Evidence of meeting #33 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was grain.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
That's $202, and the government is taking $106,000, and it's going to take $475,000.
I'm quite familiar with chicken farms. I actually caught chickens. Let me say, in terms of heating the barns in order to keep your animals alive, are there any viable alternative sources of energy that you could be using other than a fossil fuel?
Mountain View Poultry Farms
Not really. Historically, we all moved over to natural gas because the furnaces and everything function better. Before that, we all used coal. We could go back to coal, but that flies in the face of everything we're trying to do.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Absolutely. I fully agree.
There's no alternative, yet you're being punished.
Let's go to Peggy from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
Is your industry given any credit for the many megatonnes of carbon dioxide that all the crops are absorbing?
President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture
We would love to see a greater acknowledgement of the work that fields and farms do naturally, which is sequester carbon. That's part of the natural plant process. There's still work to be done. We would certainly support seeing that work happen in the future.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Right.
So we have crops across the country—plants, grasslands, etc.—that are taking CO2 out of the air, and they are getting absolutely zero credit for that. The Liberal government is then putting a carbon tax on all these farmers, and now they have put a clean fuel standard on there. I think this is a punishment of an industry that's essential.
I'm sorry, Chair. I realize I'm out of time.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow
Thank you, Ms. Gladu. That's good timing.
Ms. Taylor Roy, you have six minutes, please.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
There are a lot of differences between the farms and the types of data presented here, so let me start with Mr. Kielstra first.
You have a poultry farm in Alberta. You mentioned that today you're paying, as Ms. Gladu pointed out, $106,000. What percentage is that of your overall operating costs?
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Just take a guess. What are your overall operating costs?
Mountain View Poultry Farms
Our overall operating costs are around $10 million.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
All right, so it's a relatively low percentage.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
You mentioned that it's going up to $480,000, but that's not until 2030. Is that correct?
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
I believe next year it's going up to about $125,000. Is that correct?
Mountain View Poultry Farms
Yes. I'm just showing where we're headed, where it's going.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
I understand. I just wanted to clarify that. We were talking about the crunch right now because of the supply chain, etc., on farmers, and I just wanted to ensure that we had on the record that it wasn't next year's cost. It was far out into the future.
As well, with regard to the carbon tax, when you were asked here if you had alternatives, you said, “Not really.” What do you mean by “Not really”? Coal is not a viable alternative, obviously. We all know that, but are there any things that could be done to make the barns more efficient? If you had subsidies from the government, for example, to adopt some of the new technologies, would you be able to do that?
Mountain View Poultry Farms
Well, we always improve insulation and things like that. That's the type of thing we can do, but other than that it's very limited.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Have you improved insulation in all your barns?
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
What percentage do you think you have actually fully insulated to improve efficiencies as much as you can?
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
That's fantastic.
What percentage efficiency did you find when you did that? How much did your fuel costs drop?