Thank you, Mr. Chair, and congratulations on your election.
I am coming to you today from the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin nation here in Ottawa, and I'm pleased to provide a few opening remarks about Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's response to the recommendations in the Auditor General's report on protecting Canada's food system. We welcome the findings of the report, which will certainly help us to better serve Canadians in the future.
If we look back during COVID-19, large swings in demand and labour shortages and closures put severe pressure on the food system and the food supply chain. Our objective as a department was to do what we needed to do to keep the supply chain strong by addressing pressure points as quickly as possible and making course corrections as needed.
We drew on a strong foundation of existing programs and mechanisms to create new programs quickly. We engaged broadly and forged connections among stakeholders and partners across the food system. This included new partners who were able to help deliver immediate program support for producers and other Canadians.
Over the first several months of the pandemic, we were able to deploy a number of programs quickly to help farmers and food processors maintain their cash flows and workforces, keep their farms and facilities safe and to manage supply chain disruptions. At the same time, we helped organizations working to address food insecurity meet increased demand at a time when they had to reorient their operations due to closures and disruptions.
Canada's food systems were stressed during the pandemic, but in the end they proved to be resilient and adaptable. The government put in place a number of specific emergency programs during the pandemic, including the $87-million emergency processing fund, which helped companies across Canada adopt health protocols and to automate or modernize their facilities to manage COVID pressures. The $50-million surplus food rescue program redistributed over 7 million kilograms of food, and our investments of $330 million under the emergency food security fund helped to improve access to food and increase food supply for vulnerable Canadians during the pandemic.
Our pandemic response gives us the opportunity to identify gaps so we can develop more resilient and equitable food systems that better meet the needs of Canadians going forward.
I can touch briefly on the report's key recommendation. We certainly acknowledge the need for national emergency preparedness and response planning for future crises with impacts across Canada's food system and the need to integrate food security into our emergency planning. We will continue to strengthen our engagement with FPT and indigenous partners and stakeholders to help Canada's food systems prepare and respond to future crises.
My department has committed to developing an action plan for engagement with federal, provincial and territorial governments and stakeholders, including indigenous groups, on emergency preparedness and response. We have already begun to strengthen key engagement mechanisms and departmental supports. For example, soon after the start of the pandemic, we brought together hundreds of stakeholders for regular roundtable calls through our food sector network. We will continue to learn from the experience acquired over the last two years and from the challenges facing Canada's food systems, in order to be better prepared for future emergencies.
We also agree with the report’s recommendation for greater fairness and transparency in program input and design. We are committed to delivering all programming with greater consistency, fairness, and transparency. Likewise, we’re committed to improving oversight controls and the development of performance measurements. Finally, we will reflect the diversity of Canadians, and the spectrum of social, economic, and environmental realities in future programming.
And we will continue to improve how we measure and report on contributions towards sustainable development commitments and gender and diversity outcomes in all our future initiatives around food.
Mr. Chair, as I said, we welcome the findings of the Auditor General’s report.
Thank you and I look forward to our discussion of these issues.