44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in support of Bill C-275, an act to amend the Health of Animals Act, biosecurity on farms, which was introduced by my friend and colleague, the member for Foothills.
Like my Conservative colleagues who have spoken to this piece of legislation already, I am also an extremely strong supporter of our agricultural sector. I actually grew up on a family farm near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. I wear it on my sleeve that I am just a regular farm kid who happened to find his way into the House of Commons.
I understand that many members of Parliament, and many Canadians, have not had the chance to visit a farm for a variety of reasons related to how they live their lives or where they live. I appreciate my hon. colleague from Charlottetown previously stating that, as a new MP, he had to recognize that urban MPs need to understand the interconnectivity between where production may take place and the processing done often in urban areas. At the end of the day, all Canadians eat. I applaud him for that and I encourage all my urban colleagues to try to understand by visiting a farm somewhere near their area.
Many others, who may be animal rights activists or vegans, may not want to experience a farm. For those who probably never will visit a farm, I would like to explain what it is like to visit a livestock operation. I have had the chance, prior to being elected and since being elected, to visit many farms.
The first question someone will be asked is if they have been to another farm recently because the transfer of diseases between farms is potentially a terrible challenge. Beyond that, someone is immediately asked to put on a suite of biosecurity measures like gowns, foot covers, hats, goggles and gloves, to make sure they are not endangering any of the flock or herd of animals on the farm. Livestock producers and all farmers care about the health of their animals. Animal welfare is critical. If we ask any producer, they will say the health and well-being of their animals is of utmost importance to them.
Relating to the bill specifically, its central provision is that it makes it an offence for a person, without permission, to enter a place where animals are kept, if their doing so could reasonably be expected to result in the animals being exposed to a disease or a dangerous substance. This is so that individuals and organizations will be deterred from entering farms without permission. It also changes the financial and non-financial penalties associated with doing so.
Some outside the agricultural sector may ask why these changes are necessary. Let me tell everyone why. Radical animal rights activists have been staging protests on private property, such as farms and processing plants, for far too long. I can assure people they are not putting on all that protective gear to protect the welfare of those animals. The groups that do not want to see this bill pass might deny this claim, so I will give a few examples.
On March 9, 2019, 15 activists trespassed on Webstone Holstein Farm, a dairy farm near Elmira, Ontario, even removing a deceased calf in the process.
On April 28, 2019, 65 individuals staged an occupation of the Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
On September 2 of the same year, dozens of protesters, without permission, planted themselves inside a barn at the Jumbo Valley Hutterite Turkey Farm near Fort Macleod, Alberta.
On December 7 of the same year, 11 activists occupied Porgreg farm, a pig-breeding facility in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec.
The disruptive nature of these protests is the reason that many provinces, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and P.E.I, have passed bills that strengthen provincial laws as they relate to trespassing on farms. However, in provinces where these laws are not present, farmers are largely left to fend for themselves when it comes to creating a playbook for protecting biodiversity and handling trespassers on their property. This legislation aims to fix that.
The fact of the matter is that individuals and groups staging protests are far from being animal saviours. They are more than likely exposing animals to dangerous diseases and substances.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2022, the agriculture and agri-food system employed 2.3 million people, or one in nine jobs in Canada, and generated $143.8 billion, roughly 7% of Canada’s GDP.
An activist who, even accidentally, introduces a disease at a farm could have a staggering effect on these numbers, in addition to the fact that it would threaten our food security here in Canada and around the globe. Let us take, for example, African swine fever, ASF. It has yet to be detected in Canada, thank goodness. It was first found in China in August 2018, leading to the death of about half of that country’s pigs and a quarter of the entire world’s pig population between 2018 and 2019.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, notes that in 2022, Canada exported just over $4.8 billion in pork to 77 different countries, as well as the fact that the industry contributes 88,000 jobs and generates $24 billion for our economy. For my province and my home riding, this is a very important issue as it relates to the hog sector. We have 138 sites producing pigs in my riding alone.
Manitoba is the second-largest producer and exporter of Canadian pork, employing 22,000 Manitobans across the various sectors involved with the industry. It is interconnectedness that matters here, in the sense that two million tonnes of feed is purchased by this sector from local grain growers, representing about half a billion dollars. Over 40 new barns have been expanded to enhance their environmental sustainability and animal care since 2017. This is a $2.3-billion industry for Manitoba that must be protected. The threat of radical animal rights activists putting that economic impact in jeopardy is worth tackling.
If ASF were to be detected in Canada, and to reach the same scale it had in China, the pork industry would simply be decimated, just like the numbers we saw in China. I cannot stress enough how devastating these losses would be, not just for those in the agricultural sector, but that interconnectedness. For the rest of the processing industry and those involved in shipping these processed products, it would have a major impact.
Protecting our economy and the global food supply is the main reason why this bill is so important, although another, and somewhat understated, goal of this legislation is to protect the mental health of farmers. Farmers have a very stressful life. They work long hours in sometimes very extreme conditions. They have an increasingly extremely high debt burden and are price takers, not price makers. In fact, the Canadian Mental Health Association states that “stress, mental health issues, and suicide are higher among farmers as compared to the general population.” When radical animal rights activists illegally enter farms on the private property that they are located on, they unnecessarily threaten farmers' physical and mental well-being by adding to the long list of stressors that our Canadian farmers already face. This is unfair, especially considering that farmers are, quite literally, the people who feed our country and the world.
I have taken a few minutes to talk about what this bill does, but I would also like to focus on what it does not do. I know there are some criticisms out there that are unwarranted. The first thing it does not do is limit a person’s ability to protest peacefully. Second, it does not prevent whistle-blowers in any way. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 2(c), protects an individual's right to peaceful assembly. If people take issue with the way farmers raise their livestock, they are free to protest in accordance with all applicable laws on public property instead of private agricultural land. To the second point, this bill does not, as some might lead people to believe, prevent whistle-blowers from speaking out. Whistle-blowers are the employees. They are the family members. They are professionals who work and are legally permitted to be on the private property where these animals are being housed. Simply put, trespassing activists are not whistle-blowers. They are more like trouble-makers.
At the end of the day, this is a good piece of legislation that will protect biodiversity on farms and farmers' mental health. It has support from a vast number of organizations from the agricultural sector, including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Cattle Association, the Canadian Pork Council and Dairy Farmers of Canada. While I could give quotations about their support and stand here all day expressing why they think this is important, I would just like to thank them for all the work they have done in supporting this legislation, as well as all the good work they do to represent our Canadian farmers. Like those stakeholder groups, I hope that we are able to turn this common-sense bill into law as soon as possible.
I will just conclude by saying that for the well-being of our farmers, our economy and our food supply, I hope members of this chamber will join me in voting in favour of Bill C-275.
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