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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 109

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 6, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 109 - Oct/6/22
Mr. Ryan Williams (Bay of Quinte, CPC)
  • Oct/6/22 3:59:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we do agree with much of the bill. The big thing is competition, and that looks at how companies are acting and what choice is there for consumers. The member talked about people being gouged and what they cannot afford. Our farmers provide food, and if we are looking at the competition, we see there are 189,000 farms in Canada. They are paying, on average, $45,000 each in carbon tax, and they are only getting back $862. We are talking about that end of the industry. Of course, we are also going to look at competition for our grocery stores. We are going to look at farmers' markets and the other ways that people get nutritious, healthy food. That seems to be about gouging. They are not finding relief at a time when farmers cannot choose other sources. We want them to use hydrogen and want them to use better fossil fuels or no carbon, but when it comes to that idea, they do not have a choice. Why is the member not pushing for relief for farmers to get better, nutritious food for Canadian families that need it right now?
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Context: House Hansard - 109 - Oct/6/22
Mr. Ryan Williams (Bay of Quinte, CPC)
Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to contribute to the debate on Bill C-294, and I want to thank my colleague for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for bringing it forward. Interoperability is a lot more fun to say in English than it is in French. However, the bill seeks to amend the Copyright Act, specifically regarding technological protection measures, more commonly known as digital locks, and the interoperability exemption to those locks. New provisions would be in effect such that, and this was brought from the Library of Parliament to be studied in committee, if a person has lawfully acquired an agriculture machine, for instance, and if this machine contains a copy of a computer program and this copy monitors and/or controls the functioning of that machine, then that person will be deemed to have a licence or use of that copy. What does that mean? It means that in the agriculture sector when we have technological advances, such as new software that comes about to make farmers' lives easier or the advancement of AI and a lot of other technological advances that need to use software, when someone buys that equipment, they would be able to use that equipment with other systems that work with it. I can tell members that it is a lot more complicated than a lot of us can understand, but to make a long story short, it would help farmers save money in order to grow more crops, which is really important. Also important, when we talk about industry in Canada, is that it would create competition. When we create competition, we ensure that not only are we looking after farmers and entrepreneurs, but we allow people to have a choice. When people have a choice, they can then make decisions that save them money and that are best for their businesses. Of course, we are talking about farmers in a very rural part of this nation, and we have talked all week about farmers, who are so very important. They are number one in this nation. We plant 89 million acres of crops, but the U.S. is about 10 times that and plants about 890 million acres. However, we have land that can be used for farming and we have technological advances that can make it into a greater reality. Fifty-three per cent of all of our land in Canada is used for farming, and as we have developments in DNA sequencing and genomics, we are able to grow corn farther north almost every year. We are finding advancements in protein clusters. We are finding better ways to grow our food and to be more sustainable, and the world is going to need that. By 2030, the world will need 50% more food, which means we have to produce 1.5 times the amount of food we grow now. Therefore, when we look at farming when it comes to Canada, it is tremendously important, and the bill before us would help out. At the end of the day, the bill would allow farmers to be more competitive, to find more technological advances and to make sure that when we develop the future of farming we have all the tools in place so that farmers can make the best choices and save money. Farmers are so important. They grow the best food in the world here in Canada. We are the breadbasket of the world with a lot of our wheat as well as our protein clusters with our fisheries, farms and animals. At the end of the day, we need farmers to not just survive but to thrive. The bill, of course, would handle only one part of that. However, there will be more advances in the future. I will talk about a few them, and I think it is important to talk about what the advances are right now. When farmers are looking to keep birds and pests away from their crops, they are now using laser scarecrows. We have Bee Vectoring, a new Canadian technology that uses software and bees to help keep pests away from plants. We have Harvest Quality Vision, which uses drones in the air and sensors in the soil to detect nitrogen, so that we can see the best weather and at what point we have to put certain nutrients into the soil. Farmers will also be able to use technology to save on labour, because they cannot find labour anywhere right now. Finding someone to pick crops or work in the field has been increasingly hard. We are going to need technology because of some of our labour shortages. If we do not have labour, we cannot grow crops and we cannot pick our food. We are talking about an industry that is so important that we will need 1.5 times of it in the next eight years. We will need technology to solve some of those problems. On crop and soil monitoring and management, as a colleague mentioned earlier, we have zero tillage happening right now. This means we can plant seeds and harvest crops without touching the soil, which saves the soil. We used to have to do fallowing. This is a new technology that is really amazing for our farmers. There are a lot of other different things being developed. This week, Loblaws, which I know is a dirty word in the House today, launched its first automated vehicles. There is GPS-controlled and automated farm equipment that will be able to manage literally thousands of acres for farmers and do the work that is needed. I do not know if members have seen the movie Interstellar. It had equipment operated by GPS. Let us hope we have a better future than what was in that movie. We need to make sure this is a good bill, and I think it does the bare minimum, which is to ensure that we look at how technology is used on our farms and at how we can support our farmers with control. There is a lot of other help we could give our farmers, and we have talked about it this week. They have a triple threat happening right now. Farmers have increased interest rates, which are really hurting them. There are increased costs when it comes to fertilizer tariffs, which no one else in the world has. Somehow Canada is the only one to have these tariffs on fertilizer, which are going to affect farmers' costs by up to 35%. Third, we have a triple increase to the carbon tax. I will not say it three times, as that has been done enough today, but these are real hardships for farmers. We talk about farmers in Canada, but how many farms do we have? I talked about 89 million acres. There are 189,000 farms in Canada and that is not including hobby farms. I have a lot of hobby farms in my riding. Just a few weeks ago, an ostrich farm opened in my riding. Ostriches look kind of neat and they are delicious. They are also great for the kids. When we were there, they fed them. What is really neat, from an environmental standpoint, is that ostriches use one-fiftieth of the land that cattle do, they let off one one-hundredth of the waste and their tenderloins taste just like beef. It is unbelievable. I am going to bring more people to see them this week. They are trying to scale and grow. They are already using technology as well. They are using technology for feeding and breeding them. It is quite a new industry. Those are the hobby farms outside of the other farms. Another great type of farm in my region is dairy. We have quite a few dairy farms. One of them is Lee Nurse, which is doing robotic milking. All the milking is done by computers. When we talk about interoperability and dairy farms, it is about how they are going to be able to service, upgrade and manage those systems as the technology is advanced, which is really amazing. When it is time to milk, the cows all line up together. I guess they go because there is a cookie with protein that attracts them. With the computer, the robot milks the cows and away they go. It is unbelievable. They have about 180 head of Holstein, and at the end of the day they are doing something really amazing. Of course, this bill would help them, which is really great. It is natural for other companies in the marketplace to try to innovate with new products and develop new marketable items that would make life easier. We want to make sure there is control and that we have given copyright protection to farmers so they can better our lives, grow the food we need and make sure we grow the farming community and economy here in Canada. More competition means more progress. Let us help our farmers, at least in this way.
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