Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Thank you to the committee members for working under these extraordinary circumstances on behalf of Canadians.
My name is Brian Gilroy. I am the president of the Canadian Horticultural Council, which represents Canada's over 14,000 fruit and vegetable growers, producing over 120 different crops. I am also an apple grower from Meaford, Ontario.
As you can appreciate, our industry is very diverse. So, too, are the challenges we are facing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain subsectors in the fresh fruit and vegetable industry are facing very acute and immediate challenges. Some of them are potatoes and greenhouse vegetables, but I will defer to my colleagues to talk more about those specific challenges.
I want to start by saying that the CHC recognizes the safety of Canadians and the integrity of our health care system remains the government's number one priority. We appreciate the great efforts the government has made to keep us all safe, as well as the measures to keep our economy afloat during this difficult time. However, we are here today to point out that like most countries, Canada faces serious challenges on an issue that is essential to a strong health care system and a healthy population, and that is our national food security. We think this is an opportunity for the Government of Canada to continue to demonstrate how critically important our food supply and security is to Canada and to underline that governments have farmers' backs, to paraphrase the Prime Minister.
We are grateful to the federal government for its actions exempting international farm workers from travel restrictions. However, a number of obstacles have made the flow of critical workers untenable. Many farms will receive merely a portion of the workers they generally rely on. Without the guarantee of a reliable workforce, many growers are making decisions now as to whether it is practical, let alone possible, to plant crops or tend fruit trees.
Compounding these difficult decisions is the knowledge that they do not have a sufficient safety net behind them. Growing fruits and vegetables has significant input and overhead costs. Many growers just can't take on these costs without a guarantee that the risk will not push them into bankruptcy. Growers are not immune to risk and uncertainty. Year after year they take on the risks associated with Mother Nature, pest infestations and market volatility to make sure Canadians have an abundance of healthy fruits and vegetables, but in these extraordinary times, more than ever they need concrete assurance that the government will have their back.
The government has announced several measures, such as the emergency wage subsidy and the emergency business account. Unfortunately, many family farms will not meet the eligibility criteria. The $5 billion that went to Farm Credit Canada is not beneficial, as taking on debt will not help our growers recover or backstop their losses.
We understand that business risk management programs are there with the intention of protecting farmers from disastrous losses, but cuts to these programs and changes to the eligibility criteria have rendered the programs, namely AgriStability, ineffective for most farmers.
The CHC and the CFA have outlined their recommendations to the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Finance for immediate changes to business risk management programs to help see farmers through this crisis. We have requested that the AgriStability trigger be increased to 90% for the 2020 program year, or more generally the program year that covers the 2020 crop year for eligible horticulture farms, and that the program cover 85% of the losses below this trigger.
To cover any immediate extraordinary costs for growers, CHC has also requested an immediate injection of a minimum of 5% of a producer's 2018 allowable net sales into AgriInvest accounts and the waiving of the requirement for the grower to match the contribution. This would help give confidence to growers in the short term.
We have recommended that these emergency coverage measures should be coupled with the removal of the reference margin limit and that consideration be given to waiving the structural change provisions.
CHC is prepared to work with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to refine any of these recommendations and minimize the risk of any unintended consequences or moral hazard.
Again, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all today. I look forward to any questions you may have, and I will now turn it over to my colleague, Jan VanderHout.