Yes:
That, as part of its ongoing study on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Committee study and report to the House on how Canada can support its allies who were affected by resource access challenges stemming from the invasion and steps that the Government of Canada should take to respond to these challenges.
Mr. Chair, if I may, I'll add a few comments to that.
When people are hungry and when people are cold, it leads to one thing, as history has shown us: Whenever the average caloric intake of a population drops below 1,800, it ends in civil unrest.
Going into the war, Ukraine's and Russia's food production systems accounted for 30% of the exports of the world's wheat, 17% of the corn, 30% of the barley and 75% of its sunflower oil.
I can spend a few minutes talking about the Black Sea grain initiative as well. Russia is no longer considering that a humanitarian mission. They may look to end the deal after its present extension. Even now, Ukraine and Russia are arguing about the length of the extension and whether it's 120 days or 60 days. As of March 2, the Black Sea grain initiative had facilitated the export of 22.8 million tonnes of grain into the global market, despite the ongoing supply chain interruptions, but only 64% of that wheat was exported to developing countries.
Of course, we're all aware of the interruptions in the natural gas that flows to western Europe. In the Versailles declaration of March 2022, the leaders of 27 member states agreed to phase out the use of and dependence on Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible. How many steps are needed to do this?
We have to look at further diversifying our energy sources and our routing. We need to accelerate the deployment of renewables, further employing energy efficiency, and improving interconnections of gas and our electrical energy networks.
We haven't seen yet the full effects of the trade disruptions on the fertilizer market. Russia and Belarus were obviously major suppliers of potash and phosphorus. I mentioned earlier the caloric consumption of a population. When it drops below 1,800 per capita, it leads to civil unrest. This is going to be a delayed response to what's happening with fertilizer. Canada is a major exporter of potash, but on my own farm in Leamington we have used more Belarusian and Russian potash on our farm over history. That whole trade route has been disrupted, and that's in a developed country, Mr. Chair.
The costs associated with the fertilizer disruptions are affecting farmers around the world in developing countries all over the place. That's going to lead to only one place: to lower domestic food production in developing economies.
I'll go back to the main point that I made earlier, which is that a caloric drop below a certain level, which we saw back in 2007-08 with the Arab uprising in response to bread prices—
