passion of mine.

Could you develop that a bit further? How are you particularly establishing the link between the importance of soil health to farmers and what our committee is studying right now under this particular theme?

[Peggy Brekveld]

I will say two things about this.

One, we should know and assess what our soils are across this county, and ensure we have the right labelling for everything.

Two, we have to understand how soil works and understand that if we don't take care of it or feed it, we will see the degradation of it. There are places where farmers have decided that fertilizer or manure are not accessible. Perhaps the livestock operations are too far away, or perhaps the fertilizer is priced to the point where they can no longer afford it because the margins are too small, so they don't put enough on. You can watch how, in two or three years, the soil changes colour and the plants get smaller and smaller. In the end, you just end up with weeds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Ms. Brekveld and Mr. MacGregor, unfortunately, we're at time. Thank you both.

We'll now go back to the Conservatives and Mr. Lehoux. You have up to five minutes.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to share my time with Mr. Barlow.

Mr. Caron, I hope your microphone is working. If not, you can answer, Mr. Tougas.

I will ask a simple question. We are doing a study on food security. We know that the war in Ukraine and the pandemic had serious impacts on all international markets.

If you had two or three recommendations to make to the committee on how the federal government can help our agriculture achieve the best possible results, in spite of these circumstances, what would they be?

[Martin Caron]

[Technical difficulty]

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I’m sorry, Mr. Caron. The connection is very bad.

We’ll go to Mr. Tougas.

[David Tougas]

We had some recommendations to that effect in our speech.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

I’m sorry, Mr. Tougas. What were they?

[David Tougas]

We talked about special programs to maintain the financial health of businesses suffering from the rising cost of inputs.

We didn’t mention it directly, but you have to keep an eye on the fertilizer tax and the availability of fertilizer in the eastern part of the country. I don’t know what needs to be done to ensure a supply, but farmers need these fertilizers to keep up their production.

Those are probably our two main recommendations.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

You mentioned that the labour issue is still a major challenge.

In a previous study by the committee, there was talk of cutting down on the famous forms to be filled out. There was even a recommendation to that effect in one study.

Have you noticed any concrete action in this area? Are we still dealing with the same thick red tape?

[David Tougas]

That’s what I understand, but it’s not my file. We are still in the same place.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Very well.

You touched on inflation, which has a significant impact on the cost of inputs.

In your opinion, should we suspend certain taxes instead of inventing programs? How do you see that?

[David Tougas]

What would help would be to abolish taxes or return the money collected to the agricultural sector, as Ms. Brekveld mentioned. That money is no longer available for producers, and increases production costs for everyone.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

That’s perfect, thank you.

Mr. Barlow, it’s your turn.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lehoux.

I want to go back to Mr. MacDonald.

I believe there are eight labour agreements between you and CP that are set to expire by end of the year when we're looking to move commodities like grain. The Liberal Minister of Labour announced today that they were going to have legislation against replacement workers. I know that when there is a strike in the railways, a lot of times the managers step up to fill those voids.

I guess I have two questions. First, were you consulted on this new legislation from the Minister of Labour? Second, if it does impact your ability to allow management to step into some of those key roles during labour disputes, what impact is that going to have on moving commodities via rail should a strike happen?

[Doug MacDonald]

First of all, to my knowledge, we haven't been consulted. Second, when you look at rail, you see we just don't have enough managers to run the railway, so that doesn't happen. We did have a strike with our signals workers this summer, and we did have enough managers, as well as a few third party outside people we brought in to help run the railway in that interim period.

Do we want replacement workers? There are only certain areas where we could use them—like that small union that went out—but for the major part of our railway, we could not do it. We would simply have to shut down.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

You say, “only certain areas”. Should this happen and this legislation go through, are we talking about rail not moving, or are we saying there'll be, let's say, a 50% reduction in capacity or the ability to move product? Do you have an idea what that would quantify as?

[Doug MacDonald]

No. With respect to this bill, it's not going to have a major impact on CN. We would shut down regardless, whether this bill is passed or not.