Agriculture Committee on April 30th, 2026

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

I really liked what Mr. Cranfield said earlier about the prevention offered by technology and innovation. In fact, I commend him for his initiatives aimed at breaking down silos and fostering innovation and partnership with universities.

However, before I turn to him, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the role of prevention in this strategy, Mr. McCann.

[Tyler McCann]

Prevention is complex because it really depends on the risks. As almost all the witness have probably said, the risks are changing, evolving and increasing, and the way to prevent all of those risks and manage them more proactively is not the same. Sometimes, it may be a matter of research. Other times, it may be a matter of market access. Sometimes, someone from a foreign government may work with other governments to ensure that we have access to markets, and that may turn out to be the best way to prevent these risks.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

I know I'm out of time, but if you have any other comments, Mr. Cranfield and Mr. McCann, I'd appreciate it if you could submit them to us in writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to the Bloc for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses.

Mr. Cranfield, I'll start with you.

You work in the academic sector. As you know, the budget cuts affecting Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's research centres come at a critical time when innovation and science must remain at the heart of agriculture.

Do universities have the means to replace the $27 million that was invested annually in research centres to pay scientists?

[John Cranfield]

In a word, no, we don't at the current time, but that doesn't mean we can't work toward trying to find solutions with other partners to start filling that gap.

I'll unpack that a bit. Public agricultural research capacity is a strategic asset in Canada. What matters most is whether Canada maintains its research depth, its regional relevance and the long-term capacity needed to anticipate and manage risks in the sector. Producers depend on a research system that is stable, regionally grounded and closely connected to extension and adoption. That's a critical piece between the innovation piece and producers adopting the technology—how they understand the technology and see it operate. This is why we keep going back to emphasizing innovation and knowledge mobilization as key complements to BRM programs.

To your point on whether we can ever make up for that, alone we can't, but together, I'm sure there are ways to find partners, both in other parts of government and in the private sector, in terms of public-private partnerships, to ensure that we are able to deliver results to industry in ways that matter to them.

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

The University of Guelph has conducted research in northeastern Ontario. In a way, you filled the void left when the Kapuskasing centre closed, and the Université du Québec en Abitibi‑Témiscamingue has also played a role in that region. At one point, in my region, Abitibi‑Témiscamingue, we had ADL, a wholesaler that was spending over $200 million purchasing products in northeastern Ontario and Abitibi‑Témiscamingue to stock grocery stores, all of which were independent retailers.

Do you know if the loss of a wholesaler of that size could have had an impact on agriculture in northeastern Ontario?

[John Cranfield]

Absolutely, it does. It is critical that the region I call the Clay Belt, the region you're talking about.... It is a thriving area where there's tremendous opportunity. We need to make sure that we have agri-retailers and equipment suppliers who are able to provide and provision growers in the region with what they need and in ways they need it. It is going to be different from southwest Ontario, other parts of Quebec or other parts of Canada, given the nature of the environment where they're growing.

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

I'm glad to hear you say that. We do need to focus on short supply chains, among other things, but the programs are often ill suited to that.

I would also like to mention that your research, Mr. Cranfield, has often focused on consumer behaviour. We're talking about risk management, but one way to reduce those risks is also to make our local products available in our grocery stores, restaurants and shops. When you travel to states like Vermont, you can see many restaurant owners who are proud to indicate where their products come from. They say that their carrots come from this or that farm, for example.

Doesn't making our local products available make it possible to better promote them and thus reduce the risks for our farmers?

[John Cranfield]

It could be, but it could also limit the financial opportunities for those farmers if the markets in the local region aren't strong enough, or if what they're growing isn't grown with the intention of being sold there. What we have to remember is that Canada is a net food exporter. We grow more food than we can ever eat. What we have to find is the dual path of having an emphasis on local so that people who want to buy local—sometimes they have to pay a premium—are able to do that because it's available and on the shelves, but at other times having an export orientation to where we know there are markets—east and west, and sometimes north and south—for the foods that we grow. The local issue starts to become very complicated.

I would say that, here in Ontario, the provincial government has been very effective, through Foodland Ontario and other regional programs that target where it's grown locally, either in Ontario or in a much more granular region. That's not for every producer, so we have to make sure that those programs are designed in ways that are attractive to the producers who want to be engaged in it and take an opportunity from it, but also that we do not force people to do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do.

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

In a conference, you emphasized the importance of transparency. You highlighted traceability, stressing that it's important to know where food comes from.

Do you think that is part of a more resilient agricultural system?

[John Cranfield]

Yes, traceability up and down the supply chain is critically important, for a couple of reasons. One is food safety. We need to make sure we have a system that is designed so that food is as safe as possible. However, sometimes risks become real, and we need to make sure that we know which food product is where if it needs to be recalled. That's important. The other piece on traceability is that some consumers want to know, with a degree of certainty, that a product that says “grown in Quebec” was grown in Quebec or in a particular county in Quebec. The more granular you get on that, the harder it becomes.

However, to me, traceability is a fundamental piece of how we manage risk throughout the system. That's both, as I said, from a food safety and food authenticity point of view, but also from the commercial and marketing side of it, in that there are consumers who really do place a value on it.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to the Conservatives.

Mr. Bonk, you have five minutes.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much.

We've heard a lot today about resiliency in agriculture and how that affects these programs. All farmers in Canada don't want to ever have to use these programs.

There has been a lot of good work done in Saskatchewan, particularly at some of these research farms. I know that Dr. Charlebois spent some time in Saskatchewan, so he'll understand this very clearly. When we look at, for example, the zero-till technology that was developed at Indian Head, this technology has probably done more to build resiliency, especially in the Prairies and, I would argue, in dryland farming across the world, than just about any other thing that has been developed—in my lifetime, anyway.

I wonder whether Dr. Charlebois could comment on that, and how he thinks the closure of these research centres might affect resiliency, particularly in the prairie provinces.

[Sylvain Charlebois]

Thank you for your question.

I do recognize that there are going to be some challenges for farmers. These centres.... We often look at science as something that is both abstract and not living. However, the issue, of course, is knowledge mobilization, and that is conducted by humans, through human-to-human contact. Farmers in Saskatchewan—I used to live there—relied not necessarily on science but on people providing the science, and that tends to lead to trust. If you trust the person who's communicating the science to you, as a farmer, you feel less vulnerable. I would argue that the closure of some of these research centres—and I was actually just in Saskatchewan a few weeks ago—will end relationships that allow knowledge mobilization to occur.

I'm not suggesting that universities can't do that. In fact, like Dr. Cranfield, I'm actually part of the university. I do think we can provide some support, but there's certainly a breach, obviously, in terms of trust. That has to be rebuilt, and that takes years.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

You mentioned people leading to science, and that's exactly the case when it came to zero till. There was definitely a role for government, but the farmers relied on these research farms to help them conduct studies. They relied on the academic expertise, which they couldn't have done themselves—for business reasons, for one thing, but they also just didn't have the resources.

A lot of these programs are being used more often, yet the adoption of these programs, the enrolment, is becoming less. A lot of that is due to shrinking margins and increased input costs. What do you think? Has the industrial carbon tax added to that?

[Sylvain Charlebois]

Of course, based on studies that we conducted on carbon pricing, we do believe that in the periphery of the supply chain there are added pressures that farmers are exposed to, as well as transport companies and processors, so we do believe there is an impact. It's been challenging to say exactly how much, but we do believe, based on the research that we've published in two journals, that the carbon pricing policy across the supply chain has impacted our agri-food sector's competitiveness from farm gate to store, unfortunately.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I think it would be very interesting for this committee if you could table those documents for us so we could include them as part of our report.

I'll turn to Mr. McCann now.

I have a question about cross-compliance, because a lot of these programs have that built into them. I've had a lot of experience working on farms in Europe and in central Asia. Cross-compliance, especially in Europe, has basically turned these programs from what they were intended to do.... People had to actually move from production to farming for these programs.

Can you expand a little bit on cross-compliance and the dangers of going down that road in Canada?

[Tyler McCann]

If you go back to where I started, these programs should be there to protect farm resilience. If they are also being asked to deliver better environmental outcomes or better innovation outcomes, all you're going to do is make them deliver poor outcomes across all of those means and all of those objectives. I think we've seen this today already with some changes that were made in the sustainable Canadian agricultural partnership, where governments put in some cross-compliance measures.

That seems to be the first time that enrolment in AgriInvest has been driven down. This is an open program that is supposed to be a savings account that enables producers to use some of the proactive risk management tools they need, and yet the cross-compliance has been such that for some producers it's just not worth it anymore.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

Next, we go to the Liberals for five minutes with MP MacDonald.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you, Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses for coming today.

I'm going to start out with Dr. Cranfield.

You gave a shout-out to the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture on the smart technology movement. I just wanted to get a few more details on that. I can explain that I come from a farm operation, and one of the pioneers of that movement, Chad Mooney, has been doing some work with us with his drones. He gained drone technology experience by serving in the military, so we thank Chad for that.

Can you just elaborate on how that's going to improve the operations of farms as we adopt additional technology that's available?

[John Cranfield]

It is a great question to ask, and it's at the core of trying to drive digital agriculture. Individually as universities and with our research partnerships, both with farm networks and with layers of government, we're generating an enormous amount of digital information that's from the ground up, grounded in farms. It's at a point where being able to actually—I'm going to use some farming puns, I apologize—make some hay out of that becomes challenging because of the volume of the data.

What we're proposing, and what P.E.I. is on the vanguard of through the Federation of Agriculture, is putting some structure around how we house that data, how we integrate that data and how we then do the analysis of that data with some very sophisticated technologies that are now at our disposal through artificial intelligence, and then also—to Dr. Charlebois's point—have a human in the loop, a person who actually understands how some results from the study based on farm-level information can be translated into meaningful innovations that a farmer will want to adopt.

A key piece in that is the extension component in there. It's not enough to do the research and analysis. You have to have those partners who will be there developing the innovation with you so that it's commercially relevant in ways that matter to producers. We all know this. Farmers will believe technology when they see it up close in person. Again, it's the human in the loop.

Making sure that we have the means to turn that analysis into something that shows up on demonstration farms, either at a plot level or on a commercial scale, is going to be incredibly important in terms of mobilizing producers and giving them the confidence that this innovation is actually going to help them and mitigate the risk they might face.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you for that explanation, because that's exactly what farmers need, that middleman to get us to buy into the research and technology.

That kind of segues into another question. We're talking about investment, competitiveness and innovation in Canada. We all know, if we come from the farm sector, that it's highly capital-intensive. Innovation is expensive, but it's becoming more and more necessary in terms of all farming operations, because labour shortages in rural Canada are real. We've tried many things to address this, but innovation is probably the quickest way to reduce labour needs and stay competitive in the marketplace.

One thing the government did in the past, and partly brought back in budget 2025, was an accelerated investment incentive, to allow 100% of depreciation of innovation. I've had many producers reach out to me who would like to see that extended from the processing sector right into the building of buildings, robotic milking for cows and things like that. I wouldn't mind if all three of you commented on a practical strategy there going forward.

[John Cranfield]

If I could kick it off, access to capital is an incredibly important issue in agriculture and, indeed, throughout the entire agri-food value chain, but it's more so at the farm level, where they are not necessarily big businesses that are able to access capital like an internationally recognized food manufacturer. They're family-run businesses. Making sure that there's adequate access to capital at reasonable rates and having the tax incentives in place to allow for the modernization and the adoption of new technologies are incredibly important.

An important dimension for Canada that's not directly related to BRM but is an important issue is how that helps enable farm succession and the passing on of farms to the next generation so that the next generation isn't necessarily burdened with an enormous capital debt but can use cash flow to grow their operations successfully, again, through the adoption of technology and innovation.