Agriculture Committee on Nov. 16th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 37 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

As per normal, I'll start with a few reminders. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. The proceedings will show only those who are actually speaking, so if you're not speaking, you won't necessarily be on camera. Of course, screenshots are not permitted.

We have a couple of substitutions. Substituting in for Mr. Drouin, we have Mr. Fayçal El-Khoury.

Mr. El-Khoury, it's great to see you here at the agriculture committee.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I'm happy to be here with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

It's great to have new members join and be able to be on the best committee on the Hill.

Today, Ms. Andréanne Larouche will be replacing Mr. Yves Perron starting at 6 p.m.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, May 30, 2022, we are continuing our study on global food insecurity.

This is actually the last panel we will have. I certainly appreciate all the witnesses who have appeared and those who are here today.

Appearing today as an individual, we have Dr. Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food with the United Nations. He's joining us by video conference. Welcome, Dr. Fakhri.

In the room we have, from the Canadian Canola Growers Association, Dave Carey, who serves as the vice-president of government and industry relations. Mr. Carey, it's great to see you.

From the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association, we have Charles Stevens, who is the chair of the board. Mr. Stevens, welcome to our committee.

From Quorum Corporation, we have Mark Hemmes, who is the president. He is joining us by video conference.

Colleagues, you'll note that we have four witnesses as we try to round out our schedule. We thought it was best to make sure we could exhaust the witness list, which is why we have four on this panel.

I'll get right to it and ask Mr. Fakhri to begin.

It's over to you for five minutes.

[Dr. Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, United Nations, As an Individual]

Thank you, everybody.

As the UN special rapporteur, I am the eyes, ears and good conscience of the UN system when it comes to the right to food. That means that the UN Human Rights Council has mandated me to regularly report to them and the UN General Assembly on matters regarding hunger, malnutrition and famine from a human rights perspective.

For the last two and a half years, I have had a unique perspective on the food crisis. I have consulted governments and communities from every single region of the world. I have also directly engaged with over a dozen international organizations at the highest levels and at working levels. I bore witness to how women face overwhelming degrees of discrimination and violence, all while having to feed their families and communities.

In 2021, the number of children in child labour globally increased to 160 million. This is the first rise in 20 years, and this is mostly in the agricultural sector. Workers, peasants, pastoralists and fishers are essential to making sure that we all eat, but they've been treated as expendable. Indigenous peoples' homelands are being stolen, occupied and decimated at genocidal rates.

In light of all this, last year the UN General Assembly requested that I report on the food crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am happy to share with you today some of my findings. I am speaking as an international expert, but I should add that I practised law in Ontario for several years before taking up this position.

The ultimate takeaway from an international perspective is that there remains no international co-operation and coordination to tackle the food crisis. Without international co-operation and coordination based on the right to food, it will be very difficult to overcome the food crisis.

I suggest that the Committee on World Food Security is the best place to develop an international plan for co-operation and coordination. Something to keep in mind is that this is a long-standing issue. Before the war in Ukraine and before the COVID-19 pandemic, hunger and malnutrition were on the rise. Even if the war in Ukraine and the pandemic ended tomorrow, we would still find ourselves in a global food crisis that would be getting worse.

Let me get to my report. First, I identify structural challenges that make it difficult to tackle the food crisis. The structural challenges are rising debt rates for all countries, an international trade system that doesn't serve people's real needs, and an increasing concentration of corporate power in food systems. Second, I identify what can be done in the immediate term and what steps can be taken now to serve needs in the long term.

As an immediate response, I recommend that governments build on what worked during the pandemic. Many governments are starting to end pandemic relief measures, but these measures provided proof of what is possible to realize the right to food. My suggestion is to make these programs permanent; do not end them.

In the long term, I recommend that all countries transition their food systems through agroecology. Agroecology is a practice based on science, on traditional knowledge and on social justice. It is a practice committed to mimicking ecological processes. It treats the goals of enhancing biodiversity and enhancing justice as one and the same.

I also explain in my report how governments can repurpose existing budgets and use their national food plans to devise a transition to agroecology. This is through three things: one, providing a just transition for workers; two, ensuring strong land rights and genuine agrarian reform; and three, holding corporations accountable.

Finally, I explain why an explicit affirmation of the right to food is important. It is worth remembering that Canada has an international obligation to fulfill the right to food as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and as a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In the simplest terms, the right to food means that everyone has the right to access good, healthy food. People can access good food through fair and stable markets or through access to land and natural resources. Importantly, the right to food provides a very specific international framework that enables international co-operation.

I look forward to any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Fakhri.

We'll now turn to Mr. Carey for up to five minutes.

[Dave Carey, Vice-President, Government and Industry Relations, Canadian Canola Growers Association]

Thank you for the invitation to appear.

I'm filling in for our farmer chair, Mike Ammeter, who is down the road presiding over a board meeting as we speak.

Global food insecurity is a complex, multi-faceted issue. It involves geopolitics, socio-economic factors and armed conflict. These are forces outside the purview of a farm group and, to a degree, even outside the control of the Canadian government.

Today, I want to talk to you about what I believe we can do from the Canadian farm group perspective to produce more food, feed and fuel to increase our agricultural exports to a hungry world. We have not realized Canadian agriculture's full potential, and many of the greatest barriers to increased productivity are domestic legislation, regulations and infrastructure, items that are within our control as a nation.

In my brief time, I will cover the top five factors that, if addressed, would mean that Canadian farmers would be well positioned to sustainably intensify their production and ultimately grow more products.

One is transportation. We need to increase transparency and confidence in Canada's railways, invest in adaptive and resilient infrastructure and take immediate steps to implement the recently released supply chain task force report.

The top recommendations that would benefit agriculture would be to expand the current 30-kilometre interswitching; to revise the Canadian Transportation Agency's mandate to provide the independence, authority and funding required to deliver on that mandate; to develop a transportation supply chain labour task force with strong agricultural representation; and to increase and improve the supply chain data—it's all for naught if we can't move our products to market.

The second would be around fertilizer. Next to water, nitrogen-based fertilizer is the second most important input to grow canola.

Any reduction in fertilizer emissions must remain voluntary and must focus on incentivizing farmers to adopt additional best practices to improve their already sustainable and efficient operations. Incentives for farmers must be made through the lens of a return on investment to get the best results. Emission reduction must also be measured on an intensity basis as farmers look to increase their yields using the same amount of land to meet current and future demand. We need to support Canada's innovative and sustainable farmers by focusing on increasing productivity, incentivizing best practices and measuring emissions on an intensity and efficiency basis.

Number three is about crop protection products. Canada has a world-class regulatory system and the products that the pest management regulatory agency, or PMRA, regulates have led to significant environmental and economic advancements on farm. These tools protect farmers' crops against pest pressures and disease and play an important role in canola sustainability. Effective weed control paves the way for conservation tillage, increasing soil health, reducing fuel use, sequestering carbon and eliminating up to 750,000 tonnes of GHG emissions per year.

The PMRA transformation agenda has created uncertainty and it challenges Canada's reputation and commitment to science and risk-based assessments. Assessments need to be done in a timely manner based on the best possible science to encourage investment and adoption of the latest technologies to sustainably grow more canola and keep our farmers competitive on the world stage. We need to champion science-based decision-making, restore confidence in Canada's regulatory system and avoid taking a European Union hazard-style approach.

Number four is around plant-breeding innovation. Plant-breeding innovation will play an important role in farmers' responses to global food security and climate change challenges. Farmers need access to the latest seed varieties developed using the latest technologies, such as gene editing. To benefit from these advancements, we need clear, transparent and predictable guidance documents from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to be released as soon as possible.

Number five is around working capital. Like any family business, farmers want to invest in their operations; however, the capital costs of farming are intensive, with most pieces of major farm equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. The CCGA strongly supports Bill C-234 and commends this committee for its work on moving that through committee stage on Monday. With no viable fuel alternatives and infrastructure in place for farmers to replace natural gas and propane, Bill C-234 provides much-needed economic relief on farm and will ultimately help the environment, the footprint of farmers and their economic viability.

The last piece of legislation we will chat about is Bill C-244, or the right to repair, currently in its second reading. Farmers also need their equipment to work in time-sensitive periods such as during seeding and harvest. The CCGA supports Bill C-244, as it will give farmers the choice of who can diagnose and repair their equipment, saving them critical time and money, and it would help reduce prices by allowing for competition.

In conclusion, it's vital that Canada focus on what we can do to sustainably intensify our primary agriculture production. To do that, we need a legislative and regulatory environment that is predictable and science-based and that fosters investment and innovation.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Carey.

We will now turn to Mr. Stevens for up to five minutes.

[Charles Stevens, Chair of the Board, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present.

I represent the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association.

Canadian food security in terms of our fresh fruit and vegetables is worryingly low. According to the U.S. Trade, in 2021, over 75% of Canadian fresh vegetables in the market and 80% of the fresh fruit were supplied by imports into Canada.

However, Canada can play a tremendous role in combatting global food insecurity for certain crops. For certain vegetable crops where we have strong economies of scale and favourable growing conditions, such as greenhouse vegetables, we are significant exporters. In 2021, Canadians managed to export $2 billion in fresh vegetables to other countries and exported an additional $3 billion in frozen fruits and vegetables worldwide.

A key to both increasing our domestic food security and our ability to contribute to global food security is strong agricultural policies. That's why we're here.

For example, the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council published a study in 2021 that showed that labour shortages in Canadian farms directly corresponded to $2.9 billion in lost sales. We're not the only ones who have a problem with this issue, as you know. Other studies of Ontario safety net programs for farms show that without some of these programs, 95% of the farms would be negatively impacted, including my own, by the way. These are just two examples of the direct correlation between government policies and our ability to produce food for Canadians and for the global community.

I have a few items here about the policies that need to be addressed to help us address this problem.

Protect the temporary foreign worker program, including the seasonal void that SAWP fills compared to other, year-round programs. If we lose this, or if it gets tweaked badly, we're out of business.

Ensure that business risk management programs are strong and accessible. Don't throw up barriers to programs, rushing for new cross-compliances. The uptake would be—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I apologize, Mr. Stevens. I'm just stopping the clock. I know Mr. Perron was having a bit of difficulty with translation.

I will continue to speak in English. Can you hear me now in French in the translation?

Okay, we've resolved it.

Mr. Stevens, sorry to interrupt, but we'll let you continue from there.

[Charles Stevens]

Okay.

Get farmers back to farming by streamlining government inspection processes. They are complicated and drawn out, especially the temporary worker program integrity audits. There were 11 audits on my farm last year. When I started, there were none. It doesn't help the farmer when he's under stress and harvesting his crop to have somebody come in and audit. At the end of the day, he has nothing wrong, and it just overburdens them.

Establish financial protection for fresh fruit and vegetable farmers in Canada to mirror the same policy in the United States by quickly passing Bill C-280, the financial protection for fresh fruit and vegetable farmers act. Our product is perishable. We can't collect it when there is a bankruptcy.

Implement a grocery code of conduct to protect domestic farms from risk of anti-competitive practices by large retailers, which are stretching family farms to the limit.

Correct the competitive handicap for Canadian farmers due to the fertilizer tariffs by developing a fair and equitable refund or tax rebate program.

Ensure farmers have the tools that they need to protect their crops by increasing funding to the pest management centre. That is not the PMRA. They got some dollars the other day, but the pest management centre is the tool that we use to get the new technology in crop protection to the farmers of the fruit and vegetable industry. That is the key big one because without them we're going down the tube. It's very important.

That's it. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Stevens.

Mr. Hemmes, you're online, but your camera is not on.

There you are.

We'll go over to you for up to five minutes.

[Mark Hemmes, President, Quorum Corporation]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for the invitation to participate in today's meeting.

I'm Mark Hemmes, the president of Quorum Corporation, based in Edmonton. Quorum has been responsible for monitoring the Canadian prairie grain handling and transportation system on behalf of Transport Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada since June 2001.

You all have my notes, I believe. I sent them in a couple of days ago, so I'm not going to try to read the whole thing to you.

As my expertise and knowledge centre on the logistics and supply chain of the Canadian grain industry, my comments today are going to be focused on how global food insecurity can and cannot be aided by the Canadian industry.

Global food insecurity has been a concern for many over the past number of years as demand grows with increased population and higher standards of living, while production and supply fluctuate with regional weather conditions and supply chain disruptions, be they weather- or human-caused. The Russian invasion of Ukraine served to exacerbate this situation. As such, my comments will cover both the short-term and the long-term challenges that we face.

In the short term, not unlike the impact the pandemic had on the entirety of the global supply chain, the Russian invasion of Ukraine served to upset an already tenuous balance of supply and demand for grain and grain products globally. Using wheat production and exports as an example, the three-year average of global production was 752 million metric tonnes, while the global export market averaged about 177 million metric tonnes. Four countries made up over half of the global export supply—Ukraine, Russia, the United States and Canada, with Ukraine and Russia providing about 31% of that supply. Most of those exports flow from Black Sea port origins and supply the demand of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

General industry opinion suggests that supply from that region is going to be reduced by half, if not more, for the duration of the war and for a period after its conclusion. In short, the global market is going to be looking for about 26 million metric tonnes of wheat, which has been lost due to the impacts of the war.

Western Canadian wheat and durum production has averaged 28.9 million metric tonnes annually over the last five years, with an average of three and a half million metric tonnes carried over. Domestically, we consume about six million metric tonnes annually, and the remainder, anything over and above this that we grow, goes into the export markets. That's about 26 million metric tonnes. There is a graph in the paper I sent you that pretty much displays how that kind of balance happens.

Canadian grain companies and grain exporters have long-standing commitments to established markets globally, many of which are second and third world countries. While the current year's western Canadian production volumes have returned to a level that equals the five-year average, the total available to supplement the loss of supply due to the impact of the war is very minimal.

Compounding this are the logistical challenges of supplying the regions that will be most impacted by the shortfall in supply—meaning the Middle East and North Africa. The logical routes would be through Thunder Bay and the seaway or eastern Canadian ports.

While the port of Thunder Bay has more than adequate terminal capacity, it would require increased seaway capacity, either through increased laker vessels or through an increase in seaway-sized ocean-going vessels. This would increase the cost of movement as compared to the existing routing, which normally goes through the west coast ports.

A direct rail movement to eastern Canadian ports would require additional rail capacity in terms of railcars and resources, adding to an already constrained system. These constraints would need to be considered if we are going to think about routing the supply to the affected regional areas.

In the longer term, though, Canadian grain production has enjoyed an annual increase averaging about 3% due to improved agronomics, while our domestic consumption has remained relatively constant. This allows for the potential in the future of increased exports of Canadian grain and grain products that will serve to help in the alleviation of global food insecurity.

To serve that growth, grain companies in Canada have invested significantly in expanded capacity in their country elevator networks and the facilities at both western and eastern Canadian ports. The challenge that is faced by all the grain exporters, though, is getting access to the ports through the rail networks, as Dave has already mentioned.

This committee has probably heard in previous meetings on this and other topics that grain exporters base their sales and marketing plans primarily on what rail capacity they think they can obtain. The railway grain plans that are issued each August for the upcoming grain year do not reflect the level of increased production experienced already. As such, access to rail capacity is and has long been a serious concern for all grain exporters, and it will continue to be in the future if the current conditions continue—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. Hemmes, we're going to keep it right at that, if we can. I know my colleagues will want to ask more questions, and we're going to get to that right now.

Ms. Rood, it's over to you for up to six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing here today on this important topic.

I'm going to turn to Mr. Stevens.

I've had some great meetings over the last couple of days with our fruit and vegetable producers from Ontario. Having been in the industry with my family for a long time, I understand some of the challenges that the industry is facing right now.

We are a supplier of high-quality fruits and vegetables not just to Canada, but to the world. As you mentioned in your statement, we export a lot of our vegetables that are greenhouse-grown in Canada.

I'm wondering if you could touch on the fertilizer tariffs and the fertilizer reduction that the government is looking at imposing on farmers. What will that do to our food security in Canada? What will it do to our growers as far as being able to continue to produce the yields and the great crops that we have is concerned, while we're seeing fewer and fewer farmers in the business of producing fresh fruit and vegetables in Canada right now?

[Charles Stevens]

That's a pretty easy one. There's legislation or a policy that has increased the cost to the farmer, and it comes out of his bottom line. When you do that, it reduces his funds to be able to innovate, grow his business and grow the industry. It gets very tough when you have one of your key ingredients doubling in price in one year. I know it's probably more important to the grains and oilseed business.

We use technology, even in our horticultural operations, to put the fertilizer just where it is necessary. The technology is phenomenal in how this is being done. I don't know whether the government understands how we are getting better and better at using this technology to help reduce the emissions.

As I said, it's a policy that takes dollars out of the industry. You cannot do that. We have a huge opportunity to be a key leader in agriculture in Canada. We have water and we have land, but we need policies that bump us up, instead of taking us down.

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

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing from those remarks is that if we cannot reduce our inputs as growers, we're going to become uncompetitive compared to imports that we would receive of fresh fruits and vegetables from around the world, where we can't control how they produce them, what they're putting on their crops and what regulations they have.

Is that correct?

[Charles Stevens]

That is correct. The fruits and vegetables.... We are in an open market in the world. There's no protection for us at all.

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

You're leading into my next question, on financial protection for those who are in the business of perishable foods.

Can you expand a bit on how important it is to make sure that we have mechanisms in place to protect Canadian growers, so that they can continue to grow food for Canadians and we can make sure that we have food sovereignty and food security in our own country?

[Charles Stevens]

On that one, obviously, Bill C-280 is with the government at the present time. We would love to see that pass. The reason is that the United States protected us when we took fruits and vegetables and went into the United States. They had their own deemed trust, as it's called, and they took that away. We weren't protecting them when they put product into Canada, so they gave us a slap. We need to put this in so that we reciprocate and have the same type of protection on both sides of the border.

This costs the government nothing. It's a deemed trust. There's no money, but it puts agriculture.... When my producers take apples to the States and that company goes bankrupt, we're number one on the list to get paid. We're number one over the banks, because that's the only way: We can't take back that produce. It would be bad by that time, and we'd really be at a disadvantage.

This is a pretty simple thing. We've been working at it for 20 years and have yet to get it through. Your support would be great. At the end of the day, it will protect us for every dollar, because there are companies that will buy produce.... This is done in Canada too, such as when you go to the food terminals in Montreal. It protects us from people going bankrupt and not paying the farmer.

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

Mr. Stevens, one of the greatest costs that some farmers face is the carbon tax and, we've heard, the tripling of the carbon tax. We just passed Bill C-234 through the committee stage yesterday. Can you touch on that a little bit ?

I'll ask you this point-blank: If greenhouse growers didn't have the carbon tax exemption right now, what would that do to our growers in that sector? Would this bill help keep fruit and vegetable growers, in Ontario and beyond in Canada, in business?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

You have only 10 seconds, unfortunately, but I'll let you go ahead, Mr. Stevens.

[Charles Stevens]

Okay.

Well, in terms of the greenhouse growers, the carbon tax is huge in that industry. We got some protection on it, but it will make us uncompetitive again. We're only doing this in Canada at the moment, I believe, and the United States produce will come in. They will expand. We will shrink.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you.

We will go to Mr. Turnbull, who is online.

It's over to you for six minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to all our witnesses for being with us today.

Dr. Fakhri, I will probably have questions directed to you. I appreciate all the other witnesses, but I'm interested in your role in particular and your vantage point, which I think is very interesting, to add expertise to this conversation. I think you bring a somewhat unique perspective.

Dr. Fakhri, do the global trends in our food systems give you cause for serious concern when it comes to addressing food security?

[Dr. Michael Fakhri]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Turnbull.

Most definitely they do. As I mentioned, and I'll expand upon on it, even if the war ended tomorrow and the pandemic ended tomorrow, we'd still be in a food crisis. The war in Ukraine, to build on what a previous witness said, exacerbated existing problems. The reason the price fluctuated at first, when the war happened, wasn't necessarily a supply and demand issue. The problem was commodity markets.

Commodity markets are unregulated. They're really influenced by the U.S. commodity market in Chicago. Ever since 2000, because they've been deregulated, it allows for speculation. The price fluctuation of the price of grain isn't necessarily reflecting supply and demand; it's reflecting the fear and panic of speculators. The market isn't working properly, and what the international markets are doing is amplifying the problem.

The WTO, the World Trade Organization, is at a standstill. For 25 years, they've been stuck on negotiating over the Agreement on Agriculture. The consensus is that the Agreement on Agriculture is outdated, but there's no consensus on how to move forward. That's one of the structural problems.

Finally, the food system generates about one-third of greenhouse gases. The United Nations held a food systems summit last year, in 2021, and the global consensus is that everybody needs to transform their food system. There's disagreement on how and in what direction, and that was my suggestion on agroecology. It will take a lot of work, but we have to start now.

Thank you.