It’s my pleasure to add a few words on the record about Bill 155, An Act to amend the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario Act, and I would like to make it clear that I will be sharing my time with the MPP from Ottawa Centre.

The bill is rather simple. The Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario has played a valuable role in furthering the agricultural industry in Ontario. The act is being amended so that it will be renamed from Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario to Agricultural Research and Innovation Ontario, so that it will further Ontario’s commitment to excellence in agriculture, food processing and the development of agricultural and food technology.

If you go to some of the amendments, they “will facilitate the pursuit and commercialization of high-impact research and innovation, the management of properties for agriculture and food research, the cultivation of strategic relationships and the support of the growth of the agriculture and food sectors. Emerging crop and livestock sectors and new technologies stand to benefit from such areas of research.”

To prepare for my few minutes of talk, I thought I would go through the different research institutes that exist that are part of agricultural research in Ontario. The first one that I wanted to talk about is the one located in Alma, about aquaculture.

You may be wondering why I want to talk about aquaculture, Chair. Well, it’s because, in my riding of Nickel Belt, we had a farm in Estaire, which is part of my riding, that was offering fresh northern Ontario—get this, Speaker—shrimp. We were growing shrimp in Nickel Belt. It was Kerry LeBreton, a resident of Nickel Belt, who had brought it. The farm was called Good4UShrimp, and what they were doing is growing Pacific white shrimp from its post-larval stage until it was ready to sell. The shrimp came from the US; I forget exactly where. They were the size of an eyelash, like, really just a tiny weeny little thing, and they would be hatched at this farm.

I went and visited the farm. I had never seen anything like this in my life. It was really, really interesting. They would move the larvae through the different tanks, through the different growing process until the shrimp were ready for market, which takes between three and four months. Some of the shrimp were like scampi. They were really big. He would bring them to the market at the Four Corners in Sudbury, and there were lineups of people who bought the local shrimp. They were really, really good. They were trying to bring high-quality food to the people of northern Ontario who are health-conscious about what they eat—right from the table, right fresh. Unfortunately, he ran into many different problems and had to close. I am sort of hopeful that if the aquaculture research could help, we would be able to reopen this shrimp farm in northeastern Ontario. I can tell you that all of the restaurants wanted to buy his shrimp. They just did not compare with anything else that I have ever tasted. Not only did I see the tiny little shrimp, but I also ate some of them. They were very, very tasty. So this is one of the research institutes that is in Ontario that will be affected by the change in this bill.

The second one that I want to talk about is the one in Elora. The one in Elora, everybody will know, used to be in New Liskeard. It got transferred to Elora.

As our agriculture critic says it so good, the future of the beef industry is in northern Ontario—so we sure hope that the research, going forward, will look.

I want to again share some of the reality of beef farming in my riding. We have a farm called Triple Star Acre Farm—it is a family who raises quality, natural, healthy meat year-round. In the summer, they also have seasonable vegetables. They also sell deli products. They are committed to continuing a holistic practice and method of farming that was established by the Labine family. It is now the Dube family who runs the farm. They believe in raising animals in a clean and natural environment. They feed them only healthy, non-GMO grain—they allow for full pasture, free-range, and treating them with the care and respect that animals deserve. All of this contributes to great-tasting nutrition and naturally pure food. The family vision is to raise the highest-quality meat and vegetables for our community, and they hope to be able to preserve that for years to come. I can tell you that this farm is very successful in my riding. A lot of local people buy from it.

I agree with our agriculture critic that the future of the beef industry is in northern Ontario.

When our critic talked about this bill—when you talk about northern Ontario, you can’t help but talk about the Internet. If you want to be able to do agriculture research, even if you want to be able to farm, you need to have access to stable Internet, and I can tell you that in the vast majority of my riding, we do not. If it’s in the summer—I live on the lake—and I’m at the end of the dock, it’s pretty good; in the winter, not so much. Actually, if the lake is all iced over and we get a little bit of wind, it sucks. Am I allowed to say that? It’s really bad. It’s the same thing throughout my riding.

The government has millions of dollars—but with only one strategy, and the strategy is that the for-profit companies get big money from the government to set up their infrastructure and all of this and run the Internet. There is no money to be made in Nickel Belt. You can give them all of the infrastructure you want; they do not want to set up. You have to look at other ways to make sure that we have access to the Internet because, right now, we do not.

But coming back to the bill, I want to talk a little bit about another research facility, and this is the one in Huron that concentrates on weed control. This is a big issue in my riding.

I want to quote Joël Thériault from Foleyet in my riding. He basically collected the petitions. He is a third-generation float plane pilot and outfitter, and a professional fishing and hunting guide. His interests in this matter are truly to protect and preserve the natural environment for future generations, a goal that all of us should be striving toward.

In his work as a float plane pilot, he flies over thousands of acres daily that have been sprayed with chemicals, and he has noticed a massive decrease in the big game population over his lifetime.

Ontario is spraying about 60,000 to 70,000 hectares with chemical herbicides per year, which equates to Algonquin park after a decade. Similar chemicals are banned in the city of Toronto for health and environment reasons, but we continue to allow them to be sprayed in the backyards of northerners.

It’s the same thing with Wahnapitae First Nation, which is trying to get this government to engage on the issue of chemical defoliant. They are being used without the consent of the First Nation.

I could go on, but I’m running out of time. In my 20 seconds, I wanted to talk about the SPUD unit, which Mr. Vanthof talked about. I am proud to say that the biggest potato producer is in my riding, Poulin patates—Poulin potatoes. He farms on 400 acres of farms in Chelmsford. Look for the “Pride of Azilda” potatoes. This is the name, and if you go to a chip truck anywhere in northern Ontario, I guarantee you that you are eating Poulin patates. They are delicious and I encourage everybody to buy them.

Next speaker?

Thanks to my friend from Nickel Belt. I want to add to this debate by focusing on an issue that’s really important to growers and residents where I live, in Ottawa Centre, and that is the issue of food waste.

It was alarming when I did the rounds back home the first time and started checking in with farmers’ market vendors, family farms around the greater Ottawa area and experts on the issue of residential and commercial food waste to learn some of the following things that I’m going to share with this House that I think are very appropriate to the mandate of the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, because after all, we are talking about what are the ideas that drive the bread basket, of, I believe, a lot of our country, but certainly of the jurisdiction for which we’re responsible.

So let’s just go over some numbers when we think about food waste in Ontario and in Canada. Surprisingly for me, I learned Canada has one of the highest food waste percentages of our output in the entire world. About 60% of all the food produced in this country ends up in waste. In Ontario, the 805 landfills we have in the province are expected to reach capacity by 2041, and a while ago, nine years ago, in 2015, the province estimated that approximately 32% of the landfill waste is food waste. So that accounts for 3.7 million tonnes of food that is thrown out every year. In a context we talk about all the time of hardship and affordability and poverty, 3.7 million tonnes of food is thrown out in Ontario every year.

The vast majority of this organic matter is sealed in plastic bags, which is serious because what that means is, when it decomposes, it doesn’t decompose properly and it emits methane—methane, of course, being a gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It traps heat and is exactly opposite to what we should be working towards as a province.

I’m going to cite a local agency, a local community agency that has a lot of expertise, Foodsharing Ottawa. They said, in their report made available to the community, that 50% of the wasted food that they were aware of happened from farm to retailer. So it’s the capacity of the retailer to utilize the food to sell the product to the consumer, as the member from Peterborough–Kawartha said earlier. The consumer has an idea of what appropriate food should look like, and when it’s not appropriate, it’s not bought, and when it’s not bought, often it’s disposed of.

In 2016—again, some time ago—the province committed to revamp its waste management strategy. They talked about moving towards a system in which we encourage what’s called a circular economy, so when a grower produces food and that’s brought to a retailer, if there is food waste, we find some use for that food waste.

I want to salute, in the time I have left this afternoon, some people back home who are pioneers and innovators who are doing exactly that. I want to talk about Karen Plunkett from an enterprise called the Frugal Farm. Karen has relationships with 26 grocery stores in the greater Ottawa area, and she saves for her animals 10 to 12 tonnes of food that would otherwise go wasted per month, which she uses to feed her animals. If you go on Facebook right now—and I know everybody right now is paying rapt attention to the words I’m using, but if any one of my colleagues were on Facebook right now and you were to pull up the Frugal Farm’s Facebook page, you would see images of Karen’s farm, of livestock eating pumpkins that were otherwise destined for the landfill, of chickens eating pieces of watermelon, all appropriate for their diets, all tested with good veterinary science, but reutilizing through a circular-economy approach food that would otherwise go wasted.

I want to salute another organization called Box of Life. Box of Life, at home, is a vermicomposting social enterprise. What they are doing is trying to find a way to partner with apartment complexes, with restaurants, with agencies responsible for the creation of food, to make sure that what otherwise might go to the landfill is used in a revitalization process where worms are put in big tubs of earth that make some of the richest soil. I know there are green thumbs in this place. If you love to garden, then the kind of gold that gets produced from these vermicomposting units is precisely what you need.

Box of Life, I’m happy to say, has added 500 new residents to my own constituency office at 109 Catherine Street. We have one of the large vermicomposting units. It does not stink up the office; the scent is fine. What we do with our office staff team is repurpose any food scraps from our own homes and feeding our family. Anything in the day ultimately gets fed to the worms, our 500 friends in the office. What we do is, we have a fantastic little garden box outside our office door at 109 Catherine Street—you’re all welcome to visit any time—and we make some of the best cherry tomatoes, I believe, in Centretown. But that is all, again, part of that small version of what that circular economy should look like. And it’s a lot better, quite frankly, than—let’s review the statistic again—3.7 million tonnes of food being wasted in Ontario every year.

Why I’m bringing all of this up as we talk about the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario is, I would actually like to see significant provincial investment put into how we support these local champions—Frugal Farm, Box of Life, Foodsharing Ottawa—because what we know is that any time we have invested in these pioneers, we use all or most of the food that we create in this province, which is good. We repurpose and lower costs for farms who would otherwise have to buy food for their animals. It’s a win-win all around.

But what we have to remember is that in the agricultural sector, we want to do everything we can to preserve arable land, to support the farmers and the growers and the agricultural workers who are doing all of that work. But once we have that bounty harvest, we’ve got to make sure that it’s used appropriately, and that has often been part of the discussion that’s not been appropriately understood.

I want to point to two jurisdictions for inspiration as I end the discussion of food waste, which I think is appropriate when we think about what this agency should be doing for Ontario. I want to talk about the city of Vancouver. The city of Vancouver has passed a bylaw which works directly with restaurants in the greater city of Vancouver, which provides pretty steep fines after an introductory period of education—and this has been around since 2015—if there are excessive food scraps going to their landfill. What they try to do long ahead of time is partner those restaurants and large community operations, business operations that are creating and making food, to repurpose all of that food waste so it can be used to produce effective fertilizer. They have one of the best green box programs in the country. They have shown that green box opportunities are possible for multiple-dwelling homes, single-family homes, large business enterprises, and that once business was aware of the conduit with which their food could find a home, you took a burden off them, and it was embraced.

I also want to point to the country of South Korea, which, as my friends back home have indicated to me, embraced this over 20 years ago. South Korea used to have, according to the research made available to me, 97% of the food waste going straight to landfill—today, it is almost 100% efficiency of turning around that food waste and, through a circular loop, repurposing it back so it plays a productive role and not the role of waste.

This is an odd moment, in which I am appearing as a conservative as a New Democrat. I am known by my children, in my own home, as “the food police.” They hate it when I pick on them—not just for finishing their meals. I don’t demand that they finish their meals, but I do hate it when food goes to waste in our own fridge. And I think that’s something we all should care about.

If the people we rely upon to grow the food, to manage the animals, to manage the enterprises that produce fantastic food in this province—it is a shame that 60% of that food should end up in landfills. We need to do a lot better than that. And what I know, from the folks I’ve had the pleasure to work with at home, is that we can do a lot better than that, but it requires making the right investments.

So I suggest to the government, as it works with this research institute going forward, that food waste should be a priority. We should be thinking about how we utilize all the food we produce. And we should be supporting the local producers and the local innovators who are making it happen.

The member from Ottawa Centre just inspired to me ask a question. I’m known, in my house, as a person who takes care of most of the food waste. It is very visible, in that case, and I enjoy it.

We waste $49 billion of food in Canada each and every year. I’m just wondering if you could elaborate on the importance, from a financial perspective, a climate perspective and a food security perspective—why it’s so important that we reduce that $49-billion number.

Thank you to the members opposite for their comments on the subject of food waste. It’s a very interesting topic, and I think there are a lot of things that can be done.

I wonder if the member from Ottawa Centre is aware of Leket Israel, which has a great model for recycling food and making sure food gets redistributed to those who need it—and has been studied, has a very successful model which could be implemented in other places.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre.

I’m also very interested in what’s possible in terms of meat. I’ve seen some of these composting things that you can buy. They’re pretty expensive. They’ll take everything and then, some time later, you’ve got your soil and so on. Can you help us out—like, can the worms do it? What are the options?

Questions?

I just want to salute the member for Guelph for playing that positive role for the economy—making sure that food goes to a good place.

But in all seriousness, let me point to his part of the province as one of the leads, actually, because—again, information made available to me from Foodsharing Ottawa—the region of Guelph-Wellington committed to a circular economy, with a $10-million federal investment. They committed to what they called a 50-50-50 goal—50% increase in food security; 50% new, circular, collaborative businesses; and by recognizing 50% of the value of waste. That’s fantastic. I remember, when I used to be a professor in his city and I would go to the University of Guelph, I was surprised, often, to learn that they had wet and dry waste. That was done on purpose to make sure that they could actually utilize the organic waste, so they could grow their own greenhouses and use fertilizer on campus. So kudos to the member for the leadership there.

Sometimes it can be a mental leap for people. If you’ve learned your whole life to dispose of food waste in a particular way, it’s hard to grasp how you would have a worm composting facility in your own home, for example. Thanks to innovators, we have those options.

I would welcome more information from the member about what she’s talking about.

This question is for the member from Ottawa Centre. As most know, I do own a restaurant, and we have a significant amount of waste that comes through the restaurant. I actually compost everything at my restaurant through my house, so I can understand what you’re saying, that black gold that comes out of what our food waste is.

I’m just curious if the member is aware of the FoodCycler system. That’s something that came out of Cornwall, actually, and it’s quite an interesting system that a lot of municipalities have come on board with, and they’ve done pilots with the residents of the municipalities. I’m just not too sure if you’re aware of that or if you want to touch upon that a little bit more. It’s not worm-based, but it provides compost on your countertop within 24 hours, so I’m just curious if you want to touch upon that.

Well, thank you very much. We have a proud history of reducing, reusing and recycling in Waterloo region as sort of the creators of the Blue Box Program, but I wanted to just touch a little bit more on the member from Ottawa South’s comments about Vancouver and hear a little bit more about what is setting them apart, with their green box program, from other parts of the country. And because we are obviously talking about research and innovation here, what research and innovation led to them being the leaders in mitigating food waste in Canada?

Further questions?

I recognize the member from Kitchener–Conestoga.

If I was on the right track in my previous answer, this is precisely the fix. Normally what I was told by Akil and the innovators of the Box of Life back home is that worms are vegans. You can’t give them anything other than that or you’ll make them sick. But with these innovations, if you run them through these smaller enterprises where you can use meat and you can use other things, the worms can actually eat that, and there are industrial-scale equivalents to that. This is again how we can repurpose food to make sure we create fertilizer, which is could for future production of food.

So Vancouver actually, as I understood it from Mr. Bury, designed a process that allowed people to adapt willingly, with consent, as opposed to just punitively saying, “This is what you’re going to do now. Here’s the newsletter; figure it out.” So that’s why I think Vancouver has had a lot more success than other places.

What I will beg, through the Speaker, from the other members is that in the three minutes and 42 seconds, could someone ask the member from Nickel Belt a question about Poulin patates?

I had no idea that my colleague from Ottawa Centre was such an expert on food waste. It’s been a fascinating conversation. The condo building that I’m living in, we just started composting about five years ago. It’s been very successful. The food program that I volunteer with, they also, you know, get a lot of recycled food and they talk about this food that would otherwise be going to waste. Some of the grocery stores are actually thankful for the food program to take it because otherwise they have to pay a disposal feel on it. So what does happen to food that is not bought from grocery stores, if it’s not repurposed?

C’est toujours un plaisir de poser une question à la députée de Nickel Belt. J’imagine qu’elle serait très contente de recevoir une question sur le sujet que le député d’Ottawa-Centre vient de mentionner, et je pose la question.

Ça me fait toujours plaisir de parler de Poulin patates. Poulin patates, c’est un fermier dans le Nickel Belt qui est le plus gros producteur de pommes de terre dans tout l’Ontario. Il est dans mon comté. C’est une famille super gentille, très impliquée dans la communauté et qui vend ses patates partout.

Je dois dire qu’on a eu beaucoup de difficulté à voir—Your Independent Grocer ne voulait pas vendre ses patates. Maintenant, ils les vendent, donc je suis très fière de ça. Elles sont vendues à la grandeur de l’Ontario, mais si tu viens dans le nord de l’Ontario, je te garantis, peu importe où est-ce que tu vas, tu vas manger des patates de Poulin patates. Il y en a de toutes les sortes. Il y a les patates blanches. Il y en a des jaunes. Il y en a des rouges. Mais elles sont toutes délicieuses et elles sont faites ici en Ontario par une famille qui est dans le nord de l’Ontario depuis des générations et des générations et qui fait la culture des pommes de terre.

It’s a real honour to rise to speak to Bill 155, the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario Amendment Act. You don’t hear this a lot, maybe, in the House, but I just want to compliment the minister for bringing forward this bill. I know it’s something that people in the farm community, people in the food sector and researchers, in particular, in the food and farming sector have been asking for: modernization of the ARIO Act. A lot has changed since 1962 when the institute was founded by the three founding colleges of the University of Guelph, obviously located in my riding: the Ontario Veterinary College, the Ontario Agricultural College and the Macdonald Institute.

While I’m just on those, Speaker, I really quickly just want to say we’re blessed in Ontario to have a university like the University of Guelph. OVC ranks first in Canada, third in North America and is in the top 10 worldwide for veterinary medicine and does a fantastic job. We certainly want to continue working to expand the opportunities at OVC because it’s harder to get into veterinary school right now than it is to get into medical school, so we certainly need more spaces in our veterinary college. I also just want to mention that the Ontario Agricultural College ranks in the top 10 worldwide for agriculture and forestry. Then, obviously, the Macdonald Institute has been doing pioneering work over the years as well.

While I’m talking about the Macdonald Institute, I just want to give a shout-out to our former late colleague Daryl Kramp, whose bill he put forward around food literacy—

Interjections.

The act was last updated in the 1990s, so prior to cellphones, prior to the Internet, prior to a lot of the innovations that we see in the world today, and the food and farming sector has changed. When I was a kid driving a tractor, I could drive the tractor and work on the tractor. Now you kind of drive the tractor with your phone, and I have no idea how you would ever fix the tractor if anything went down with the tractor. Things have changed a lot, and we need to make sure this institute and the 14 research locations that it represents are modernized with that change. So, I think it’s a good thing that we do that.

Speaker, I wanted to mention a few things, though, and these are going to be constructive, and I hope helpful constructive criticism and is taken in that light. If we’re going to modernize this act, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture—Mark Reusser from the region of Waterloo came and I think gave a fantastic presentation at committee. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Mark over the years, and especially recently about the importance of protecting prime farmland in this province and, in particular, in Waterloo region, where he’s very active right now. But in relation to this bill, he brought up some—and he said this in support of the bill. I’m going to be very clear: OFA called for modernization; the government has delivered on modernization. But there are some things that I think are important to put into the record.

One is that farmers have a direct involvement in the institute, especially as it modernizes, and that their voices—as the scope of the institute expands and the number of food value chain stakeholders becomes more prominent in the role that the institute plays, that farmers still have a direct role in the direction of research and in participation in research.

The second is, if the research mandate of the institute is going to expand, which I think is a good thing, then make sure the institute has the financial resources to be able to deliver on the mandate of that expanded mandate.

That the oversight of facilities improve: There were examples, not actually brought by the OFA but by other farmers, particularly a berry farmer, who talked about the fact that some of the research that they were doing, because of inadequate maintenance of facilities, led to their berries molding, and the research was lost. So they just talked about the importance of making sure we maintain the facilities in a way that, when the farmers in particular are doing research at these 14 locations around the province, their research isn’t damaged in any way due to the inadequacies of the facilities themselves. You could imagine the time, money, aggravation lost in doing that.

Concerns around making sure that industry representatives, particularly farmers but also throughout the entire value chain, serve on the board of the institute moving forward: That’s not clear in the legislation. I’m assuming the minister is going to ensure that, but I think it’s important to have it on the record and important to let folks know that farmers express that.

And then the final point I want to make is funding for our colleges and universities. At the same time this bill was in front of committee. The head of the faculty association at University of Guelph came and talked about how in her department they’re going to lose two of the three plant scientists, and they don’t have the financial resources to replace those plant scientists. That’s going to hurt the ability to do this kind of research in the province of Ontario, and that’s why we need to adequately fund our post-secondary universities.

Questions?

Thanks to the member from Guelph for coming to Wilmot township last week. We met with farmers who are being expropriated from their prime agricultural land, 770 acres. Developers have already gone to this land, back in January, and offered $58,000 an acre, based on rumours that it would be rezoned for industrial land.

We can’t study soil and the farming sector if the farmers aren’t there. So I ask the member, what do you make of the fact that regional politicians have signed NDAs? It’s silence on our democracy. This land is clearly being set for a large industrial project, and we have before us a piece of legislation which claims that we should be studying and thriving in the farming sector, and yet the Get It Done Act, schedule 1, fast-tracks expropriation and makes it more difficult for farmers to exist in Ontario.

I’d like to thank the member from Guelph for his remarks today. As I was listening, I took note of your comment regarding veterinary capacity. As part of this proposed act, if passed, we would be investing $14.7 million to establish a new collaborative doctor of veterinary medicine program to enrol up to 20 more veterinary students per year, as well as the Veterinary Incentive Program, which will be $50,000 over five years for veterinarians to go to underserved communities.

Perhaps the member can speak to how that investment in those programs will help this capacity.

I appreciate the member’s question. Thank you very much for it. I do want to be clear—and this is in all respect—that doesn’t deal with this particular bill. But your question is very important, and so I want to say to the Minister of Agriculture the work that we did advocating for an expansion of the vet program is really important.

When I was asked in last year’s budget what was the one thing I really liked about the budget, it was funding for this exact program that you’re asking me about. The partnership between the University of Guelph and Lakehead University and the expansion of veterinary spaces, particularly targeting northern communities, is a step in the right direction.

We know that there’s a shortage of veterinarians across the province, but there’s especially an acute shortage of veterinarians, especially large animal veterinarians, in northern Ontario. This particular funding in the expansion of this program and the partnership between Lakehead and the University of Guelph is going to make a real difference.

Mark Reusser, when he came to committee, made it very clear that the OFA supports this bill. I’ll be voting in favour of this bill. But in his testimony and in his broader public comments, he has indicated that, do you know what? If we don’t have farmland, if we continue to lose farmland at the rate of 319 acres every day in this province, we’re not going to have a food and farming sector to actually do research on. And so we have to build homes within existing urban areas. We have to look at doing industrial applications on land that’s not prime farmland, because it’s so critical to our economy and our ability to feed ourselves.

Report continues in volume B.