Agriculture Committee on April 21st, 2026

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for the Western Grain Elevator Association.

You spoke about the transportation issues that affect your association and sector. How can this be incorporated or improved under the new BRM suite of programs or in the next policy framework, or is this something that should be outside the BRM?

[Tyler Bjornson]

Generally, we think the government should be very concerned about business competitiveness. There are a number of ways in which the government can respond to that. The BRM is one. We've highlighted a couple of others, in addition to our BRM ideas on a tax credit that responds to foreign political trade barriers.

We also think the government has a role to play in reducing regulatory red tape. For example, there are several port-related issues on the transportation side, such as the fumigation rules, that are relatively easy fixes. Ours is the only jurisdiction that requires vessels to sit for 24 hours after they're fumigated, unlike every other jurisdiction out there. Port rent at the port of Vancouver has exploded over the last several years. Some terminals are experiencing increases year over year of 30% to 40%. We're looking at situations in the licensing of port terminals and other inland elevators that take place on an annual basis and that we think could move to every five years.

Those are relatively simple fixes, MP Connors, that we think could be implemented alongside our ideas for BRM.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

You used the term export risk management. Would that be similar? Can you elaborate on that a bit for me?

[Tyler Bjornson]

Certainly. This is really the key point that we wanted to present to the committee today.

This is when you have a foreign country that's responding to geopolitical tension with Canada. Let me take the example of China. One day after Canada announced the tariffs on electric vehicles, China announced that it was doing an anti-dumping investigation into canola. Immediately, we had Chinese customers calling us, saying, “Can you get the boats of canola to us as fast as possible?”

We had to prioritize canola vessels before the November 8 deadline to respond to the anti-dumping investigation, because we had no foresight into what might happen after that. We ended up asking, proverbially, boats that were supposed to load with wheat, barley, peas or other commodities to do donuts in the Pacific while we loaded as many canola boats as possible, but we were paying for the costs of those boats waiting to be loaded because we were trying to prioritize the canola boats.

That's an example of an export risk that we had no ability to manage whatsoever. We think the government could look at some business risk management tools to help exporters specifically when we run into challenges of this nature.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Monsieur Lemire for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for their opening remarks. Something interesting is emerging from what we're hearing today.

I'll start with a question for you, Mr. Miller.

The Canadian General Standards Board ceased operating on April 1, 2026. It was responsible for developing standards for organic foods and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The board also provided conformity assessment services. As I see it, that raises hugely important questions about the quality of available standards and adherence to them.

Do you think the government made a mistake? Does this affect your operations? Should the board be immediately reinstated?

[Douglas Miller]

To ensure that I understood your question, this is about GMO labelling and organic standards.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Yes.

[Douglas Miller]

From our organization's perspective, it's important that Canadian producers have access to all the tools in the tool box. As we approach our standards-making authority and the work that we do, it's very much agnostic to that.

It's about providing an enabling framework. We have been a participant around the table, but we are not active participants, so I wouldn't be able to comment on that.

At the Seed Growers' Association, we have a lot of transparency measures in place. Right now, we are piloting digital seed tags. The mark of our sector is this blue tag, and the blue tag hasn't changed a lot in 120 years. Sometimes it's handwritten, and sometimes it's a dot matrix. What we've done is embed a QR code into them so that the end-user can scan them and get more insights into how that variety was produced, such as if it is a genetic variety or a GMO. That's all possible in the future. We're piloting that to be able to respond to certain segments that want that additional transparency in their seed purchases.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

That's interesting.

This morning at my office, I met with people from the Canadian National Millers Association, oat and specialty grain miller associations, and the association representing Quebec cattle farmers, the Producteurs de bovins du Québec. All of them talked about the importance of the research being done all over the place.

As we speak, the government is about to shut down the regenerative research program at the Swift Current Research and Development Centre. It's rumoured that the program's closure is currently jeopardizing research, because people are obviously leaving their jobs sooner.

Why do you think the government is moving quickly to shut down these research programs?

What's at risk when this type of research is abruptly terminated? Are we going to lose expertise and thousands of hours of research just because the government wants to move faster at all costs?

What impact will this have on the research under way? Are you especially affected by this?

[Douglas Miller]

Yes, absolutely.

Whenever the AAFC closures were announced, CSGA was very quick to bring together over 80 impacted stakeholders to be able to get a sense of what was at stake so we would have a common, fact-based understanding of what was going on.

The closures to the long-standing organic trials were definitely something that was brought forward, and it was a very big concern to the producer groups and the producers around the table that rely on those trials to be able to do that, because you just can't pick up multi-year production sites and move them to Saskatoon. That's just not happening.

Once those research stations close, we definitely lose that capacity. There is no guarantee moving forward that these are going to still be in the agriculture sector. Going through the government's surplus process, we don't know who's going to end up with these.

Whenever we're looking at these programs that are being closed, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the germ plasm. These are the gene banks that are at all these facilities that Canadian producers and Canadian taxpayers have invested millions of dollars in developing and maintaining over the years. That's definitely a concern.

There's a common joke here that once they close, just wait. Just go to the back dumpster and you'll be able to make sure that germ plasm is being kept. That is absolutely something that we should not have happen. Whenever these stations are closing, we need to have more advance notice.

I think back to 2012 and to the deficit reduction action plan. I don't look like I was around back then, but I was. There were some big cuts to the seed sector. We had to privatize our crop inspection model. The Government of Canada was doing that work for us for over 100 years, and they said they were not going to do that moving forward.

They gave us an 18-month window to get it right and to have a plan. They gave us some seed money to build a best-in-class digital system call SeedCert. We're able to get through it. We're able to reimagine how we do our processes, but with the current leeway we have, we don't have that ability to reimagine what's possible.

I think if we had the ability to say we're going to close these stations in three years, as tough as that would have been, we could have come up with a plan to say, here's how we can do it in a new way. Here's how we can make a uniquely made-in-Canada solution. Unfortunately, with the current timelines that we have, that's lost.

I don't know what's happening with the technicians. Maybe there aren't research scientists being impacted, but we're losing the technicians who are responsible for doing the day-to-day work that helps bring that science to life. Once they're gone and the land is gone, it's really hard to get back. It's critical capacity we'll never get back again.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

It's funny, the government is making cuts, but I would've liked to hear you talk about the importance of understanding the diversity of soils in Canada. I'll come back to it in the second round.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Epp, you have five minutes.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing.

The present agricultural policy framework has five pillars in it. We've heard of the importance of the BRM, business risk management, which I'm about to get into the weeds on. Before I go there, one of the other pillars is science and innovation, and obviously the ag research station closures touch on that and are important to that. We've heard about the importance of that from my colleagues' questions and our previous study, which we're wrapping up.

There are three other pillars that are sometimes not as broadly supported. The question I want to get on the record from at least two of the groups here today is this. What is your organization's position on the concept of cross-compliance, of tying the importance of the other pillars, whether they're supported or not, to the BRM? I'll begin with Mr. Pike or Mr. Harpe.

[Dustin Pike]

I can kick it off.

Quite simply, end cross-compliance. In our view, it erodes the effectiveness of BRM programming when you require this cross-compliance. BRM needs to focus on covering loss.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Miller.

[Douglas Miller]

Unfortunately, that is outside my purview. I wouldn't be able to comment on that.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Okay.

I'll get right into the business risk management programs.

We heard testimony that AgriInsurance is the cornerstone of that. I've heard that from other groups as well. The concerns, as I hear them, are largely focused on AgriStability.

Would that be an accurate statement, Mr. Pike?

[Dustin Pike]

Yes.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Okay. I'll dive into that a bit more.

Given that concerns have been building, would you envision...? I believe this came out in your testimony. Are you now looking for tweaks or major overhauls?

[Dustin Pike]

I could kick things off again and perhaps pass it along to Andre for some more on-farm application references.

It's very hard for our guys to access. As I mentioned in the preamble, there's a 30% participation rate. The way the program is designed, it doesn't support grain and oilseed farmers, because they have huge capital investments in equipment and land. The way margins are calculated and the trigger organized, many guys, unfortunately, just aren't able to take advantage of it.

Regardless, these tweaks could still probably be classified as a major overhaul, because there are a lot of them. You talked about red tape reduction as well. It's not responsive to meet the needs of the current global threats out there. The payments come late even if you're able to get something from it.

As I mentioned, we think a different course should be explored in terms of how we can utilize the program's capacity to manage income stabilization for trade threats.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

If I can push you a bit on that, do you have any specific direction AgriStability should go in, then? We're talking about various coverage levels. We're all aware of the low enrolment level, the complexity and the lack of “bankfulness”. Do you have any specifics?

Let me follow up with another question.

If some of that predictability and ease of administration were addressed, do you think producers would support it a bit more? Would they consider investing more in that program if they had more confidence that their margin pitfalls would be addressed in a timely manner?

[Dustin Pike]

Yes, they might.

Go ahead on that, Andre.

[Andre Harpe]

I'm going to interject a little and use an example that I think is really timely: my farm.

I've been enrolled in AgriStability for years. For the last two years, we've looked at getting out of it. It's very costly because of what you talked about before—cross-compliance. It's about making sure your i's are dotted and your t's are crossed. It's costing me $5,000 to $7,000 a year to have my accountant go through it.

That's the number one issue. It's very costly, because the government wants things done right. I don't blame them for that, but it goes back to having an inventory that is not scaled. It's not weighed all the time, and—

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt.

I hear you on those concerns. Insurance programs work. If margins were insured, is that a concept you would support?