Agriculture Committee on Feb. 17th, 2022

[Katie Ward]

I am happy to provide the link in our submission to the committee. It's from Statistics Canada as of January, which was just published.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

[Katie Ward]

That one-third that's remaining includes program payments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Ms. Ward and Mr. Louis.

Mr. Perron, you now have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being with us this afternoon.

I will address Ms. Lefebvre first.

Ms. Lefebvre, you raised several points in your presentation that bothered me, including the difference between the price you get for your fresh fruits and vegetables and the price they sell for on the market. You note that the market price is going up, but the price you're getting is stagnant.

Could you explain the causes for this discrepancy? What's the problem?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

We're competing with international markets. Today, vegetables from Mexico are coming into the country, while we still offer vegetables in Quebec. As for the cost of labour, wages are $80, $100 or $120 a week in Mexico, while the wages for a similar number of hours of work here are $700 to $800 a week.

When we see the price of containers, we don't understand how it's possible to export commodities here and still offer better prices. I haven't yet found an answer to that question.

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

What could we do to help you with this?

Would this relate to reciprocity of standards?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

In terms of reciprocity of standards, the reference margins are quite different from those of our neighbouring countries or countries that produce the same vegetables as we do. In Mexico and Guatemala, for example, the on‑farm food safety and environmental standards are completely different from ours.

Reciprocity is important, but something has to be done about the prices we can get so that we can compete with those countries. Right now, a box of peppers from Mexico sells for $10, and our growers who are lucky enough to be working in Florida during the same period are unable to sell theirs for $15. I'm not even talking about greenhouse peppers that we are trying to sell for even more. It is an incomprehensible phenomenon.

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

Indeed, this is an important issue because there is a strong desire to promote local food and food self‑sufficiency.

I have a concern about transportation. You're telling me that you're paying 42% more for transportation and that you can't sell your products at a higher price. You'll disappear from the market if nothing is done.

Do you have any comments on this?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

We are currently losing orders for root vegetables from Quebec. For my farm alone, two orders that were going to be exported on the weekend were cancelled. The price difference is unbelievable.

The exchange rate usually helps, but it's not that different right now. We also have to think about the price of transportation, the price of our labour and all the costs that will be added in 2022.

At the moment, we aren't able to compete, so I can't imagine what the situation will be in 2022 because of input costs.

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

What government measures could support you concretely?

Could a code of conduct help you?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

Yes, we definitely need a code of conduct, but we also need programs to support farmers. We want to feed people, but we don't want to feed them at a loss. It's the loss of businesses that we foresee, in many cases, those that will not be able to make it.

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

Okay.

There are two parts to it: one is to apply the same requirements to products that come in from outside, such as the carbon tax and environmental standards, and the other is to provide direct support.

Have I understood you correctly?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

Yes.

We can go even further than that and talk about wash water, for which new committees and new standards are added every day, every week and every month.

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

Okay.

I don't want us to forget about labour. There is a big problem with temporary foreign workers. There are often moments of panic because of the delays.

What are the problems?

I'm giving you the opportunity to tell us what needs to be changed quickly in the temporary foreign worker program.

[Catherine Lefebvre]

For impeccable employers, it has to be three‑year predetermined contracts. It isn't complicated.

Currently, processing a request normally takes 20 weeks. Today, Service Canada still processes applications manually. This results in a processing time of 12 to 15 weeks. This leaves no time for foreign countries to prepare and help our workers prepare. Our workers aren't arriving on the right dates. We've been experiencing the same phenomenon for three years, and it's not new this year. We've been wondering for three years whether our foreign workers will arrive on time.

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

So it's a matter of timing. I think we could easily do a labour market impact assessment by site.

You mentioned poaching in your presentation, which is something I've looked at. When I ask the government people questions, they tell me that it's not true and they tell me to check the site. You're experiencing this problem.

Can you tell me about it quickly?

[Catherine Lefebvre]

Mr. Léger Bourgoin, could you answer that?

[Patrice Léger Bourgoin, General Manager, Quebec Produce Growers Association]

Yes. You can round out my answer.

Essentially, we see that, as part of the COVID‑19 amendments, Service Canada has put in place a process to try to speed up the processing of applications. However, this approach has been understood by people from other sectors that are not related to agriculture, and they have put in place a system to facilitate poaching of employees who come to Canada to work in agriculture.

Ultimately, Mr. Perrault, the market gardener pays for the whole administrative process and for the airline tickets, foreign workers arrive in Canada and, a few days later, workers are diverted by the manufacturing or construction sector, for example, which won't have to pay the costs associated with the worker's arrival.

Ms. Lefebvre, I'll let you continue.

[Catherine Lefebvre]

We have to be careful. We don't really endorse—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I'm sorry, Ms. Lefebvre, Mr. Léger Bourgoin and Mr. Perron. The six minutes are up.

Mr. MacGregor, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] from the National Farmers Union.

I think you made it quite clear in your opening comments that the supply chain issues cannot be looked at in a silo apart from the ongoing climate crisis. In my home province of British Columbia, last year we transitioned, in the space of three months, from brutal wildfires to some of the worst flooding we've ever seen, effectively isolating Vancouver and its port from the rest of the country for a fair amount of time.

Of course, we've seen disastrous droughts in the Prairies and the incredible impacts they've had on farmers and supply chains there. I invite you to expand on some of your opening remarks. From your perspective and the National Farmers Union's perspective, what do we need to shift systematically to create resilience and flexibility in our food system that will mitigate our having to put out these fires or react all the time to these events, which we know are going to part of a pattern in future years?

[Katie Ward]

Absolutely we need to see systemic change, more holistic management of the supply chain as a whole. We have in the past proposed a Canadian farm resilience agency that would be able to provide assistance to farmers in terms of education and cover cropping. We're currently facing a fertilizer crisis as one of our big supply chain issues. Farmers need to find low-cost alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and that will still fit their needs. A lot of farmers just got notice this past week that Bayer has declared force majeurefor one of its most popular pesticide products. Farmers are scrambling to figure out how they're going to implement their production for this year. We really do need to find ways for farmers to be less dependent on these inputs, because when something breaks at a factory overseas, all of a sudden we're scrambling and anticipating yields going down and costs going up again.

We really do think that systemic changes at the level of a Canadian farm resilience agency and more holistic views of the whole supply chain are absolutely in order.

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

Those are measures that seem to, of course, increase resilience but also positively impact a farmer's bottom line because of the cost of inputs and so on.

Also, as you may recall, in the last Parliament, our committee looked at processing capacity in Canada, and I really appreciate your remarks about JBS and Cargill and their absolute dominance of the Canadian market. The shift in a few short decades and the way the free market has really been centralized to give complete control to just two players has been quite incredible.

I'd like you to expand a little bit more on that, because processing capacity and supply chains are intricately linked. Maybe you could take some time to expand on what you would like to see our committee recommend, vis-à-vis the federal government, to ensure that smaller communities have better access to processing capacity and therefore increased resilience.

[Katie Ward]

I think there needs to be a program of support to open new small abattoirs across the country. I think one way to ensure that those maintain competitiveness going forward is to look at something like what we have for grain transportation, whereby we have maximum revenue entitlement for grain transportation by the rail companies because otherwise you take away all of the options.

For example, I was at my local abattoir in October picking up some pork, and they were already taking calls for pigs to be brought in in October of this fall, so that was months before the piglets would even be conceived. That's just one small part of eastern Ontario. The shortage is far worse for cattle because all of the knock-on effects from the federal slaughter system have flowed into the provincial abattoirs and there's just not enough space. People are losing orders. They are deciding to just not kill as many animals or are reducing herd sizes. It's going to create really big problems in the long term.