House of Commons Hansard #90 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was judge.

Topics

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:10 p.m.

Liberal

Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC

My colleague is right, Madam Chair. This is a problem, not only for today, but also for tomorrow and next year. We will have to work with our international partners to fix this problem.

We must continue to support Ukraine in this war. We must also continue to work together to help Canadian farmers produce the essential foods that our country and the world need.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:10 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Madam Chair, I am really concerned that we are not looking at the larger issues here, the fact that we are dealing with war crimes being pushed by Putin. We are dealing with destabilization.

What is the plan to actually put in a new world order, a new understanding of the world in an age of destabilization? Where are we going, given the crimes that we are watching in Ukraine, the destabilization, the break-up of supply chains and the climate change? Canada needs to have a whole new vision.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:10 p.m.

Liberal

Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC

Madam Chair, I agree with the hon. member. It is important for us to recognize what we are facing with the invasion of Ukraine. What we have seen in other parts of the world is an increase in the rise of what I would call authoritarianism and a move away from the world order where we respect human rights and where we respect pluralism. We have really turned away from the values that have made this world work in the way that it has in the past.

The opportunity for Canada is to lean into what we do best, which is to export our values of pluralism, of inclusivity, of working together, of innovation, of respecting diversity and respecting one another to solve problems. The way that we battle misinformation and disinformation is by coming out with reasons for people to feel good about things and by actually showing that there is strength in solving problems together. It is not a zero-sum game. We can all do better.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:10 p.m.

Green

Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Madam Chair, I want to start by thanking the hon. member for Vancouver Granville for sharing his time with me.

I recognize that we stand on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

This debate has been encouraging in that we recognize that there is a looming food crisis and food instability globally, but also dispiriting in that we seem to think we can bite off little chunks of it as an incremental set of issues within one silo called “food”. We are, in fact, facing multiple crises that influence each other and must be dealt with together.

I just pulled some clippings I have. I remember when the pandemic was first getting up and running and I flipped this article I found in The Guardian to the person who was then our Minister of International Development. She was also on it, saying she was getting to the World Food Programme. The article is from The Guardian, April 2020, and the headline is “Coronavirus pandemic 'will cause famine of biblical proportions'”. It quoted at length from David Beasley of the World Food Programme. That is where we started from: the pandemic causing huge risk of global food insecurity.

Then, of course, the climate crisis made all those issues worse, as it has from the beginning. I mean, the Arab Spring was caused by the geopolitical instability that created the wars in Syria and Libya. That came from prolonged drought, which meant that there were food breakdowns. There was a food insecurity crisis, and it created war. Now we have climate change galloping and galloping, and persistent droughts. Just this last season, we saw droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, droughts through the U.S. prairies, droughts through the Canadian prairies, and now we have an overlay of war.

I want to stop for a moment and say something about David Beasley, because I think it is really interesting. I got to know him through the U.S. presidential prayer breakfast. He is a Republican. He is a former Republican governor from the state of South Carolina. He lost his seat as governor of the state of South Carolina when he changed his position on the question of whether the Confederate flag should fly above the capitol. When he took down the Confederate flag, he lost his seat. As I may have mentioned, as a very dedicated Christian, he has put his talents where they are of most use, that being as the head of the UN World Food Programme. He knows what he is doing.

It is urgent that we save lives, and we do not save lives through dribs and drabs. Canada must commit at least the $600 billion that the World Food Programme says we need.

However, I will turn to another source right now. The question is, how do we, as humanity or as politicians, deal with more than one scary thing at a time? Are we capable of doing it? The word I want to use is “polycrisis”. It comes from Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, who now runs a program called Cascade Institute in collaboration with scientists around the world. I just want to read something from the Cascade Institute website, because I think it helps us:

Humanity faces an array of grave, long-term challenges, now often labeled “global systemic risks.” They include climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, widening economic inequalities, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization [such as cyber-attacks], mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations, and an escalating danger of nuclear war. Compared to humanity’s situation even two decades ago, most of these risks appear to be increasing in severity and at a faster rate....

With one minute left, how do we address polycrises? I suggest that we do not address them as if it is normal business. It is not status quo. This requires that when the G7 meets later this month, when NATO meets, or whenever world governments meet together, they stop thinking that we are going to get out of this with incremental in-the-box thinking. We have to get way out of our boxes. We have to treat the global food insecurity crisis as an emergency and try to save tens of millions of lives while we can. We have to address it as part of the attack on Ukraine and defend Ukraine, but also ask Ukraine to take the mines out of the harbour in Odessa and tell Russia to take away its blockades because grain must move across borders.

We have to treat this as a geopolitical emergency and as a crisis of the human family. We can only do it all together.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:15 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB

Madam Chair, when it comes to food production, what should be addressed first, global carbon emissions or global water quality and quantity, to increase food production in the world?

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:15 p.m.

Green

Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Madam Chair, I often find that my friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa is more aware of what happens on the land in the place where he is rooted than on that of other members. We cannot separate them. The global warming crisis, the climate emergency, drives the water crisis. They are inextricably linked.

We have to set a date and start moving away from fossil fuels. It will be hard. It was hard for Quebec to shut down the asbestos industry, but if we do not plan to shut down the fossil fuel industry in the near term, we will not be able to protect our water, we will not be able to preserve the possibility that farmers can plant crops that have a chance of surviving and we will create mega-droughts.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:20 p.m.

Bloc

Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC

Madam Chair, I thank my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. As I have already told the House, I think it is deplorable that some members do not have as much speaking time as others just because they represent a party with fewer than 12 seats in the House. After all, the voice of the people they represent is just as legitimate and important.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations notes that war and climate change are the main causes of food insecurity around the world. I would like my colleague to tell us more about climate change as a cause of food insecurity.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:20 p.m.

Green

Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Madam Chair, my dear friend from Joliette is right. The food crisis and the climate change crisis go hand-in-hand. The climate change crisis is urgent. It amplifies other threats, such as war and agricultural production problems. We are in the midst of a full-blown global crisis. We have to deal with it, and it is not easy.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:20 p.m.

Ottawa West—Nepean Ontario

Liberal

Anita Vandenbeld LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development

Madam Chair, I want to thank my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands for making the incredibly crucial link that all of this is interconnected, whether it is climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic or the conflicts around the world, not just what is happening in Ukraine. The fact is that all of these things are creating a perfect storm that is leading not just to this incredible food crisis, but to a crisis in democracy and a crisis that is having an unbelievable impact on the people of the world. I wonder if she could elaborate on that.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:20 p.m.

Green

Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Madam Chair, I really appreciate the question from my hon. friend from Ottawa West—Nepean.

These are not separate crises. If we look at the role Putin has played in undermining our own democracy, the Russian government has been using disinformation websites for quite some time to undermine democracies by provoking a whole series of false narratives. Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin, disrupting democracies in the western world, increasing incivility in the way we deal with each other and increasing the risk of white supremacy, which is an example of something that threatens our democracy.

We cannot take these things as separate and siloed. We need to defend democracy and attack autocracies and fascist states. In doing that, we need to be conscious of the fact, to be biblical like David Beasley might want me to be, that we cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. We have to identify the enemy, and the enemy is multinational corporations that seek to profit from every one of these crises.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:20 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, I would like to continue along the same lines. The food crisis is directly linked to the climate crisis. It began before the COVID-19 pandemic, although that amplified it. It also began before the war. As a country, it is imperative that we set meaningful targets and find ways to begin a real energy transition. That means Canada has to stop approving projects like Bay du Nord, which made absolutely no sense.

Let us think of the droughts in western Canada last year, or the flooding and the fires they had in British Columbia. These were all major disasters. Things do not appear to be as bad this year, but we certainly have had excess water in Quebec. We have had far too much rainfall, an abnormal amount, I would say. Farmers cannot even dry their hay, because sooner or later a cloud comes along and it rains for 15 minutes. That is enough to spoil the whole process. The climate is unstable.

A while ago, we had very high winds. The Lanaudière farmers' union actually told me it is asking the Government of Quebec for a support program for maple syrup plantations. The damage was extremely severe, and there is concern for the safety of the landowners, who will be cleaning up all those precariously fallen trees themselves. Maple syrup plantations take more than just a couple of years to turn a profit. It is more like 20, 30 or 40 years. That is the reality. It has begun. The longer we wait to take real action, the worse it will get.

Food insecurity is happening here because of COVID‑19, the housing crisis, and rising interest rates, with inflation playing a role. People who paid too much for their homes are up to their eyeballs in debt. Some unpleasant stories will play out in the months to come. A crisis response team was put together in my riding in anticipation of the housing crisis this coming July 1, because housing is too expensive. When people pay a greater portion of their income for housing, where else can they cut spending but on groceries? People eat noodles more often, and they eat less. I hear people talk about this every week.

Just this morning, someone told me that they receive old age security and that this government is stubbornly refusing to increase it. I will digress here because I talk about this subject every chance I get. This creates food insecurity. We need to be vigilant.

I want to appeal to all members to recognize the importance of maintaining our social safety net. That is why the Bloc Québécois rises so often to protect our jurisdictions. People can say what they want, but the social safety net in Quebec is more effective than elsewhere. This means that we need our health transfers as well as an increase in old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. We have proposed easy solutions. We must ensure that we redistribute wealth equitably.

Let us now talk about the global food crisis and the war in Ukraine. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, 44 countries will need aid this year, and 53 countries will face food insecurity in one form or another. Those are big numbers. This appalling war is being carried out in such a way as to create food insecurity. It becomes clearer the more we analyze it. We are working on this issue at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which received Ukrainian elected officials. I have to confess that I found this extremely difficult. I would like to tip my hat to these people, who are standing guard and are showing exemplary courage.

In this war, Russia is targeting infrastructure and deliberately blocking ports. The Ukrainians are unable to export last year's crops. This year's crops are growing, but there is nowhere to store them. It is a serious problem. We absolutely need to create a safe corridor to ensure the export of grain out of Ukraine, not just for us, but for the entire world.

We have to think about food insecurity. As long as there is hunger, there will be no peace. There have already been several coups in African countries recently. This will create a lot of political instability.

I hope I am wrong, but the implications of the war in Ukraine are much greater than currently projected. At some point, someone is going to have to make a move. Exporting this grain is of capital importance.

I think that Canada is capable of helping with respect to temporary storage infrastructure, obviously located outside the combat zones so that it too is not targeted. To save the crops, they need to be moved.

Canada can also increase its contribution to the UN World Food Programme, as was mentioned earlier. It is important. The Oxfam representatives who testified at committee told us that Canada's international food aid contribution right now is half of what it was a few years ago. That is due to inflation, and we need to adjust it. We can afford to do that, and we have no right to refuse. That is something meaningful we can do.

We need to provide constructive international aid. A few weeks ago, I was in Ghana. I visited the main FAO offices for Africa, which are located in Accra. People were telling me that only 8% of international aid goes to improving agriculture because most international aid is geared to generate specific demands. A somewhat exaggerated example is that a tractor may be provided, but there is a requirement that the parts be purchased from the supplier. We need to invest in the long term, in infrastructure, while respecting local cultures. We could develop food autonomy.

I am sure it will come as no surprise when I say I am going to talk about supply management again. It is another option, something we could do that works well here. It needs to be protected, and we must stop selling it out bit by bit in the international agreements we sign. We should export the model. African countries are being flooded with cheap food surpluses from developed countries, hindering the development of local production. We should organize local farmers. In many African countries, women do the farming, but they have no bargaining power or market organization. This kind of thing costs nothing. We have the know-how, so I think we have a duty to go there.

I now want to talk about what needs to be done in this country. We must ensure that we are self-sufficient when it comes to food. I was happy to hear a lot of speeches about how we need to make life easier for our farmers. Charity begins at home. We need to give to others, but we must first ensure that we are protected. We must protect supply management.

We must not implement unnecessary restrictions, such as labelling trans fats on ground beef. It makes absolutely no sense. Ground beef is a whole food; people know what they are buying.

Taxing pollution is a good thing, but there is no point taxing grain drying, because there is no alternative and it only ends up increasing the cost of food.

We need to stay focused and be smart about what we are doing. We need to support our agricultural producers' environmental innovations. When they do something to protect the environment, that is worth money. We pay them money, we ensure that the money is at their disposal for the next innovation. We need to trust our farmers. They will not disappoint us.

We need to listen to our people. This morning I shared with the minister a letter from the UPA dated May 18, asking for emergency support because of the skyrocketing increase in input production costs. Costs have gone up by 50% compared to the consumer price index, which is around 5%. Farmers need meaningful help. Farm debt is extremely high. These farmers are currently burning through all of their cash. In a few months, we are going to start seeing businesses close down and disappear. Is that what we want? Obviously the answer is no, so we need to do something about it.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:30 p.m.

Conservative

Richard Lehoux Conservative Beauce, QC

Madam Chair, I congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech. He talked about support for getting grain out of Ukraine at this time. If we want to see short-term results, we have to look at that. Does my colleague have a sense of what the government has done?

Last week, when Ukraine's agriculture minister was with us, she said she needs urgent help clearing mines from fields. The fields were seeded this spring, but there will be no harvest this fall because farmers are too afraid of setting off mines to go into their fields. Has my colleague heard anything from the government about plans to do anything about that? Everybody is desperate.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:35 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, I thank my esteemed colleague from Beauce.

Like him, I hear good intentions and lip service. It is all well and good to establish principles of action in the early days, but at some point we need to take action.

I think we are in a position to provide demining equipment, for example. We can do that and we must do it quickly. We can also do it with drones, I believe, without putting human life at risk. That is very important.

When Ukrainian farmers return to the fields, we want them to be harvesting crops, not bombs.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:35 p.m.

NDP

Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Madam Chair, I am sorry, but it is hard for me to speak in French because it is so late.

I really enjoyed it when my colleague talked about what good development principles are. We know that we have the principles of sustainable development effectiveness. He talked about what we can do with the FAO and with other organizations to deal with the global food crisis in a holistic manner or how to deal with it in an unsiloed manner, as my colleague from the Green Party has mentioned.

The sustainable development goals are something that the government has signed onto, and the 17 goals work together to build a more sustainable, more prosperous future. I wonder if the member could comment on the sustainable development goals and how multilateral institutions such as the FAO and the United Nations could contribute to these global solutions we will require.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:35 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, I sincerely thank my colleague for her very interesting question.

That was indeed the basis of my speech. We cannot talk about the food crisis without talking about the environmental crisis. They are both intertwined, and any development needs to be done with sustainability in mind.

The thing that gets me down the most in life is the pace at which politicians move. I was taught about sustainable development at university in the 1990s. It is still not being done. The government is still approving worthless things like Bay du Nord. It is mind-boggling. Everything we do counts.

When my colleague talks about multilateralism, we also need to set an example internationally, because there are other countries that do not want to budge and are entrenched in a dynamic of oil production or other polluting things.

On the international stage, one needs to have credibility in order to have influence. That is the challenge. Unfortunately, I am not so sure that Canada has a lot of credibility in this area right now.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:35 p.m.

Ottawa West—Nepean Ontario

Liberal

Anita Vandenbeld LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development

Madam Chair, I want to compliment my hon. colleague for talking about the demining that is needed in Ukraine. I wonder if he is aware that Canada has provided over $450 million in the last two decades to demining. I also wonder if he is aware of the importance of the assistance we are also providing to Ukraine and the fact that, through DND, we have tremendous expertise in this regard.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:35 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, that is precisely why my colleague from Beauce and I were talking about this. We know we can do it. That is why we are saying we need to make an extra effort and get going on this. We need to do it intelligently and in consultation with other countries, of course, but we have to be at the table.

Canada does not have the military power to decide tomorrow morning to open the grain export corridor. It will have to be done jointly, with the UN. However, we can carry out this other kind of operation ourselves. I think we need to focus on humanitarian aid and charter flights. The Bloc Québécois spent endless weeks calling for charter flights to get Ukrainian refugees out. We finally got three, but it took a very long time. Can more be arranged?

People are still waiting, and this could take some pressure off people who are undernourished. We have to think about the refugees. Those who can cross a border, for example into Poland, are relatively better off because they are in some way registered. However, Ukrainians were telling us about refugees inside Ukraine, and it is like they are stuck in a land that does not exist. They are desperate. Many are women and children who have to trust strangers. I leave it to my colleagues to guess what this kind of situation can lead to. There is a huge amount of work to be done.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Conservative

Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB

Madam Chair, last year, we spoke with the German ambassador and were told that an energy crisis in Europe was imminent. It has arrived.

Now we are seeing that the global south, in particular, will experience a food crisis. What will we do? Does Canada have a solution to improve the situation we will be facing next year?

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for his question and for asking it in French. He made a good effort, and I congratulate him.

I understand the question. He is telling me that there is a food crisis, that there will be an energy crisis and that we must do something. We have a certain level of production at present, but we are not going to build pipelines to fix things in 10 years' time. It is happening now.

The food crisis is linked to the climate crisis, and droughts and floods are occurring right now. We must act now. I am not saying that we must shut down everything today, but we must start the transition.

Massive amounts of money are being invested, including in the Bay du Nord project. However, I believe we should invest this money in the energy transition, because there are other sources of energy. We must be forward-thinking and innovative.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Bloc

Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC

Madam Chair, before he started his speech I told my colleague that he would be the cherry on top of the sundae. He said that he might just be the sundae. He is both the cherry and the sundae. The teacher in me is irrationally happy to hear him talk about passing on knowledge and about sharing Canada's success stories, especially when it comes to supply management. At the same time, he also reminds us not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and the historian part of me loves that as well.

I would like to hear my colleague talk about the mistakes we should not repeat and the success stories from Quebec and Canada that deserve to be better known.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Chair, the “sundae with the cherry on top” would love to answer that question. I will not address the other things my colleague said because it could become a bit of a slippery slope.

She asked me to talk about our success stories. Every chance I get, I talk about supply management. A great example is the COVID-19 crisis. Some milk was thrown away at first, but that was a very temporary situation. Farmers adjusted very quickly. They had much less difficulty than other producers, overall, because the quantity and the price are controlled. That is how you control quality.

However, in order to succeed and continue to manage this system, we have to continue to control imports. If too many foreign products start coming into the country, if our local farmers decide to reduce the quantity they produce, if products continue to come in by the truckload from abroad, the system will no longer work.

As for not repeating the mistakes of the past, we should never again give away a single share of the supply management market. We should promote it abroad, especially in African countries, where I think it would work really well. We should protect it with the Bill C-282, a fine bill. Do not forget the number, it is going to make an impact.

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Chair Liberal Alexandra Mendes

It being 10:44 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 53.1, the committee will rise and I will leave the chair.

(Government Business No. 18 reported)

Global Food InsecurityGovernment Orders

10:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 10:45 p.m.)