Agriculture Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

[Jennifer Pfenning]

Thank you for that question.

My French isn't good enough for me to answer you in French.

I apologize. My sound cut out a bit during the question.

Yes, we're asking for it to be decentralized, but it needs to be nationalized. We need centres across the country.

As we all know—this isn't something that I need to explain to anybody, I'm sure—we all have different conditions on our farms across the country. We're facing different environmental stressors, so we will need those centres to be adapted to and addressing the specific conditions in each area.

For example, right now the snowpack—

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

I apologize for interrupting, Ms. Pfenning, but speaking time is really limited.

Thank you very much. I clearly understand your message.

Ms. Lefebvre and Mr. Léger Bourgoin, what do you think of that? Do you have any more important points that you would like to emphasize before concluding your testimony?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Please do so in 30 seconds.

[Catherine Lefebvre]

I believe Ms. Rood discussed the important part earlier. I'm referring to the motion she introduced, to the effect that the federal budget should take into account the portion that falls to agriculture. That part should be representative of our contribution, whether it be to our gross domestic product, our GDP, to health or to all the other budget items.

I believe we deserve our fair share. Whether it comes from insurance programs or programs that support our agriculture, I believe the budget should allocate a greater portion to the needs of the agricultural industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. MacGregor, I expect a nice succinct question and a nice succinct response, please. I go over to you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to ask my questions to our Nova Scotia guests, so I hope that adds a few points there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Oh, well—then you get more time.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

To the Nova Scotia fruit growers, I'm a coastal Canadian on the Pacific side, and my province was battered by an atmospheric river in fall 2021 that caused absolutely brutal devastation and damage. I think it cost our province about $9 billion, and a lot of that came from farmland. I know Nova Scotia is no stranger to its fair share of natural disasters from weather. Can you explain a bit about the hard lessons learned from those events, and where you think the federal government can be stepping in to help farms adapt their farming practices to try to establish a bit more resiliency in the face of what are sure to be future storms coming your way? What can be done to help you adapt and become more resilient?

[Jeffrey Walsh]

One of the things that went on during the last 10 years, probably, is that Dalhousie University did a study on infrastructure for our actual trellis equipment, so we now have a template that we can plug everything into to build stronger, more sustainable systems for holding the trees up. There's nothing worse than when a hurricane comes through in September and the trees are loaded with fruit. Not only do we lose the crop for the year, but we lose the whole tree and we're out of production for years to come. It would be nice for more business risk management systems to be put in place to try to weather that, with hail netting and things like that. There are different climate change things that we can use to mitigate, but the costs are massive to try to get them implemented.

[Emily Lutz]

To add on to that, the costs of production are going up and our returns are declining, so farmers have less money in their pockets to address these issues that we need to address to fight climate change.

One thing I also want to point out is that the burden on associations, growers and industry to contribute to research keeps going up. We have these problems and we are receiving less money for our products and our costs of production are going up, and then we're seeing that our share of research projects keeps going up as well. It's really hard to find those dollars to contribute to those research projects that can help us find ways to reduce our own environmental impacts and mitigate climate change on our own farms as well as to look to the future to try to see what's coming and to plan for how we can grow in changing conditions.

I think there's a lot that the federal government can do in terms of lessening the burden on industry and on associations regarding our contributions to research, because we simply just don't have cash available to put into these projects, and we see the contribution formula change from fifty-fifty to seventy-thirty. It might be well-intended, but it's really difficult for us to come up with that cash when our farmers are struggling to make ends meet and even to farm.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Quickly, Ms. Lutz or Mr. Walsh, on cold storage, you mentioned the state of Washington in your opening remarks and the apples that are flooding into the market. Can you speak to this committee not only about the importance of cold storage research but also about how that is a market mechanism to try to help protect value for your products?

[Jeffrey Walsh]

We have some of the best cold storage. We do a lot of research at our Kentville AAFC building, so we have some of the best cold storage data around. We're able to hold our fruit back in cold storage longer, while Washington and other areas flood the market. We can hold our fruit until the spring or summer of the following year. We can hold it for a whole calendar year, and that helps protect us on costs, because while they're flooding the market with low-quality, low-value fruit, we just hang on to ours, sell it domestically and sell a bit when we need to. We can hang on to it until June, July or August, and sell it all then at a better price.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Colleagues, thank you so much. We ran a little over our time, but I thought the testimony was great today.

Let me thank our witnesses from l’Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec, Ms. Lefebvre and Mr. Léger Bourgoin; our witness from the National Farmers Union, Ms. Pfenning; and our witnesses from Nova Scotia, Ms. Lutz and Mr. Walsh.

Thank you for your testimony today.

Colleagues, we're going to be on a break week next week, but we'll be back on February 27. The first hour will be on horticulture and the second hour will be with Minister Champagne on the continuation of efforts to stabilize food prices.

As a quick note on the grocery code of conduct, there were great exchanges today with our friends here around the table. This committee believes in the grocery code of conduct and will be writing to the CEOs to express our complete desire and to call for them to adopt that code.

We'll see you after the break week, colleagues. The meeting is adjourned.