Agriculture Committee on May 7th, 2026

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Mr. Lee's time is up. If you don't mind, you could submit that in writing to the committee, about the labour support that may be there for the greenhouse industry.

We will now go to Madame Dandurand for six minutes.

You can ask Mr. Lee to finish his answer, but that's on your time. I will leave that to you.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I'll tell my colleague that we have a program for that: The youth employment and skills strategy. It's a program that helps with hiring young people in agriculture. I invite him to take a look at it.

Thank you all for being here.

I'm from an area with a wide variety of agricultural sectors and a large organic sector. I feel that it's one of the organic farming hubs in Quebec. We have pioneers who have been in organic farming for over 25 or even 30 years. We also have a lot of young farmers.

You've raised relevant challenges. Pursuing organic or conventional farming comes with a high level of risk, especially for young people. How can the risk be reduced to relieve pressure on business risk management programs? If we were able to reduce the risk, it would reduce the pressure on risk management programs. In your opinion, what solutions would help these people?

[Katie Fettes]

I'll start, and then I'll pass it over to my colleague Gillian to talk about new entrants and young farmers as well.

As you said, Madame Dandurand, it's about complementary strategic initiative programming that can help reduce the dependency on BRM programs and make sure that they are there as a last resort or a response when they're needed, and that they're responsive in that case.

Some of the things we've proposed around the transition supports are the education, extension and advisory services and the availability of research. These are all really critical pieces that would be useful on a federal level to ensure consistency across the country, because that's what we see in Quebec for sure. As the previous witness has said, Quebec has half the organic farmers in Canada, and it's from provincial policy and integrated support with a whole mix of measures. We want that to be consistently available depending on where you are in the country.

I'll turn it over to you, Gillian.

[Gillian Flies]

Thank you, Katie.

I want to say that, on our farm, we have an opportunity to interact with a lot of new farmers and young farmers. We find that the majority of people coming into the farming system are very interested in regenerative and organic agriculture and the impact it has on our climate and human health. We have found, as organic farmers for 20 years, that there has been zero support available for us from government.

When we're working with more conventional farmers who are curious about transitioning to these practices, we find there's a fear because there's a lack of understanding around the process, and then there is knowledge that there is often a transition period. When your soil is weaning itself off a chemical agricultural program you have been using, and you are relying on biology, you have around three or four years when you could have lower yields.

Farmers are afraid to face this reduction in income, so this is an opportunity for government to come in and help folks through transition support to survive that period. Oftentimes when you look at similar programs in the EU and the United States, it's not as bad as everybody thinks. It's really shoring up the insurance, making farmers feel confident they can make it through that process.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Shiels, it's your turn to respond.

[Scott Shiels]

There has been some initiative taken by private companies and private industry like us. We started a crop sciences division 10 years ago or so with Grain Millers. We aren't involved in selling crop inputs and those kinds of things, but we wanted to provide support, especially to organic growers, as they don't have chemical reps and fertilizer reps coming to them all the time to tell them what's wrong with their fields and then trying to sell them stuff. We wanted to go out and do that ourselves—basically, to help people out at no cost and take that on.

There are industry initiatives that are doing that. We've helped with SaskOrganics in working on transition programs. You can get the industry to do it, but we're looking for support for that, because that's coming out of our pocket. You can't look to industry.

Katie was mentioning that the organics program at the Swift Current research station was shut down. As an industry, we have been taking on bigger chunks of that and supporting those programs. We feel that the government could be taking a bigger part.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Flies, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that, despite the current instability and the rising cost of inputs in agriculture, the cost of your inputs has remained relatively stable.

Actually, I'd like to hear more about that. Is shifting to organic farming a long-term solution to reduce risk, given that, in your case, the cost of your inputs affects your business less than other businesses?

[Gillian Flies]

Yes, absolutely.

Organic agriculture is a system of practices that protect the farm on a number of levels.

The first thing is that in 20 years, we've never had to use a gram of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides or fungicides on our farm. Rather than working with chemistry, we work with biology. First, it's a huge cost savings, but second, we're limited and protected from these problems that you're seeing today around supply.

The second thing is that we have really excellent soil health on our farms, so when we are receiving massive amounts of rain or even heat, we're able to survive it, and it doesn't impact the cost of our production, because we're not losing our product.

It is a long-term solution. On our farm, we're finding that we are more resilient and more profitable year after year. The more we increase our soil health, the more we increase our profitability.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thank you very much, Ms. Flies. I appreciate your time.

We will now go to Mr. Lemire.

You have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will start with Ms. Loftsgard, from the Canada Organic Trade Association.

In a meeting I had with one of your representatives, Ms. Bosch, it was suggested that the government invest just $9 million per year in the AgriMarketing program, but earmark it for organic crops.

Why would that be necessary? What would it actually do for organic farmers?

[Tia Loftsgard]

I've met with many farmers and businesses over the years, and when there's profitability in the picture, if there's demand, farmers will go towards it.

We've seen a lot of fluctuation in pricing in the last couple of years. Some farmers, of course, go for the price, and some of them go for the long-term soil health component, but there is market demand. We've grown over 8% in the last year, and every year before that was double digits. We have a demand in Canada. You can hear from Scott that he prefers to buy Canadian, and I have many other members who say that they would like to buy Canadian, but they can't find it.

Part of the problem is that we don't have the data. We don't have one list of who is certified in Canada. We're trying to get Statistics Canada to take over the list of operators that we're pulling together so that we can have full information available in regard to what the opportunity is and have benchmarking to look at why there is a decline when the market is growing.

I really feel that AgriMarketing is the pull approach that we need. When farmers have the opportunity and we can connect the market with the production, there's a huge opportunity that we've been missing in Canada.

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

You prepared a white paper for unlocking the potential of the organic sector in Canada. That's a bold step.

Can you tell us what the minister's reaction was when he saw that document prepared in November 2024?

[Tia Loftsgard]

Yes, I can. This is it. It's the organic action plan. This is the work of three national associations in conjunction with all the provincial organic associations.

We have been meeting with many MPs and the minister. I think that people see it favourably. There are a lot of key recommendations in there, and we have teamed it up with our budget submission, which is about to be submitted as well.

This action plan really takes us to a whole new level. We're documenting and aligning not only our policy requests but also our budget requests, and recommendations for the government are clearly spelled out, as well as what we need industry to do. We don't expect the government to do everything.

We were running organic for many years before we were ever regulated. There's a role for industry and there's a role for government. These areas in here clearly articulate exactly what we need to get to a place at which we are competitive again, because we're losing opportunity to our trade competitors.

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

I encourage you to submit it to the committee. I think it contains things that would interest most members of the committee.

The Canadian General Standards Board wound up its activities on April 1, 2026. Among other things, the board was responsible for the development of standards and services for assessing compliance with standards on organic agriculture and genetically modified organisms. This raises very important questions about the quality and monitoring of available standards.

What impact will the board's closure have on producers and your organization?

[Tia Loftsgard]

In terms of the impact, we were lucky, because we were at the tail end of our five-year review of the organic standards. They were published at the end of March. Our issue is that we have no home right now for those organic standards, so if we find there's any problem with what gets published or what has been published, we don't have any opportunity to open it up.

Currently the government is telling us that we have five years. Well, we actually don't, because we have an aquaculture standard that expires in three years. It's a bit of a crisis for our sector.

In the meantime, the organic equivalency arrangements with our two largest trade partners are up for renewal. The one with the U.S. is this year, as well as the one with the EU. If there's anything in there that they want to carve out as critical variances between our standards and we want to make a change, we have no ability to make that change. It's a pretty big deal for us.

The other thing to mention is that we have no government funding in order to do that. Even though it is a regulated standard and it is tied in to trade agreements around the world, the government currently expects the industry to fund it on our own.

We need permanent standards funding. We need to make sure that we cure this issue. We wrote a letter last month to ask to be stakeholders in part of the conversation about where it gets rehoused, but we have not yet been invited for a meeting. We'd like to see that happen.

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

It is important. I hope this forum today will help get you a seat at the table.

However, one question remains: In the future, who will be responsible for reviewing standards related to organic farming and genetically modified organisms? Do you have any idea?

[Tia Loftsgard]

The short answer is no. Currently, we do not know.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

You have about 10 seconds left, Mr. Lemire.

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

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to our second round.

We will go to Mr. Bragdon for five minutes, please.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be sharing my time with Mr. Bonk as well.

Thank you to each of the witnesses today. Thank you for your compelling testimony, important testimony, in offering us a lens from the organic perspective from your producers and farmers.

One thing that is of great concern for producers across the spectrum is the trade relationship that we have with our largest customer by far, our neighbour to the south, for various reasons, including proximity and the volume of goods that is traded back and forth, including our perishable goods.

With that in mind, do you feel from your perspective that enough attention and priority have been placed upon getting certainty for our producers and growers in the current trade and tariff dispute?

I'll start with you, Ms. Loftsgard.

[Tia Loftsgard]

We've been monitoring this issue very closely. Another barrier that stood in our way was that we didn't even know how much we were trading to the United States. I had to go to our U.S. trade association to ask for the numbers that they had. When I got them, I realized that Canada is tracking only 20% of our exports of organic products. We were working blind, completely blind. We still are.

Yesterday I was at a meeting, and I spoke with Treasury Board. We really need to develop more HS codes for organic products so that we can monitor those trade impacts. Everybody always hears us talk about data. It has far-reaching effects if we are unable to benchmark. We can't prove things, and the research isn't there. We need Canadian studies.

Our sector has very much been impacted, and we've met multiple times with the U.S. about it. Now we have to get our members on board to try to do the claim back process. Many of them sucked it up and paid the tariffs on their own because they didn't want to lose their largest market. It impacted us hugely.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

In your estimation, from your vantage point, do you feel that there's enough proactive action or prioritization by the federal government to get this resolved?

[Tia Loftsgard]

I would say that we're in discussion. I lead the data working group. We lead the discussion with regard to tariffs. We haven't seen that enough has been done yet, but there's dialogue.

We're in conversation, but we need some closure and some final answers on things.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Yes, people want certainty for sure. Thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to my colleague. Mr. Bonk is going to continue from here.