Evidence of meeting #29 for International Trade in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was beef.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Guimond Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
I would think it would be the same for an agreement with Europe regarding designation of the country of origin.
4:10 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
I think the difference would be that we probably do not expect to ship live cattle to Europe. If we have a requirement to label our beef as Canadian when we ship it to Europe, we're fine with that.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, Mr. Masswohl.
I really, deeply enjoyed the beef that was served at the cattleman's BBQ. I understand it came from British Columbia. It's the best beef I've ever tasted. You're not going to reveal the source, are you?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
They didn't tell us where it came from; we just know it was Canadian.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
It was very good.
Ms. Hall Findlay raised the issue of your competitors. It's a question I've raised before with you. If the U.S. is our major competitor, what are the kinds of investments the cattle industry in the United States gets? Could you remind me of that? And could you remind us as well of the kind of funding the beef industry gets here for export development in Canada?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
I think the last time we had this conversation you gave some numbers that I had to assume would be correct.
4:10 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
That also suggested you might even want to take the opportunity at some point to have the Canadian Beef Export Federation in, and they could go into greater detail of their budget, where their budget comes from, and who they compete against.
I was at a meeting over the last couple of days--and I hope I'm going to read this chart correctly, because I knew this question would probably come up and I wanted to make sure I looked at it correctly.
We really don't receive any government funding for promoting beef in Canada. The hog and chicken industry might take a dim view of the Canadian government promoting beef in Canada, so everyone pays out of their own funds for the domestic market.
On export marketing, we have something that we referred to, when it was first created back in 2006, as the legacy fund. I believe the legacy fund was announced in 2005. There was a federal government contribution and a Province of Alberta contribution. The federal contribution worked out to approximately $10 million per year and the Alberta contribution was a lump sum of $30 million. The idea of this was recognition that we were coming out of BSE and were going to have to make a new push to get those markets back. It was a fund that was over and above what we used to call CAFDI. CAFDI used to be the program for export marketing. Now it's agri-marketing, which I believe you're familiar with. We do not participate in agri-marketing because we have this legacy funding. We're now at the halfway point in the 10 years of this legacy fund.
If I look at the budget--because the money went in and it's gone through investments, and some of it had the opportunity to grow--the total federal contribution for 2010-11 is $9.8 million. The Alberta contribution for the same year is $4.3 million, for a total federal and provincial contribution of $14.16 million, roughly.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
The contract...basically the understanding is there's leveraging. The industry has to put in matching funds to go along with that. I believe it's a 75-25 split.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
As you're aware, the U.S. industry gets many, many more times support than the Canadian industry does.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
I don't know what that ratio is.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
You have the testimony.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Yes, in previous testimony we heard it was six to eight times more support for the American industry than the Canadian industry.
The question then comes whether there is an ask that's out there now from the cattle and beef industry, an ask in terms of export-related product promotion support.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
Basically, what our ask is...and the reason I have this number is that while I don't participate directly in the marketing efforts, I thought I would sit in on this meeting and listen to it. Every year this money is allocated, directed, in cooperation. It's a partnership among the federal government, the Province of Alberta, and the industry, and in the industry it's through our various marketing agencies--through BIC for the U.S. market, through CBEF for the rest of the world, and through the Canadian Beef Breeds Council for the beef genetics. Basically they say, “This is the money we have.” If you compare that to what other industries are doing and receiving as funding through agri-marketing, we probably have more resources than the other Canadian industries.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
I don't doubt that, but compared to our competitors, I think it's much less.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
Right. So I think if there was.... We'll always take more and we will always spend it if there's more, but I think--
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
I think what we're looking at is that with what we have for funding compared to what other Canadian industries have, I don't think it's realistic for us to expect that we're going to continue to outpace the other industries.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
That's helpful.
I just wanted to refer to the British Columbia Cattlemen's Association press release that came out on October 15. Here again, I think, is a symptom of dysfunctional trade strategy. You've identified China and Japan as two of the top four issues, in terms of market access. We have the cattlemen going over there, and this trade mission was partly funded by the individual ranchers themselves, with additional funding from the Horn Levy Fund of British Columbia. So you have the cattlemen already getting far less than the investments that our chief competitors are putting into their industry, and you have cattlemen having to pay out of pocket to go on a trade mission to deal with two of the top four issues that you've identified here.
Does that seem normal to you?
I have two final questions. One is on the value of the 200 tonnes that you expect to export to Jordan.
And finally, two of the top five that you've identified are countries that we've already signed a free trade agreement with. So what is not working in our approach to free trade agreements when market access to the U.S. and Mexico continue to be a problem years after we've signed the agreement that supposedly was going to resolve all those issues?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Government and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
On the first part, does that seem normal, it doesn't seem abnormal to me in terms of how things work. Normally, if there's going to be a trade mission, at the planning stage we have our money and we know what the mission is going to be. Usually some of the people who go or the companies that go have to make a bit of an investment. There's staff and there are leaders of certain organizations. We'll basically say, okay, for this mission, x number of people are going out of the funding; others can go along at their own expense. So it doesn't seem abnormal to me that some additional people might go on a trade mission and pay for it themselves or be paid for by a different organization. That certainly does happen.
We're very frustrated. Here we are seven years after BSE, and even three years after the OIE, the World Organisation for Animal Health, classified Canada as a controlled risk for BSE. We know what that is supposed to entitle us to in terms of access, but not all countries are honouring that. Some countries are. If you count all of the members of the European Union individually, I think we're up to about 43 countries that are fully honouring the OIE code. I read off a list of nine priorities. They're not all BSE-related, but many of them are. And they're important countries. Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, and Korea are still not living up to that obligation.
We're making progress on them. We're hoping we're going to get there, but every country, Canada included, retains the sovereign right, if it feels there's a safety risk with an imported product, to say it will not let that product in. Now we think in this case there is no safety risk of BSE from Canadian beef. We know it's safe. We know the controls we operate under. We eat the product ourselves, and we know it's safe. We're asking other countries to accept that, and they all go through their regulatory processes.
I think in many of these cases there's a lot more going on than just safety and regulatory concerns. There are domestic politics going on, and that's why we think it's important to have the minister travel to these markets, as he has done, and meet with his counterparts and really be able to look his counterparts in the eye and say, “I'm the minister responsible for this, this product is produced under regulations for which I, Minister Ritz, am responsible”, and be able to give that assurance to his counterparts that the product we're going to send is safe.
That has worked in some cases, and we want to see more of that. We like to keep the minister busy, and we like to have all the opposition parties pairing off and making sure that the minister is available to go on those trips on our behalf.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
Thank you. Those were excellent questions, and not a bad reply, either.
Mr. Holder.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for being back at our committee to provide testimony. I'm sure there's nothing you would look forward to more than to having all-party support for this agreement. I would like to imagine that's what's going to happen as a result of this. I was glad to hear clearly that the Bloc has indicated that they're prepared to support this. I hope all parties, perhaps before this whole session is done in this meeting today, might be prepared to say that. That would be rather interesting.
Thank you as well for providing the larger wish list of the various projects that you would like to see completed to assist the beef producers.
I'm going to focus more of my questions back on Jordan, if I might, since that's the topic at hand. I want to come back to something. You provided testimony some six months ago, it seems to me, and you gave a strong compliment to our Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. Gerry Ritz, and at the time you acknowledged his work in having the BSE restriction lifted in Jordan.
You made that comment six months ago, and it had occurred just before that. What are the beef producers doing to take advantage of this?