Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to the committee members. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, or CFA, and its members understand the critical importance of maintaining a safe and reliable food supply and protecting the safety of those who feed us. As such, CFA is in support o

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Barlow, for the question, and the answer is “absolutely”. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I think this bill really complements current provincial legislation. It strengthens both provincial and federal legislation on protecting farms, farmers, farm families

Agriculture committee  Yes, I would absolutely agree. Having a national act in place as a deterrent also leads to consistency in enforcement right from coast to coast. I think that is equally important so that people understand that we can't risk the safety of our livestock and our people looking afte

Agriculture committee  Diseases like ASF, or African swine fever, are very highly transmissible. I'll throw avian influenza in there, as well. AIA is devastating to poultry flocks, and quite often, the quarantine area is not just the farm that it occurs on, but a larger area where birds have to be dest

Agriculture committee  Typically, depending on what the outbreak is, of course, they may have to be destroyed. It's not only that, because when activists enter those facilities, particularly on poultry farms and also with livestock, these animals are not used to them, so they get extremely excited. The

Agriculture committee  There has been one charge laid under it. To the best of my knowledge, it has not made it through the court system yet. Has it been successful? I guess we'll see. We are in the season of activism. Typically, the warmer weather months are when activists are more prevalent, so we'll

Agriculture committee  I'm not aware of any organization that has applied for it, but you have to keep in mind that when you enter into this public trust type of campaign on animal husbandry in particular, it quite often becomes a battle on social media. You're dealing with activists who have no idea w

Agriculture committee  MP Drouin, it's good to see you again as well. If I could just add, one of the things that's occurred in the last 15 months is that people have become more aware of food security and have a better understanding of the need to make sure that we look after the people providing the

Agriculture committee  Thank you. This “I didn't know better” excuse is being used quite frequently in the court, and many of our judges in particular are stating that “because there was potentially no harm done, we can acquit you of this mischief charge that's being presented”. I keep referencing the

Agriculture committee  Yes. Quite often, you will have people who actually are caught in a facility or caught doing some trespassing on a property and get charged, but lots of times these people have had help in accomplishing their end goal of getting in, doing a sit-in and trespassing on property. Any

Agriculture committee  Well, I think any strengthening of the protection of animals and their handlers, their owners and the employees who work around farms, is good. With respect to the act itself, it may need further wording to enclose things like pasture fields. It may need to include processing fa

Agriculture committee  I think any piece of legislation could be enforced. It's whether or not there's a willingness to do it in a lot of cases. We have rules. We need to have them enforced.

Agriculture committee  Many activists use the “ag-gag” law as a defence. The reality is that if there are bad farmers out there, I want you to find them. It's like saying every parent is a bad parent, every pet owner is a bad pet owner. That's just not the case with farmers and their livestock. They

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. I'm not sure that I would prioritize one over the other, for the following reasons: Biosecurity is incredibly important for the protection of our animals, but the act of trespassing in itself is something that's creating a tremendous amount of stress

Agriculture committee  Well, certainly I believe it's up to each individual farm operation to make sure they educate their employees on the proper biosecurity protocols that are in place. All livestock commodity organizations that I know of have resources that farmers can access to educate their employ