44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 29, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I am here today to debate concurrence in the report on strengthening food capacity in Canada for food security and exports.
I am a proud member of the agriculture committee. Members on the committee work very well together, and this was a study we did during COVID. We heard from a lot of people across the country about challenges that we face in our agriculture sector. I was able to travel across this country during COVID to experience what our processors were facing first-hand. I had the opportunity to visit a couple of meat processing factories, and it struck me how resilient our agriculture processing sector is. However, processors also need a helping hand sometimes. We lack capacity in this country for food processing.
I am proud to come from a region that grows an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a lot of vegetables are grown for processing. As a matter of fact, there is a food processor in my riding, in Kent County, that processes field tomatoes. Until recently, there was also a pickling processing plant; unfortunately, due to circumstances, that pickling processing factory closed. It is really sad, because it was a thriving business that employed a lot of people in Wallaceburg. The owners tried to keep it open, but, unfortunately, they did not succeed. Why is this? Policies of the government impeded their ability to continue their business in Canada.
Sugar beets are another example of food produced in my riding, in southwestern Ontario, Kent County and Lambton County. However, 100% of them are shipped to Michigan to be processed. What happens then? They come back to Canada refined as sugar, and we pay a premium for that sugar, including tariffs, even though the sugar beets were grown in Ontario and are a product of Canada. I bring this up because we are seeing more and more that we are losing processing capacity in Canada, whether it is in the fresh food sector, sugar beets or oilseeds. I hear day in and day out that one of the big impediments to being able to compete in Canada is the carbon tax. The carbon tax makes it more expensive for any of the processors to do business in Canada.
Another example of food processing that we lose to the U.S. is pork. There is an abundance of pork producers in my riding. Most of the pork gets processed at Conestoga in Kitchener and, up until recently, at Olymel in Quebec. However, again, we do not process the value-added products in Canada. The pork bellies get shipped down to the States; they are made into bacon and then imported back to Canada, where we pay a premium on that product.
There is a plastics ban that has been proposed to eliminate plastics for all produce. Produce needs to be wrapped in plastic when it is shipped to maintain its quality. We rely on other countries to provide two-thirds of our fresh produce in this country. If it is not kept wrapped in plastic when it is shipped, we are going to see an exorbitant amount of food waste. Not only that, but we are also going to lose the ability to import food in this country, putting our food security at risk. That is talked about in this report.
Food security is of the utmost importance, and if we ban plastics in our produce sector in Canada, how are we going to get the imported food to feed Canadians that comes from all over the world? It is a global supply chain. We do not get to dictate the packaging on fruits and vegetables. Other countries do the packaging, and we need to make sure that ours is uniform, especially with our biggest trading partner, the United States. If this plastics ban goes forward, it will have serious consequences for our produce industry. It is going to cost our produce farmers upwards of $6 billion to make that happen.
Can members imagine what we are going to face in food security if we already have Canadians who cannot feed themselves? We have two million Canadians using a food bank. There are 800,000 who use a food bank in Ontario. The prices of groceries are high right now. I cannot imagine what the price is going to be when, all of a sudden, we have to pay up to 30% more for our fresh produce at the grocery stores. Families cannot afford to eat right now. They are choosing between heating and eating. If the prices continue to go up on food, we are going to have more people lined up at food banks. That is not acceptable in this country.
The carbon tax makes everything more expensive. I am a farmer, and I hear all the time in the House from the members opposite on the government side talking about how farmers do not pay a carbon tax. That is simply not true. Yes, there are things farmers do where they do not pay taxes on their fuel that I could name off, such as driving a tractor in their field, putting fuel into their generator to be able to pump water to an irrigation system or using vehicles that do not use a roadway. These are exempt from the carbon tax and from taxes on diesel fuel. However, in reality, as I am driving through the countryside on my way to Ottawa every week, the farmers are out in their fields combining their corn. This past weekend, on Sunday, was no different; this is very late right now, because it is so wet.
A lot of farmers do not use tractors and wagons anymore to transport their grains from the field back to the farm to the elevator. They are using transport trucks, which are required to pay the carbon tax for the fuel they use. When the trucks are paying more for fuel, of course the trucking companies are going to pass that cost on to the farmer. Most farmers are price-takers, so they do not get to necessarily pass those costs on to the consumer. What does that mean? Farmers are having to eat up those costs on their farm, taking it out of money they would generate as revenue and reinvest in their farm to purchase more innovative state-of-the-art equipment to keep their business in business. Instead, they have to pay more money in order to transport their grains from the field to the elevator.
In my region, it has been a very wet fall. Our farmers have had extremely wet conditions when trying to get the crops off. Not only that, but the corn is coming off the fields with a very high moisture content. Farmers have to dry the grain in order to keep it in the bins, because it goes for animal feed and to the ethanol plant. In order to deliver that corn to the ethanol plant, it has to be at a certain percentage. Whether for corn, beans or wheat, there are no commercially viable options in Canada other than propane and natural gas. If there were, I am sure farmers would use it. What I have heard from farmers is that we do not have an electrical grid system that could ever handle an electric grain dryer. Therefore, right now, they are forced to use propane and natural gas. That is why Bill C-234 is so important. We need to pass the bill, because farmers desperately need this relief from the carbon tax. It will have an immediate effect on food prices in the grocery stores.
As potato farmers, we use transport trucks to transport our potatoes from the field back to the wash plant. A lot of farmers do that now. Transport trucks transport most of the crops from the field back to the farm for processing, and they have to pay the carbon tax. There is no way around it. Therefore, farmers should be exempt from paying the carbon tax on drying their grain and heating their barns. I have 23% of Ontario's chicken in my riding; I have been in those chicken barns. In order to keep the animals alive, the barn has to be kept warm in the winter. How do they heat it? They do so with natural gas or propane. There is no other commercially viable option.
I implore the Senate to pass Bill C-234 and give our farmers that much-needed tax relief. This is about food security; that is what the report is about. We need to ensure that our farmers, now and in the next generation, can stay in business, so we can produce the food Canadians need to eat. Eating is a necessity, and we need to continue to be able to feed Canadians and the world with our nutritious Canadian food.
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- Nov/29/23 5:00:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been asking for the grocery code of conduct for over three years. Three years ago, I started talking about that. As a farmer who used to supply three of the five major grocery chains with potatoes, I know the grocery chains were imposing ridiculous fees on farmers and suppliers. They were constantly nickel-and-diming farmers and suppliers.
Because farmers are price-takers, and because there are so few options because of the consolidation in the grocery industry, where we only have five major players in this country owning over 80% of the grocery chains, we see the need to keep them accountable. If the grocery giants and the grocery stores are kept accountable through this code of conduct, it will ultimately help to reduce prices for consumers.
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- Nov/29/23 5:02:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, farmers are innovators, and they have always been innovators. Farmers are trying to save money however they can so they can put money back into their businesses, grow their business, and continue to farm and grow food for Canadians.
Unfortunately, the carbon tax makes their fuel more expensive. Again, if there were commercially viable options available for heating barns or drying grain, farmers would be using them if they were cheaper. Instead, we are penalizing farmers and making them pay a carbon tax when there is absolutely no option available for them to heat their barns or dry their grain other than natural gas and propane.
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- Nov/29/23 5:03:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, through this study, we saw that, during COVID, provincially inspected abattoirs were allowed to move meat across interprovincial borders because of some of the COVID protocols out there. If we removed interprovincial trade barriers, we would see a lot more movement of meat across this country, and we would see more abattoirs potentially opening up with capacity.
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