Evidence of meeting #23 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farmers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The management has changed in terms of the ADMs. Right now, the conflict of interest office has been moved to the human resources section of the department so that it is closer to the hiring activity, so we can make sure that it is tracked.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
There's a concern raised with this conflict of interest department. It goes in there. That's what they're there for. They exist to do that. This is about as blatant, as simple as it can get.
I'm as far away from being a lawyer as you can humanly get, and I understand it. So I'm having a great deal of trouble understanding how something like this could be ignored or avoided or not dealt with. How could that be? How in any ministry right now could a conflict of interest that is so obvious not be dealt with by the people who are there to pick up on these things?
How can that happen? You're the deputy. Tell me how that can happen.
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Well, it happened. That's what the audit found. We have put in a process so that it will not happen again.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
And that's it. Was there any HR action taken? I know there's a change in management. Does that mean somebody was demoted? Were they downgraded? Was somebody held to account for something this blatant?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The assistant deputy minister who was in charge is no longer there.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
But was it a lateral move or was this a disciplinary move? Or were they just kind of gotten out of the way?
Was somebody held accountable, Deputy?
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Because we are. When the elections come, we're held accountable at tens of thousands of doorsteps. I want to know who was held accountable for this not responding to an obvious conflict of interest.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Sir, from what I understand and as the audit report says, the documents were not present to verify what happened, and there was a failure in the system. What I am working on is making sure that error doesn't occur again.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It sounds to me as if nobody paid a price; they were just shuffled around. I'm going to paint the picture: it looks as if people were just nicely taken care of--don't worry, we'll move you around, everything's fine--and then just take a couple of hits here at the public thing, and it's all forgotten about.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
No, sir. I take things very seriously, and we are working on it so that it doesn't happen again.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
But I didn't hear of anybody being held accountable, Deputy. That's my concern here. Nobody was held accountable.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Sir, I'm accountable.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Well then, I have to tell you that your response on something this serious is unsatisfactory, Deputy. If you're the one who is actually accountable for this, then I would say that you've fallen short of what's expected of a deputy. When we have something this serious and there was nothing done except some lateral staff moves, I, as one member of this committee, do not accept that that's the proper oversight responsibility, and I think, Deputy, you've let us down. If you're going to take responsibility, then the judgment is that you've let us down.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Sir, with all due respect, we have taken action. We have revised the processes, and we're dealing with it.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
There was no responsibility, though. Everybody got away nicely.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Hubbard Liberal Miramichi, NB
Is CAIS dead, or do you still have some remnants that you have to terminate?
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The CAIS program has been replaced with a new business strategy suite.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
However, we're still in the process of processing some CAIS payments.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
No, we are not accepting them through CAIS. It's AgriStability.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Hubbard Liberal Miramichi, NB
One of the things we have preached in agriculture for some time has been diversity. With diversity, farmers who approached CAIS and who were diversified paid a price. In other words, if they were into more than two or three commodities, they had to set up another farm in order to benefit from the one that was in trouble. Those who had a mixed farm--for example, if you had a beef operation and maybe a maple syrup enterprise in the winter--didn't really benefit. The neighbour who had only the beef did very well.
So diversity was something. Do the new programs really give good advantage to the farmer who has a mixed operation--to the dairy farmer who has vegetables--or are we still into a program where the farmer has to set up two farms in order to make the best application of these new programs?
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Farm Financial Programs Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Actually, in terms of business risk management tools, the producers will tell you themselves that they prefer to get their returns from the markets. So in terms of diversifying and getting it that way, it works. However, the four programs now affect different types of need.
For example, AgriInvest will actually provide for an investment account, so it does not matter what you produce or what you don't. Based on a specific amount, for every dollar you put in, the government puts in a dollar. So it has nothing to do with the actual loss of that year.
