Public Accounts Committee on March 1st, 2022

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

It's nice to be in a committee again with you, Mr. Chair. Congratulations on your role. I'm looking forward to working with you again.

Thank you to the witnesses for taking the time to be here this morning.

I want to read from the report what appears to be one of the key findings. It's a message that we've heard here today, but I'll still refer to it. It states as follows:

Overall, we found that the government had not developed a national emergency preparedness and response plan that considered a crisis affecting the entire food system and Canada's food security. This is despite...having identified food as a critical infrastructure sector since 2009.

I absolutely understand that, but then it continues:

Nevertheless, we found that the responsible departments and agencies we examined drew on existing programs and mechanisms to expedite the creation of the new emergency food programs.

My question is for Deputy Auditor General Hayes.

With that in mind, and keeping in mind, of course, that Canada is a large country, the second biggest in the world and a huge federation, maybe it makes sense that we don't have a national emergency plan. This is not a judgment; I'm looking for a perspective here. Maybe these things should be organized at a provincial level, because as it says here, “we found that the responsible departments and agencies we examined drew on existing programs..”. Where existing programs are in place, it sounds like they were able to do what was needed to address existing programs.

Of course, there are gaps, and the report identifies those gaps. There are serious gaps as well. Some are less concerning and some are more concerning.

We can talk about the specifics there, but it's a question around first principles. In a country as large as Canada, does it make sense to have a national plan, one that would apply to the entire country but carry with it obvious risks of one size not fitting all problems? Or, do we try to work at a more focused level, through different agencies and departments that are already in existence—and with provincial governments where necessary—and have plans and seek to refine those plans?

[Andrew Hayes]

Thank you. I think it's a philosophical question, which I suspect the deputy minister may also have a perspective on.

On the first principles level, I would look to the Constitution of Canada and the division of powers and recognize that on matters of national interest, peace, order and good government, we would see a role for the federal government in many areas of national concern.

In terms of a national plan, what I think is important to recognize is that the collaboration, coordination and integration of partners—federal, provincial, territorial, indigenous, etc.—is something that the federal government has typically taken a role in.

I don't know if you'd like to hear from the deputy minister on that, but I think there is a big policy question there.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Yes, I would like to hear from the deputy minister.

Mr. Forbes.

[Chris Forbes]

I would say that in our work, you'd probably need both. You need national structures. You need an approach that engages with all of the partners. I want to make sure that we think about business in there, too, along with provinces and territories, indigenous communities, and others.

The provincial, regional aspects of food supply and food security are really important. We need to keep an eye on both, and that means working both in large groups and tackling some of the specific regional elements. My one example there would be when we had the recovery programming, which wasn't part of the audit, but came up post-COVID with the drought for cattle producers and ranchers. One of the things that was good about that programming was that each of the three prairie provinces, as well as Ontario and B.C., were able to target programming province by province to the specific needs and structures of their ranchers with the same overall funding approach. That allowed us to have the approach that covered all of western Canada, but allowed each jurisdiction to respond appropriately to the needs of their big sector.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have time for a comment.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

It's a short comment to reiterate that one of the concerns that's been expressed and the takeaways that we'll have is that we need a national program to prepare for any future emergencies. However, if existing programs kicked in and existing mechanisms kicked in as the report outlines, I wonder if it makes more sense to ensure that they are refined and approved where necessary, rather than having, as I said before, a one size fits all national policy in a country like Canada that might be out of place.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Turning now to our third round, MP Patzer, you have five minutes.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much.

I want to turn my lines of questioning here towards the Auditor General's office. There was an emergency processing fund set up, and I'm reading from the chart in exhibit 12.2 that “New funding for food processors in the agriculture and agri-food sector to help them maintain and increase domestic food production and processing” comes to the tune of $77.5 million.

In your audit, could you point to how much extra processing capacity was added to the industry with that $77.5 million?

[Andrew Hayes]

I might have to turn to my colleague Ms. Leach for some details on this. I know that this question bears on the findings later in the report on performance measurement and whether or not the indicators are there to show that the program is going to meet its objectives. Ms. Leach may be able to add to that.

[Kimberley Leach]

With respect to the emergency processing fund, that was all spent during the time of our audit, but we noticed that in some of the tables at the back, there were weaknesses in measuring the program results. On emergency processing funds, this was as of May 19, 2021, and 63% of respondents had responded to the questionnaires that AAFC provided to try to find out what the results of the program were. We found problems, as illustrated in exhibit 12.7, with the ways that documentation was provided by the recipients.

As Mr. Hayes stated, it was very difficult to identify whether the outcomes were successful in these programs. They are documented there in exhibit 12.7.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

To the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, do you have an answer to that? How much capacity was added with the $77.5 million?

[Chris Forbes]

I do not have that number with me. It would have been in the applications looking for some indication of what was intended and what the outcomes would be. We would have had it project by project, when you apply obviously, but I don't have that in front of me right now.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Do you have a report that you could table? If you have something that you can table with the committee, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Chris Forbes]

I'll find—

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Clerk, can we follow up with him to get that report? That would be hugely beneficial to the committee.

When I talk to ranchers and farmers, production capacity is one of the biggest issues they bring up, and the lack thereof or the fact that we only have two facilities in Alberta and one in Ontario to process. There are smaller provincial abattoirs, but at the end of the day, when we look at the federal side of things, we see that we only have the two main locations out west. Throughout the pandemic, we saw staffing shortages, all kinds of issues trying to maintain, let alone increase, production capacity.

When I see that we spend $77.5 million to maintain and increase capacity, and I'm hearing from the department that we don't have an answer as to if we're able to do either....

Were we able to maintain anything, even? Again, all I saw in the news was that there were shortages all across the board.

[Chris Forbes]

Just as a reminder, that funding went beyond meat processing. It obviously went to a range of food processing sector participants. As I say, in the applications it would have been how to either maintain existing production volumes under the COVID operating circumstances or provide, in some cases, additional incremental capacity.

That was certainly the objective of individual projects and the program overall.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, and that's the time.

MP Yip, you have five minutes, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Congratulations, Chair. It's wonderful to see such representation from our witnesses from regions across the country.

My question is directed to Mr. Forbes. I have seven food banks in my riding. It's a sad fact, and I wish we didn't have food banks not just in my riding, but across the country.

How has the surplus food purchase program helped food banks or local food security organizations across Canada?

[Chris Forbes]

Pardon me, was that the surplus food rescue program that you were asking about?

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Is it the surplus food purchase program?

[Chris Forbes]

Yes, okay. This $50-million program was really the first of its kind to try to match some of the surplus food that producers, farmers or, in some cases, the fishing sector had, and match that with food banks.

I think the good news of that would be that we were able to distribute something around seven million kilograms of food, including items like potatoes, fish and seafood, veal and chicken, which landed in about 1,300 food security organizations across Canada, including a number in the north. We think it was a fairly successful program.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

How does this program work in conjunction with the emergency food security fund and, again, what were the resulting impacts on food banks?

[Chris Forbes]

The emergency food security fund was more of a direct transfer to the food banks and food security organizations for the national or regional ones to share the money across their networks. We were aiming to get as broad a distribution as possible, and national coverage, with those organizations. Those were the specifics. Really in the end that was for the local food banks to determine how they would use.... In your example, I don't know how many in your riding would have received a share, but some of them would have received money, and that would have been their decision about how to use it based on their needs and what was available to them.

The surplus food program was a bit more of a matching exercise where we were trying to find uses for food that would otherwise have gone to waste and that had been produced by the Canadian sector.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Some of the food banks in my riding have inquired whether or not there was fairness in terms of the organizations that were able to apply.

Can you comment on that?

[Chris Forbes]

If a food bank has issues, we're always open to hear concerns and questions. We have to be. This was not an area that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was involved in prior to the pandemic.

We wanted to work with groups that would allow us to get as broad a reach as possible across the country, touch as many communities as possible, and make sure that we did that in a relatively efficient way. That's how we chose the larger organizations.

If there were some groups that were excluded, certainly, our goal is to learn if we missed people, but as the program went on, we were also able to push the larger organizations, if we found gaps, communities, or regions that were underserved, to work to resolve those with local food banks.