Debates of May 13th, 2020

Canadian Dairy Commission Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to remind hon. members to place their question through the Chair. I am sure that the member meant that we will let the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain answer that, and not me.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will go back to the last point from the previous question, that we all are working hard. As the member has asked, the problem is that the announcements are being made with no details that follow. We go on there, we do some technical briefings and we are basically wasting two hours of everybody's time, because we have to get some more information as they work.

I believe Canadians are getting the hope that something is being heard and something is going to come forward, but rumours that go through, because nobody knows any of the details. Somebody hears one thing and another person hears another thing, and then we find out that on some of the programs, and I will use EI and the SUBP fund as examples, people would get more money on EI than on the CERB, but they had to go on CERB because they were laid off after March 15. Now, not only are they losing out on $75 a week on their unemployment, which is $300 a month, they are also losing $150 per week on their SUBP payments. That is a total of $900. This is the stuff that happens when everybody is not at the table explaining the details to them of what can actually happen.

We have people who are actually losing $900 a month who paid into a program, but the government has made a new program that stops them from getting that.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to a comment made by an hon. government member. He said that he understood that the opposition had to ask for more.

What the opposition does not understand is why the government did not act faster. As my NDP colleague graciously pointed out, it took the government over a month to take action. I hope no one will try to tell me it was complicated. Today, we are changing one number in an act. We are crossing out the number 300 and changing it to 500. That took over a month, so do not tell me that the government acted quickly.

I really enjoyed my esteemed colleague's heartfelt speech. He clearly cares about agriculture. That is something we have in common, and I am pleased about that. He talked a lot about the attacks on supply-managed sectors in free trade agreements. He spoke about the need to protect these sectors in the future. I imagine he would agree that supply management should be protected through legislation.

I have other sub-questions. Does my colleague think that this is a good time to make compensation available and to send money to farms in Quebec and across Canada?

Does he think that a way of saving the dairy industry would be to grant import quotas, the percentages awarded, to processors rather than to distributors?

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important that we help our dairy sector, and the cost will be a lot higher than what the government has offered.

Farmers were told, even with the CUSMA deal, that we would compensate them for all the losses that we had taken out of their production. That has not happened. Now with the pandemic and with what will happen between July 1 and August 1, it will be devastating, which is creating mental issues for our farmers. They have expenses, but have no income. They are finding out now that they are doing all this work for nothing. Therefore, it is critical that we ensure these people, who have gone through this hard time because of new rules, get compensated on a fair basis.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have more of a comment than a question.

In response to the comment that was made by the Conservative colleague across the way, suggesting that the U.S. had delivered its stimulus funding within three days, that is absolutely and factually incorrect. In fact, if the member googles it, he will find an NBC article that references that. By April 21, the first 80 million Americans waiting for stimulus funding had not received it. To suggest that somehow Americans had received stimulus funding so incredibly quickly is just factually incorrect. I would encourage him to look that up and to understand the issue before commenting on it. In fact, Canada was far beyond any other country in terms of delivering stimulus funding and the timeliness of it, especially when we use comparator countries to Canada.

I am not trying to belabour this point, but in the spirit of trying to put the right facts on the table and on the floor, we need to have a conversation as it relates to what actually happened. To suggest otherwise is just factually incorrect.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was not a question and so I cannot answer. I think we all heard it, and I will just leave it there.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Earlier today I had the honour of introducing to the House of Commons a petition that a constituent of mine had initiated. The petition called for mandatory life jackets for children 14 or under. The petition was initiated originally by a constituent of mine who tragically lost her son in a boating accident.

It turns out that the original sponsor of that petition was the member for Hull—Aylmer. Many of my constituents urged me to introduce the petition in the House of Commons. I just assumed that the reason for that was that the member for Hull—Aylmer might not have been coming back to the House for a long time, given the very slow rotation of MPs coming in and out due to the present circumstance. However, I want to make clear that he was the member who sponsored that petition and he was the one who originally initiated it from the parliamentary side.

This is a great passion of his. I know he is trying to save young people from the tragic end that my young constituent suffered. I want the House to be clear that he deserves full credit for initiating that petition and sponsoring it to Parliament.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

So noted.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Green Party supports this legislation to amend the Canadian Dairy Commission Act. We also support additional measures to help our farmers.

As has been pointed out by many other hon. members in this place today, Canadian farmers need help. They need help to deal with the sudden disappearance of demand for their products. Tens of thousands of restaurants, cafés and diners closed their doors two months ago. Hotels and schools were emptied out. At that moment, the demand for dairy products to go into their coffees, baked goods, sandwiches and desserts evaporated.

Dairy cows do not suddenly stop producing milk when the demand for it disappears. And as dairy farmers cannot lower production quickly, they were faced with an unstoppable supply and no demand. Some milk was dumped, but instead of dumping it all, dairy producers across the country have donated hundreds of thousands of litres of excess milk to those in need. Dairy Farmers of Canada has announced that producers have committed to donate $10 million of dairy products to food banks across the country. Dairy producers have also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. I applaud them for their support feeding people in need.

The Green Party does not like to see anything wasted. We believe in the idea of a circular economy, where nothing is wasted and every product has a full life cycle, so I can say we do not like to see dairy products dumped needlessly. Dedicating more federal funds to help with the storage of butter and cheese is an important way the government can support dairy farmers and avoid wasting valuable food.

Unfortunately, the trouble for Canada's farmers and for food security in this country did not begin with the COVID-19 crisis, and it will not end when restaurants and cafés reopen.

The average age of a farmer in Canada is 55. Most aging farmers who have been surveyed report they have no succession plan for their family farms. Families that want to transfer farms between generations should be able to do so without facing a huge tax bill. This is something we can also fix.

At the same time, more and more young people are pursuing farming as an occupation. That is the good news. The bad news is that unless they grew up on a family farm and intend to take over from their parents, many young farmers have great difficulty accessing land to farm.

In British Columbia high property values are a major factor. On one hand, agricultural properties that are not protected by the agricultural land reserve are increasingly being developed for housing. On the other hand, ALR-protected farmlands that are not available for development are still too costly for young farmers to buy or lease. The unfortunate result of this situation is that agricultural lands end up sitting fallow or not being used for food production.

On Vancouver Island we have a very long growing season and one of the best climates in Canada for food production. We also have a large amount of prime agricultural land, but the number one crop being grown on Vancouver Island is hay.

Why are we not growing more food? This is a very relevant question to be asking right now. Food production has become too centralized and we are far too dependent on international supply chains. Up until the 1950s, about 85% of the food consumed on Vancouver Island was grown on Vancouver Island. Now we import 95% of the food we eat.

In the event of a serious supply chain disruption, such as an earthquake, Vancouver Island would be in a very perilous situation. We have a three-day supply of food in our stores and warehouses. We have a growing population. We need to get very serious about increasing our capacity to produce food locally.

That applies across the country. We urgently need to support efforts to relocalize food production. It is one of the most powerful actions we can take to develop resilient communities that will be able to weather the challenges of climate change in the coming decades.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light many issues and weaknesses in our food production chains in this country.

Nearly a decade ago, the federal government got out of inspections of abattoirs and passed that responsibility on to the provinces. The fallout of that decision is still rippling through small farms in B.C. today. Many small regional abattoirs shut down, because it was too expensive to comply with new provincial regulations that mandated a separate, dedicated washroom and office for the inspectors when they visited.

In many cases, this just strengthened the market position of big corporate players. Now, small-scale farmers who used to get their animals processed close to home at their local abattoir have to truck their animals for hours to a large abattoir. In many cases, the large abattoirs charge more than they used to pay and have large minimum orders.

Many small-scale farmers have had to get out of raising animals for meat. Every time this happens, it hurts local food security. It increases centralization in our food production, and it also means a lower quality of life for the animals being raised.

Many small farmers have farms that resemble the farms in children's books. Large industrial farms with tens of thousands of animals being raised in close confinement have very little to do with the farms in our children's storybooks. Bigger is not always better. The move to big feedlots and bigger slaughterhouses has led to issues such as the spread of COVID-19 among the workers. This is a provincial issue. Nonetheless, it has created serious problems for farmers and for the supply chain, and it will increase food prices for consumers.

The canola trade issue with China has highlighted another problem. Concentrating agricultural production on certain export crops leaves our farmers susceptible to trade disputes and unfair trade practices. It is important that Canada continue to do its part to feed the world when so many are going hungry, but it is just as important to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have the ability to feed their own populations, and direct foreign aid can help increase the capacity in those countries to help them become more self-reliant.

As I mentioned earlier, re-localizing our food production is key. For the first time in decades, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of young people who want to be farmers. That is a trend we can support and encourage. We need to figure out what role the government can play in connecting young farmers with land that they can farm on. These kinds of arrangements require long-term thinking, because it can take years to bring a former hayfield back to food production, but it can be done and is worth doing.

Organic regenerative farming can sequester carbon. It is a key tool in the fight against climate change. We need to support organic regenerative farming. We need to increase food security with more local food production. The government should provide more local food infrastructure funding so that communities across Canada can count on locally produced food, as much as the weather in their regions will permit.

I want to give a shout-out to the Cedar Farmers Market, which opened this past weekend, and today the Island Roots Market opened outdoors for the first time this season.

Local food production enhances our food security. It lowers the carbon footprint of the food we eat. We must develop and strengthen urban growing, and farms and community garden initiatives. This has been shown to create good employment, as well as nutritious, fresh produce and fruit for people living on low incomes.

Prior to being elected, I worked for a local non-profit, Nanaimo Foodshare, and I did skills training for people with barriers to employment and people with diverse abilities. We worked with them with food. We taught them how to grow food, how to cook food and what nutritious food was all about. We got them jobs in areas of food production, working on farms, working in processing, working at grocery stores and in restaurants, and engaged them in all those aspects related to food.

I remember being in the van with a group. We were going to a farm, and a young first nations fellow said to me that he did not want to go to work on the farm that day. He was not interested in a job on a farm.

At the end of the day, after spending the day out in the open air planting, digging and working with his comrades, he told me he really wanted a job on a farm, so I got him a job on a farm. He really enjoyed it. He loved it, actually.

Other young people I work with also love working on farms. They love feeding the chickens, taking care of the animals, planting crops and watching them grow and taking care of other things. There are a lot of young people who benefit from that.

The urban farms in my community grow a lot of local produce, which goes into good food boxes that Foodshare supplies. They go to low-income families, seniors, students and people with diverse abilities, because nutrition is key to physical health, mental health and our well-being. The young people with diverse abilities who face challenges in their lives feel a sense of pride in helping other people in their communities who face challenges. They are proud to step up and help other people.

I stated earlier that the trouble for Canada's farmers regarding food security in this country did not begin with the COVID-19 crisis and will not end when restaurants and cafés reopen. The sad reality is that a very large number of restaurants and cafés will never reopen. Those closures will have a ripple effect and negatively impact suppliers such as dairy farmers. Many restaurants and cafés were operating on very thin profit margins, and in some cases, newer restaurants were operating at a loss while they worked at building clientele. Many restaurants are very dependent on tourism in the summer months. Summertime is the high season for them, a time when they can make the money that gets them through the rest of the year. The dairy industry and many other industries depend on the restaurants and hotels getting tourist business.

The tourism industry is also facing tremendous uncertainty. Tourism employs more Canadians across the country than the oil and gas sector does. The prospects for tourism operators this year are grim. Hotels, motels, tour operators and fishing charters are only a few of the businesses in my riding that might shut down forever. Again, widespread closures would negatively impact businesses that are intertwined with tourism, like restaurants and farms. We need to make sure that these businesses are supported in order for them to weather this storm and survive until next year's tourism season.

We should start thinking about marketing strategies to increase domestic tourism. Our country will have to be creative as we come out of this crisis. We will not be able to rely on foreign tourism for a while. When it is safe to do so, we will need to encourage more Canadians to rediscover the tourist destinations in their regions. This is another facet of re-localization: rediscovering all there is to appreciate about the places we call home, reconnecting with nature and our parks and reconnecting with our communities, neighbours and local farmers.

Agriculture is very important to all of us. No matter what we do, what kinds of occupations, pastimes or passions we have, as my good friend Farmer Brown likes to say, “We all eat for a living.”

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his thoughtful speech.

I would like to focus on one point in particular. He mentioned that the restaurant industry is currently going through very hard times. That is the reason for lower demand. He mentioned that many small restaurants may not be able to reopen. Consequently, the agricultural sector's difficulties may last much longer than the COVID-19 crisis because there will be an adjustment period.

Does my colleague believe that it would be useful to take this opportunity to make changes to permanent programs based on what the sector is asking for, such as revisiting AgriStability and increasing the margins to 85%?

Some demands were made before the COVID-19 crisis.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to look at some of these programs that were proposed before COVID-19. A lot of valuable ideas were floating around. Now that we are in a crisis, we are seeing how these programs could help farmers and small businesses. An example is the guaranteed liveable income, which the Green Party has been promoting for decades, to ensure everybody has a floor of income that they cannot fall below.

These ideas have been around for a while and we should support them. A lot of learning is coming out of this crisis, especially when it comes to seniors and what has been happening in care homes. There is also the deficit in our health care system, the lack of maintenance of our hospitals and aging infrastructures. A lot of lessons are coming out of this. We were talking about them before this crisis and we can fix them after this crisis.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we need to take this opportunity to work through the issues.

I would like my colleague's opinion. He mentioned that small businesses are more precarious. I would like his opinion.

The Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec has made some specific demands because many small businesses are not eligible for the assistance measures because of how payroll is calculated, among other things.

What does the member think? Is that acceptable? What should we do?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know we need to improve programs for farmers, who are small businesses owners. Small businesses have been encouraged to pay themselves with dividends for years. I ran a small business and that is how I paid myself. If I were still in business right now, I would not be eligible for a small business loan because I would be paying myself with dividends.

A lot of farmers work with contracts and contract out, so they are not eligible for the programs coming out. This is imperilling them. This is causing problems and we could end up losing a lot of small farms. In the areas where development is encroaching, that increases the dangers of losing farmland in our country.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague's speech. He talked about the problem of so much food being imported into his constituency, which is at about 95%. How would Canadian farmers be able to feed the country if indeed the oil and gas sector were dead?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I spoke about regenerative farming, which requires a lot less fossil fuel input. Regenerative farming is a very key part of dealing with climate change. I have talked to farmers and grain growers in meetings. They have talked about how they have changed their system of farming so it is far more regenerative and sequesters carbon.

We are working through development now where we see things like Caterpillar that has an excavator that runs on batteries. We need to have an electrified system so we can have farm equipment that can be charged and run. We can do it. We just need to have a little creative thinking and innovation and work toward the future we want to see.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, deemed considered in committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage on division, deemed read a third time and passed on division)

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Accordingly, pursuant to order made on Monday, April 20, 2020, the House stands adjourned until Monday, May 25, 2020, at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

Have a good evening, everyone.

(The House adjourned at 6:49 p.m.)