Good afternoon.
I'm a dairy farmer. I was invited to speak here by way of our local MP, Mr. Bragdon, but more on that later.
I was born and raised in a city in Holland. You might have already guessed that by my name. My parents had no farm. For some reason I always wanted to become a dairy farmer. I knew I would never have enough money to buy any kind of farm in Holland. Because I wanted to become a farmer, I went to the agriculture school in the city where I was born.
ln my final year at school, which would have been when I was 19, I contemplated where to go to pursue my dream. At that time—this would have been the late 1980s—France and Australia were popular. Denmark was also a go-to place. I had heard in school that Canada was good to their dairy farmers, as they had some kind of system in place to ensure their dairy farmers were getting paid a fair price for the milk they produced. That was all I knew in 1986, but it was good enough for me to go on a big adventure. I bought my first plane ticket to go to Canada.
I arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, not really knowing much English, and ended up working on a farm in Nova Scotia. Of course, I was very homesick. I slowly started to find out that there was indeed a good system in place here, which I eventually learned was called supply management.
True to the Dutch stereotype, I was not much of a big spender, focusing instead on saving money towards my goal of buying a dairy farm. I managed to save $700 a month of the $900 a month I was earning working on the farm in Nova Scotia. At the age of 25, I began looking around and found this nice working dairy farm in beautiful northwest New Brunswick. I indeed had enough money saved up for a down payment for that farm, and bought it in 1991.
Not coming from a farming background, my attitude might differ from some other farmers. I feel I'm also a businessman. In my opinion, profit is not a bad word, including in a farm setting. Why would I want to work pretty much every day for long hours and not make any money doing it?
It's the same for my 23-year-old daughter, who hopes to take over the family farm someday. She now works full time on the farm and sees the political climate we are in. The trade concessions have gotten her very concerned. She feels that we, as dairy producers, have been picked on from all sides. Over the years I have been following the situations that have occurred in Holland in respect to the dismantling of the Dutch quota system and all the hardship that it caused. I still talk sometimes to my agriculture school buddies about what they have had to endure. In no means was it pretty or easy.
Canadian supply management, in my mind, consists of three pillars, like a three-legged milking stool: supply control, import control and a stable pricing system based on costs and markets. But the system only works if there is political will to safeguard the pillars. If any one pillar is taken away, like a stool, the stool will fall over.
This brings me before you today. All during the time the negotiations went on for CUSMA, when people asked me if I was concerned about the outcome, I would say, “No, I am not.” I always said I had full faith in our government to stand up and defend supply management.
Unfortunately, I was proven wrong. I think I and most other dairy farmers were very disappointed when the final details came out. We have a system here that ensures the primary producer, the farmer, gets a fair price for his product. By no means are we getting rich, but we're doing okay.
I believe that farmers in other countries recognize that our supply management system does work well and that we do get a fair price for our product. I know for a fact that a lot of dairy farmers in other countries envy us. Unfortunately, it seems that rather than working towards improving their own system in their own countries, they are trying to compromise or infringe upon our system. I just don't understand that way of thinking of the other farmers in other countries. All the magazines I read from south of the border put CUSMA as a great win for their dairy farmers. In my mind, that would mean we got the short end of the stick.
I have also read of farms south of the border that milk as many as 30,000 cows on one farm. That's equivalent to all the dairy farms in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia combined. Is that where we want to go? In my small community, I employ three people full time. One of them is my 23-year-old daughter. I also use land belonging to several of my neighbours, and at times even employ my neighbours as needed. I employ about six high school students to work shifts during milking, giving them experience in work ethic and some spending money.
If farming becomes too challenging due to these trade agreements, I and other dairy farmers might have to stop farming. Therefore, there would be essentially no economic activity left in our community. If Canadian dairy farmers are forced to abandon their livelihood, this would contribute to the ongoing decline of our rural communities. This might be why my local MP, Mr. Bragdon, asked me to appear before you. He is very aware of what will happen if farms keep disappearing from his riding. Remember that any kind of farming is, and has to be, a business.
Another side effect of this agreement is that we had a processor who was going to upgrade and expand a processing plant in New Brunswick. This processor now has indefinitely postponed this project due to uncertainty. We Maritimes producers are very concerned about keeping processing in our region.
I now want to touch on the compensation package promised, and partly delivered, for CETA and CPTPP. I haven't heard anything about the remaining years and how it will be paid out. That in itself concerns me. The compensation package is bittersweet. Most farmers, including me, received a payment in December of last year for those previous trade agreement concessions. As far as I am aware, no concrete timeline has been set for the next payments. We, as dairy farmers, have always prided ourselves on getting all our money from the marketplace. This is how the system is supposed to work. This is how it did work. The government trading away excess and then offering compensation is not what we want. Having the supply management system tampered with by government trade concessions to the point where we're now looking for compensation should tell you how bad these concessions are hurting us. To be honest, the words “no more concessions will be made” sound a bit hollow to me, as this was the line all along. Of course, we're now getting concerned by the possible trade talks that will happen sometime with the U.K.
I don't pretend to know all the precise details of the agreement. We as dairy farmers have DFC for that. You can probably stump me pretty easily with some in-depth questions. But one thing that stands out to me in CUSMA is the oversight and export cap clause that this government has granted the U.S. I just do not understand how one country, that being Canada, can allow another country, that being the U.S.A., to dictate where and how much it can export to a third country. It's even more frustrating as our domestic market is being given away.
In conclusion, if I could make any suggestion, it would be that compensation for all the agreements will help to maintain my farm and business and allow us to manage for my family's future. As my business model was based on producing milk, I now will need the compensation money to keep the farm viable and profitable for my daughter. Keep in mind that the last 10% to 15% of the milk produced on any farm is the cheapest milk for the farmer to produce, and the most profitable. Having that share of the milk market traded away means we will need compensation funding to continue to innovate and adapt to this new market reality.
Finally, anything you could do to prevent further concessions and limit the U.S.A.'s ability to oversee our system and limit exports would be positive for dairy farmers like me.
Thank you.