Agriculture Committee on May 5th, 2026

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I think there were farmers who were not part of AgriRecovery who were allowed to join the program because of the drought situation in Newfoundland and Labrador this year.

[Richard Carey]

Yes, it was an emergency situation, for sure.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

In most cases you would need to be part of the program in order to be compensated.

[Richard Carey]

Yes. Again, as I said earlier, it's complicated to people, to small farmers, whether to avail of it or not, and if they didn't, they kind of missed out in some respects.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Seeing that I'm familiar with the industry, I want to go back to when we had a farmer here from Newfoundland last week who spoke about low participation rates in all of the BRM programs in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You mentioned how cumbersome it can be to fill out forms with the information that you have. Most farms in Newfoundland and Labrador are whole-of-farm. We have multiple varieties on farms.

Does that impact the participation rate in the crop insurance?

[Richard Carey]

For sure, yes. A farm that's diverse in different types of vegetables can only insure parts of vegetables, parts of fields. It becomes problematic in that regard, and it's accounting and everything else.

There's more work to be done, I think, on that. We could expand and make things easier, and I think that's where the key is. This is a great start, the committee forming like this, and I'm hoping that many things are going to come out, including changes that are warranted for regional circumstances. We're unique in so many ways in the province. The average farm in Newfoundland is 142 acres, and the average farm in Canada is over 800 acres, so we're at a disadvantage. Our soils are stony, rocky and shallow. We're going uphill all the way in what we're trying to do, so we need some special consideration for—

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

From your background with the provincial government and now your role with the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture, is it safe to say that one size definitely does not fit all in this situation?

[Richard Carey]

It doesn't. I think we should look into what can help a region. Maybe Newfoundland is not unique—maybe the Atlantic Canada provinces can support the same argument—but we are definitely different in what we're trying to do. We have more struggles and more mitigating factors that we're trying to get around. I hope what comes from all this is that we're looked at regionally.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

If there were a couple of things you'd like to point to in terms of what should be improved to help the Newfoundland and Labrador agricultural industry, what would be the key points?

[Richard Carey]

That's a big question. As per my little speech there, I think more investment into AgriInsurance would go a long way and would have an immediate effect. The amount of product insured would in turn put more money into the economy. Right now the industry has more facing it with natural disasters. We're not quite sure how it will work this year. We have tariffs and everything else coming at us. Everything will be more expensive. Everything breaks down when you're dealing with stones and boulders. All the equipment parts are continually coming in. All of that could be more expensive, which will affect the bottom line.

I think some recognition of the uniqueness of our province and more discussions should be had.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I think we're safe to say that climate change is here and it's not going away any time soon.

[Richard Carey]

That's right. It's going to cost us, for sure.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

You have 10 seconds.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay.

I want to thank you again for coming out to meet with our group. I look forward to having you here again sometime.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Mr. Lemire, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Ross and Ms. Grossenbacher, thank you for being here and for sharing further information with us. It may be different, but it needs to be heard today.

You mentioned that promising risk management innovations already exist, but that they're not yet at scale. Could you give us some concrete examples, including pilot projects in Quebec, where programs do not encourage climate change innovations?

[Karen Ross]

I'm going to answer you in English because I may lack some vocabulary along the way.

It's a great question. I'll give a few Canadian examples. I'll start in Alberta, maybe pass it to Gen for a bit on Quebec, and then come back for a conclusion, perhaps.

In Alberta we have a new pilot available for producers in one particular region. They get a premium discount based on their soil carbon measurement. It's a fascinating example, because folks like actuaries, such as Lysa online there, who are able to calculate the actual economic risk reduction of soil carbon have determined that it offers additional risk-proofing and merits a discount. Will this on its own encourage more producers to change practices to improve soil carbon? I'm not sure. It likely needs to be supported by broader programs that also support adoption and have practices that encourage these kinds of outcomes, but that's a perfect example of one opportunity that's better balancing reactive and proactive risk management baked within the program.

Alberta was only able to start with a very small region, something like 1,000 producers at the moment, because the amount of new data and modelling that needs to go into that to better understand modern-day risk profiles in a climate-changing world is complex.

I will now ask my colleague Ms. Grossenbacher to talk about Quebec.

[Geneviève Grossenbacher, Director of Policy, Farmers for Climate Solutions]

There have been a lot of innovations, including one program that comes to mind: Agriclimat. I don't know if you're familiar with it. The idea is to connect producers with agronomists not only to get support, but also to come up with a plan for what we could do on the farm to improve things and be more proactive.

We feel it would be very worthwhile to roll out a program like that across the country. The focus should really be on developing a plan to build farmers' resilience. There are a number of on-farm practices that we can use to improve our resilience. It doesn't change everything, because we're never protected from every disaster. However, it can really help us better position ourselves when disaster strikes.

In addition, Quebec has a lot of programs and is doing a lot of work. There is a lot of horticulture, in particular. As in Labrador, the majority of programs are not adapted to this type of diversified agriculture and other types of production.

For example, on my farm, we paid insurance on principle for a number of years. However, for a production of $170,000 or more per hectare, if I had had losses, I might have got $300. It's not at all aligned with needs.

A lot of work has been done in recent years to try to improve the programs. In terms of responsiveness, it's good, but now we have to be much more proactive and help producers adapt to climate change in advance.

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

When it comes to climate change, we often get the sense that good practices, such as intercropping, can increase risks for agricultural producers because they are less covered by risk management programs, as you just said.

How can the government encourage this type of innovative practice?

[Karen Ross]

It's a great question. I'll give a very specific example from a producer we work with in Saskatchewan. He's seen amazing benefits in terms of profitability when he intercrops peas with canola. This has some great environmental benefits, but let's not focus on this. Let's just focus on it from a business perspective. He's been able to reduce his nitrogen bill by 90%. That's a huge profitability saving. He gets a yield off of both crops at 120%, so there's better yield. The Saskatchewan program limits his coverage for that kind of intercropping to only 30% of his total acreage.

That's a great example of an acreage limitation where, if this producer wants to take on these excellent risk management business practices, he's forced to be limited to 30% coverage. If the worst drought hits, nothing is going to grow, so he's therefore making a choice on his own to take on full risk beyond the 30% adoption.

That's a kind of immediate barrier we could remove from our risk management programs in order to better balance a proactive and reactive approach.

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

Local distribution channels are an important, but often overlooked, part of agricultural production. Obviously, the shorter the distance a product has to travel, the better it is for the environment.

How, then, do we promote local agriculture that meets local needs? How do we make sure the infrastructure is in place for a local agriculture and agri-food system?

[Karen Ross]

When we think about risk management in Canadian agriculture, we absolutely need to think about food security. Local food systems are certainly part of that.

In many ways, local food systems are a bit beyond the scope of Farmers for Climate Solutions. That said, I think this goes to our point around what supports risk management in Canada. What are the complementary programs we need in Canada to ensure that our agriculture sector is risk-proof within climate change and other geopolitical instabilities that are creating reasonable concerns for Canadians around how we're getting our fuel, our food and the nitrogen that supports our food systems?

I'm not sure, in terms of better supporting local food systems. We definitely need changes to the risk management programs so they support more diversified operations, which are typically the ones that are providing food locally. Beyond that, we need better supportive programming around risk management that will continue to enhance local food systems appropriately.

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

Thank you very much.

[Karen Ross]

Thank you.