Agriculture Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

As you monitor the situation in the Ukraine, is there any sense of how production of some of these materials has been perhaps compromised and also how the domestic market within Ukraine has been affected? I'm just trying to get at how much pressure there is on exporting these materials out of Ukraine to Canada.

[Michèle Govier]

Those are good questions that I would like to have answers to. I think going into it we knew that the conflict was going to have implications for Ukraine's economy and its ability to export to Canada. I believe exports actually declined quite a lot in the first half of the year.

But with respect to these particular products and the particular companies that are in question, we don't have the details on that.

I don't know if others want to add....

[Doug Forsyth]

Thank you.

If I could just add a little bit to that, yes, you're absolutely right: the situation in Ukraine itself is very difficult for companies and for their citizens, of course. So that has had an impact on what they can produce.

It's also had an impact on what type of intelligence we would have in the marketplace on the trade commissioner side of things. We don't have people in the market who would be able to provide all of that information, but I think my colleague from Finance has indicated quite a bit of the current intelligence we have. They would be looking first to the European Union, just because it is the closest market, and not necessarily to Canada as a primary or even secondary market.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Just to wrap up this line, basically you're monitoring the situation. I don't know what the timeline is on when you said you would look at the situation and, if you saw big spikes, you could maybe change. Is that monitoring ongoing? Would there be a situation where you'd say that we don't really need to have these supply-managed goods on this list and that we can take them off because there seems to be absolutely no interest or no ability to export?

[Yannick Mondy]

I'll respond with respect to the monitoring. We receive data right now on a monthly basis and we disseminate aggregates and by tariff line to our colleagues at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Global Affairs, as well amongst other federal partners. It was always noted from the start that if some problematic products started to appear in certain quantities, we would increase the frequency of this monitoring to biweekly, weekly, or however we needed to. At this time we're doing it monthly, because there are no major issues that have come up.

[Michèle Govier]

I think the second part of your question is whether we might discontinue the measure with respect to supply management, because there is no interest in the market. We haven't considered that. I think we would want to leave it open. I would say that, yes, there is a risk that if a large quantity of products comes in, it could potentially cause problems, but perhaps in more modest amounts it would not and yet would still provide a benefit for Ukraine. So I think we would want to leave that open for that kind of potential scenario.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

You have about 30 seconds left.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll leave it, then.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

I will now move on to our second round of questions.

We'll go to Ms. Rood for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for appearing here today.

I have a couple of quick questions.

Could we have had the remission order intact without including supply-managed goods?

[Michèle Govier]

Yes, there is discretion to do it on a subset of projects.

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

Okay. Do you know how much poultry Ukraine produces compared with Canada?

[Michèle Govier]

I don't have that figure. I don't know if my colleagues would. Perhaps in your next panel, I think Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada might have that information.

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

Okay, thank you very much.

Was the decision to add supply-managed goods to the order a political decision, or was it an idea of the department?

[Michèle Govier]

I really wouldn't want to comment on the process towards getting to a decision. We provide information on what the potential action could be and what the implications are, and decisions go from there, but I wouldn't comment on the briefing process.

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

Who would trigger the conversation of how much is too much chicken supply to come into Canada? Would that be the Department of Agriculture or is that Finance?

[Michèle Govier]

I think we would have that discussion together. I think Agriculture Canada is more familiar with the implications of what particular quantities might have effects on the supply management system, so we definitely want their expertise, but I think we'd want to be part of that conversation as well.

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

Going into those conversations, would you have decided on what the threshold should be for allowing a supply-managed product into Canada as part of this order before going ahead with the order?

[Michèle Govier]

No, we did not establish thresholds that would trigger one thing or another ahead of the order.

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

You mentioned the impact on tariffs to be about $2.6 million. I'm just wondering if you've done an assessment on what the economic impact would be to our producers and our farmers, especially in the high-managed sectors.

[Michèle Govier]

Just to reiterate, the $2.6 million is with respect to all products, not just agricultural products.

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

That is tariffs on products, correct?

[Michèle Govier]

Yes, that's the tariffs—

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

I'm just wondering if you did an assessment on what the economic impact on the actual producers would be—not tariffs but on the producers themselves.

[Michèle Govier]

We did not do a fulsome economic impact assessment on all of the different sectors that could potentially be implicated by this. I think we had a general sense of where the input could come from and the sectors that could be affected, but we didn't get down to that level of granular detail in the time that we had.