Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 6th, 2023

[Matthew Hollingworth]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We're terribly sorry about that, Mr. Hollingworth.

You will get your few minutes back, Madam McPherson.

I also want to advise everyone that there could very well be bells going off for voting. I've had an opportunity to speak to everyone, and everyone seems fine with wrapping up our session approximately 10 minutes early. I wanted to share that with everyone.

Madam McPherson, you have two minutes remaining.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hollingworth, I will still put questions to you. I know you are not able to respond. I'm very sorry about that. I'm very interested in your perspective, so I would really appreciate it if you would write to us.

The next question I have for you is that, knowing that Canada can and should be contributing to the rebuilding, to humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, my concern is that if that money comes from our ODA bucket instead of from a separate fund, as we used, for example, in Syria, that will take away from the contributions we need to be making for development around the world. I have some serious concerns about all of the resources going towards Ukraine at a time when we absolutely should be supporting Ukraine but we can't ignore that there are other issues around the world.

That's one question for you that I'd like your perspective on.

The final question I want to get your perspective on is this: You talked about hunger as a weapon of war and how Russia is using hunger as a weapon by targeting the specific food infrastructure that is in place. We know the conflict in the Middle East has resulted in the people of Gaza not having access to food. In fact, the head of the World Food Programme recently said, “Right now, parents in Gaza do not know whether they can feed their children today and whether they will even survive to see tomorrow.”

I would love some insight from you on the use of hunger as a weapon of war and whether you think that is occurring currently in Gaza.

Finally, as we see the conflict in the Middle East, we know that, for example, Lebanon was one of the countries that needed the resources, the food from Ukraine. We saw very early on that people in Lebanon were struggling. As this conflict could potentially spread into Lebanon, what are the risks there and how do we mitigate them in any possible way?

I'm deeply worried about the people of Lebanon feeling the double impact of a conflict that is spilling into their region and food insecurity getting very much worse.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to the second round, and for the second round we're left with three minutes each.

We start off with Mr. Aboultaif.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

I would also like Mr. Hollingworth to send me an answer. I have a question for the group, just for the sake of time.

There's a saying that what policy can do, money cannot. This is something we find in the crises we are facing, especially the Russian-Ukrainian war. If we look at the policies and what has resulted so far, there should probably be some second thought about what we could have done better to get better results out of the situation we're in.

Mr. Hollingworth, if you don't mind, you can email us the answer to this. The same question goes to the panel we have here, maybe to Mr. Carey or Mr. Harvey. If they would like to weigh in on that, it would be great.

Thank you.

[Dave Carey]

That's well said. Yes, policy often goes further than dollars do. When we look at our country, the issues we have in Canada seem sometimes silly relative to the issues we're hearing about today with the Middle East.

Canada needs to do a number of things. One is that we need to modernize our infrastructure so that we can move our product from where it's produced to get to export position and to market. The strikes at the port of Vancouver and the St. Lawrence Seaway cannot happen if we have an economic and moral imperative to move an excess of agriculture and agrifood products to countries that have a deficit. Those things need to happen.

We need Canada to be viewed as a country where companies want to invest and commercialize their products of innovation. Agriculture is about innovation, just like telecom, IT, etc. We need to reduce some of our regulatory red tape so that companies see a path to commercialization in Canada and they understand the ROI, the R and D and the regulatory burden.

We need to make sure that our farmers have the tools they need to produce agriculture products. We plant about 150 million acres of field crops every year in Canada. We have an economic and moral imperative to get that to the world.

Look, we need to work across departments. We can't have silos. We can't have one department looking at a reduction in nitrogen and another department talking about a rail review. We're not on the same page as a country, holistically.

We have the ability. The province of Saskatchewan alone produces enough food at every harvest to feed Canada for a year. I think that speaks volumes about the ability. Agriculture is one of those sectors where we have not even come close to tapping the potential we have from an economic and a moral imperative, I think, to move our products from countries of excess to countries of deficiency.

[Michael Harvey]

More in my area of expertise, I'd say that Canada needs to invest a lot of effort in buttressing the global rules-based order. That's the case in trade. That's the case in peace and security.

I think we're seeing a time of increasing uncertainty around the rules-based order, with the jungle growing back, as the expression has been used. Canada needs to work hard on that.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

On food security and energy security, do you believe that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing in terms of the policy and overall approach to those crises that we've been dealing with?

[Michael Harvey]

That's a broad comment, but quite often we make mistakes in Canada that prevent us from playing as solid a role as we could abroad.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

We next go to MP Alghabra. You have three minutes.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, witnesses.

Mr. Hollingworth, please feel free, if you want to contribute in writing to my question, to submit your response.

We're currently studying the issue of food insecurity due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, but certainly we're talking about public policies, other issues the federal government needs to be aware of and how we can contribute to alleviating those challenges.

To build on the previous question, can you quantify the risk of climate change to food insecurity? What kinds of policies do you think the federal government needs to advocate domestically and internationally in order to tackle that issue?

[Dave Carey]

That's a good question, and a very broad one.

I think there's give-and-take in any policy like this. We know that Canada has about 1% of global emissions and that agriculture represents about 10% of Canada's emissions. However, our producers aren't producing widgets: They're growing food, feed and fuel.

Farmers are on the front lines of climate change for sure. I would say that one of the things is to look at agriculture and farming as a climate solutions provider. Canola, for example, is the best field crop at sequestering carbon because of its deep root system and the fact that it's grown on 20 million acres.

There's a lot that we could be doing as a country to look at what we call “sustainable intensification”, Mr. Chair: producing more food on the same amount of land while using less inputs.

Climate change is real. Farmers feel it: They're harvesting in very wet conditions. However, there has to be give-and-take, because they are producing food.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

I want to clarify my question. This is not an attempt to play on a partisan issue about where you stand and what the current debate is here at home. How risky is climate change to food security here at home and around the world?

[Dave Carey]

It's very risky, absolutely.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

That requires urgent action by the world. What can Canada do to lead either domestically or internationally and to take leadership on that role?

[Dave Carey]

Domestically what Canada can do is make sure that our regulatory system is allowing, for example, gene-edited varieties of plants onto the market in a timely manner, because they have the ability to deal with the use of far less inputs, whether in dealing with water or dealing with heat blooms. Looking at it holistically is one way, but our approach to plants with novel traits needs to be improved so that farmers get access to varieties that are more resilient and can grow in different temperatures.

I can speak to that, being in our wheelhouse: Make sure that our farmers have access to products that can deal with climate change. That requires our regulatory system to be nimble and agile and all of those sorts of things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

We go next to Mr. Bergeron. You have a minute and a half.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hollingworth, I do not know if the sound has improved since my previous question. We can try it.

In your answer to my previous question, you seemed to say that you were still able to get the grain out of Ukraine. According to your organization, more than 345 million people would face high levels of food insecurity in 2023, and at least 129,000 people could experience famine in Burkina Faso, Mali, Somalia and South Sudan.

Is that not a sign that it is not enough? What has managed to get out through the Black Sea or neighbouring countries still fails to meet global food needs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Hollingworth, hopefully you had an opportunity to hear Mr. Bergeron. If you could kindly respond via email, we'd be very grateful indeed.

For the last minute and a half, we go to MP McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Again, thank you all for being here.

I'll be directing my comments to you, Mr. Hollingworth. I know you can't respond, so I'll be giving you some more homework, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, some of the questions that I had prepared were for you.

In your testimony, you talked about the fact that most small-scale farming in Ukraine has disproportionate impacts on women and girls. Of course, that's something that would be of key importance to us as a country with a feminist international assistance policy and a feminist foreign policy. Could you talk about the impact on women and why we should be thinking about that when we think about our commitments to food security?

I also wanted to talk about the indexing of food prices with our development assistance. We know that Canada was one of the first parties to ratify the Food Assistance Convention. We know that Canada has pledged to provide a minimum annual commitment of $250 million in food assistance, promising to help make the delivery of food more efficient. We heard from Mr. Hagerman, from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, who talked to us about the importance of an increased commitment to that. From my perspective, it would be wonderful if you could talk about whether Canada should be indexing our food prices and whether it should be expected that we would increase that commitment.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, that's all for me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Madam McPherson.

We will adjourn in the next minute or so, it now being 12:49 p.m.

At this point, allow me to thank Mr. Harvey, Mr. Carey and Madam McLaughlin for being here in person.

To Mr. Hollingworth, thank you for joining us virtually. Again, I'm terribly sorry about the challenges you experienced. I understand you're in the same office you were in last week when you connected with us, so perhaps this was foreseeable. Nonetheless, thank you very much for your expertise and your input. As soon as this report is ready, we will certainly make sure we send you a copy. Thank you.

If everyone is okay, we will adjourn the meeting.