Thank you.
The National Farmers Union would like to thank you for the opportunity for this pre-budget consultation.
The NFU is a voluntary, direct membership, non-partisan national farm organization made up of thousands of farm families from across Canada who produce a wide variety of commodities. The NFU works toward the development of economic and social policies that will maintain small and medium-sized family farms as the primary food producers in Canada. Based on the situation left by our previous government, we want to echo the Prime Minister words that it is time for real change.
For budget 2016, we would like to present the following recommendations. We should set the stage for growing forward 3. We recommend a real change from past policy, particularly by aligning the vision of agriculture with the principles of food sovereignty and supporting agriculture's efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The budget should support the next generation of family farmers by establishing universal pharmacare.
The 2016 budget should redirect all agriculture research funding toward public and independent third party research in the public interest and reinstate funding to the public agricultural research institutions to allow them to recover and rebuild their capacity with a new generation of scientists.
Funds should be allocated to public plant breeding to develop varieties that are adapted to Canadian regional climates. We need to help Canadian farmers adapt to climate change in order to do well under low-input, organic, and ecological production practices. The budget should support participatory breeding initiatives and enable new varieties to be released without royalties.
The budget should also fund research and assessment of pesticides, including field crop trials on yields, monitoring of soil quality and surface water contamination, and impacts on pollinator populations. Funds should go toward assessment and implementation of farming practices to increase biodiversity and integrated pest management to benefit farmers, and both natural and agricultural ecosystems.
Budget 2016 should take concrete steps to correct the damage caused by the previous government of ending the Canadian Wheat Board single desk. It should establish and fund mechanisms to regulate the grain system to ensure all farmers have an equal opportunity to ship grain, to counteract the power of major grain companies, and to give priority in shipping to small grain companies, producer railcars, and short-line railways.
We ask that the upcoming budget establish a mechanism to develop additional producer car loading sites when requested by farmers, and ensure that the Canadian Transportation Agency has the funding and the resources it needs to enforce the statutory common carrier obligations of Canadian railways under the Canada Transportation Act.
The NFU recommends that the upcoming budget provide support for new and young farmers by lowering the cap on the government's support programs; making effective, affordable financing programs available to new farmers, including micro loans and small grants; providing funding for farm apprenticeship programs and training; and using tax penalties to effectively prohibit foreign investor and absentee farmland ownership.
Supply management provides Canadian farmers with a stable income based on cost of production. Therefore, the government should reject both CETA's and TPP's allocation of parts of Canada's supply-managed commodities' markets to imports and should address the loopholes to stop the dumping of dairy protein products into Canadian markets.
The focus on globalization and trade means that more of the food Canadians eat every day is imported, thus subject to currency exchange rate fluctuations, external political events, and transportation issues.
Today we see food price inflation because grocers must buy imported products using expensive U.S. dollars. Canadian farmers, farm workers, food processors, companies, and consumers would all benefit from reinvestment in Canadian fruit, vegetables, livestock and meat production, and processing capacity that is distributed all across the country.
If you would like the upcoming budget to include measures to safeguard the space for domestic food production for the long term, the budget should—