- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
- Jun/4/24 10:20:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I would say to my hon. colleague is that on the whole spectrum of the food supply chain, there are the farmers at one end and the consumers at the other. I would argue that both groups are being screwed over by the people in the middle. That is what is happening.
I am not talking about going after farmers; they need to make a living, and I know their margins are very tight. I am not talking about consumers. It is the actors in the middle, the middlemen, and particularly the grocery companies, which despite all of the costs associated with climate change and supply disruptions have still seen their net profits go up to unacceptable and unreasonable levels.
That is what we should be tackling. That is what Canadians expect. If we had an activist government actually doing that, we would actually see the results Canadians want and need at this very key moment.
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- Feb/13/24 2:14:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are some incredible challenges facing Canadian farmers: changing markets and price fluctuations in commodities; rising debt levels; and climate change-driven extreme weather events. Despite these challenges, farmers in Canada continue to confront and to overcome adversity while showcasing the innovative ways they are leading us into the 21st century with advances in food production.
Farmers are certainly not fans of the “Ottawa knows best” approach. Instead, as New Democrats, we want to partner with our farmers to help them build their resilience against climate change and confront the corporate greed that is driving up their input costs to unsustainable levels. To help our farmers, we need a government that is ready for action on a sustainable agriculture strategy, a critical input strategy and a mandatory grocery code of conduct.
Today is Canada's Agriculture Day. On behalf of the NDP caucus, I hope we can all take a moment to celebrate both the hard-working Canadian farmers who grow the food we love and the essential contributions of agriculture to our nation's prosperity and well-being.
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Madam Speaker, it is nice to be able to resume where I left off back in December.
Just to refresh the memory of everyone in this place, we were discussing the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
I have been a proud member of that committee for six years now and I would say that it is the best standing committee out of any committee of the House, because we often arrive at our decisions on a consensus model. We certainly have our differences, but the collegiality stems from the fact that, no matter what political party we represent, we all represent farmers in our respective ridings and have a great deal of respect for the work they do.
This particular study is unusual, if we look at the long list of studies the agriculture committee usually embarks on, in that we are dealing more with a retail issue, which of course is the subject of food price inflation. I am happy to say that this 10th report was the result of a unanimous vote on my motion for a study. The study was also backed up by a unanimous vote in the House of Commons when the NDP used our opposition day to move a motion backing up the committee's work.
Given the brutal food price inflation rates that many Canadians have been experiencing over the last couple of years, the political and public pressure of the moment, I think, really helped focus parliamentarians' efforts on this important issue in making sure we were paying it the attention it deserved, given what many of our constituents were telling us they were suffering through. Therefore, it was nice to see that unanimous vote and the fact that we were able to get into this study.
If we look at the news these days and the experts who research this particularly brutal problem, we already know that a record number of Canadians are having to access food banks. I certainly hear from my constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford that they are having to make those difficult decisions every single week. It has affected not only the quality of food they have been able to buy, but also the quantity of food.
I think that is an enduring shame on our country, given that we pride ourselves on being an agricultural powerhouse. If we look at our standing vis-à-vis other nations around the world, we are a very wealthy country, but what we have seen over the last number of decades is that wealth is increasingly being concentrated in fewer hands, and too many of our fellow citizens are struggling to get by on the basic necessities of life.
I think this is a call to action for all parliamentarians. It is obvious that the policies we have put in place over the last 40 or 50 years and this sort of obscene corporate deference we have seen from successive Liberal and Conservative governments and the neo-Liberal orthodoxy that exists are not serving our fellow citizens right. We need to take a critical look at why that is.
This report contains a number of recommendations. I want to focus on a few of them, particularly on recommendations 11 and 13. Recommendation 11 is something that we heard not only in the course of this study, but also in other studies. It deals with the fact that many people who work in the food value chain, particularly the ones on the other side of the ledger from where the retail grocers come into play, have long been calling for a grocery code of conduct.
Initially, the calls were for a voluntary code. I think there was a tremendous amount of goodwill and a bit of leeway given to the industry to figure this out on its own and to come up with something whereby all players could develop the issue and have faith in it. However, what we have seen recently is that some of the big grocery retailers, namely Loblaws and Walmart, are now indicating they are uncomfortable with the direction the code is taking. In my humble opinion, this code simply cannot work if it is going to exclude major players like Loblaws and Walmart, so we may be arriving at a point at which the government needs to step in and enforce a mandatory code. That way, the rules are clear, concise and transparent, and all players in the food supply value chain can understand what they are and abide by them.
What we are seeing is that there is a complete lack of trust in the grocery retail sector, and for good reason. Grocery retailers have been accused and found guilty of fixing the price of bread. They have engaged in practices that, on the surface, look a lot like collusion. They have often followed each other's leads in setting prices and so on. Recently Loblaws was forced to climb down from its decision to reduce the discounts. There used to be a 50% discount on items that had to be sold that day. Often people are looking for those kinds of bargains. Loblaws was going to reduce that to 30%. That company consistently shows that it is unable to read the room and that it is completely tone deaf to the public environment in which it is operating.
Not only have consumers lost trust in grocery retailers, but on the other side, the suppliers, the food manufacturers and the hard-working men and women who work in primary production and farming have also lost trust, because when they are trying to get their goods put into a grocery market, and let us understand that 80% of Canada's grocery retail market is controlled by just five companies, which is a brutal situation and a totally unfair stranglehold on the market by those five companies, they were often subjected to hidden fees and fines for which they had no explanation.
As such, I am glad to see that recommendation 11 calls for a mandatory and enforceable grocery code of conduct.
I am also happy to see in this report recommendation 13, which asks the Government of Canada to strengthen the Competition Bureau's mandate and its ability to ensure competition in the grocery sector. The first two bullet points were about giving the Competition Bureau more legislative muscle through the Competition Act and making sure the competitive thresholds the Competition Bureau uses to evaluate mergers and acquisitions ensure that competition does not suffer.
I think, based on the hard work of this study and the recommendations of this report, we have actually seen legislative change come to this place, and it was great to see, in particular, Bill C-56 receive a unanimous vote in the House of Commons. It has passed the Senate, and it has now become a statute of Canada by virtue of the Governor General.
There are more measures contained in Bill C-59, and our leader, the member from Burnaby South's private member's bill also includes a number of very important changes. Of course members of Parliament are going to have the opportunity tomorrow, after question period, to vote on that bill, and Canadians will be watching to see which members of Parliament are serious about stepping up to fix that particular problem.
I also want to talk about the supplementary report that I included as the New Democratic member of the committee, because committee reports reflect the majority view of the committee. In the case of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, that is almost always the unanimous view of the committee. I do not think I have ever really seen a dissenting report, but sometimes some recommendations that some members would like to have seen added to the report do not get in there.
I agree absolutely with the main thrust of the report. I think the recommendations were very strong. There were some additional ones, some supplementary ones, that I would have liked to see added. We heard from a number of witnesses who asked our committee to recommend that the government embark on legislative recognition of the right to food, so one of our recommendations would have been:
that the Government of Canada acknowledge its obligation as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to respect, protect, and fulfill the human right to food by adopting a framework law that would enshrine this right in Canadian law and require the federal government to legislate binding, specific, and measurable targets toward realizing the policy outcomes it set out in 2019 in “The Food Policy for Canada”.
Again, when so many in our population are going hungry, it is incumbent upon us as legislators and policy makers to really step up to the plate and meet that need in the moment with specific action. I think that, given that this recommendation came from people who are directly involved in the national food bank network and are dealing with this issue every single day, we would do well as policy makers to listen to that on-the-ground expertise and follow through.
I also want to take some time in the final four minutes that I have to really recognize two witnesses who appeared before our committee. They are both economics professors who go against the prevailing orthodoxy of corporate deference that so many economics professors practise. They are, particularly, Professor D.T. Cochrane and Professor Jim Stanford, who I think offer a refreshing and alternative view to the dominant orthodoxy, to look critically at why systems are the way they are.
I just want to quote Dr. Jim Stanford:
Greed is not new. Greed long predates the pandemic, but greed has had a good run in Canada since the pandemic. After-tax profits in Canada during the pandemic or since the pandemic have increased to their highest share of GDP in history. Amidst a social, economic and public health emergency, companies have done better than they ever have.
In response to one of my questions, he went on to say:
At the top of the list, there's no doubt about it, is the oil and gas sector. The excess profits earned there since the pandemic account for about one-quarter of the total mass of profits across the 15 sectors I identified in that work. The increased prices that embody those huge profit margins then trickle through the rest of the supply chain. Food processors have to pay that, so they have higher costs, nominally, but then they add their own higher profit margin on top of that. The same goes for the food retail sector. By the time the consumer gets it, there's been excess profits added at several steps of the whole supply chain. That magnifies the final impact on consumer price inflation.
Two things have been true over the last number of years. Canadians have been suffering through brutal inflation. They have seen the cost of almost everything rise to almost unsustainable levels, in fact, to unsustainable levels for too many of our fellow citizens. That is one truth of which we can see empirical evidence.
The other truth we are dealing with is that since 2019, many corporate sectors have been raking in the cash. Those two facts exist side by side, and we know for a fact that when profits are increasing in many different corporate sectors that Canadians rely on, that money has to come from somewhere, and it has been coming directly from the wallets of the constituents that I represent, the constituents that every MP in this place represents from coast to coast to coast.
I will wrap up my speech there by saying that this was an important report and these are important recommendations. I am glad to have been a member of the committee that produced this report. Of course, I will be voting to concur in it. With that I will conclude my remarks.
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Mr. Speaker, I am in favour of keeping the bill in the same form that passed the House at third reading.
I have been on the agriculture committee for a long time, and I hear the Conservatives talk a lot about the carbon tax. However, I would like to hear from my hon. colleague about the other costs. I do not think that is talked about as much in this place.
How does the Conservative caucus propose to deal with the immense costs that are being foisted on farmers from the effects of climate change? We know the summer coming up is going to be particularly bad for farmers in Alberta. What about the high input costs? What is the policy in dealing with those? Also, when are the Conservatives going to speak up to address the outrageous profits in oil and gas? Those, by themselves, completely obliterate any effect the carbon tax would have. Oil and gas profits have increased by over 1,000% since 2019. When are the Conservatives going to address that incredible cost on the backs of farmers and Canadians from coast to coast to coast?
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- Dec/7/23 11:44:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to give everyone a third chance to demonstrate their support for our farmers, so I would like to request a recorded vote.
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- Dec/7/23 11:31:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as the NDP's agriculture critic, and because I want to give all MPs a second chance to demonstrate their support for our hard-working farmers, I request a recorded vote.
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- Nov/28/23 12:17:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, those are all good points. That is why I voted for the bill. We understood very clearly from committee hearings on this bill that there are no commercially viable alternatives. The problems with drying grain and with getting appropriate levels of feed because of future droughts, as I said in my speech, are going to multiply because this is the new reality that our farmers are facing.
It is not just Conservatives who support farmers. One of the reasons the agriculture committee gets along so well is that all parties around the table understand that they have farmers as constituents. I think it is the only committee of the House of Commons that regularly works and makes decisions by consensus.
I would argue with one point, though. Senators do not have constituents. We have constituents. I acknowledge that it is a problem; I do not agree that the Senate should be holding up a bill. However, I gave countless examples of where Conservative senators did the exact same thing for other bills. That is the hypocrisy people need to understand when it comes to the Conservative Party.
Senators should not be doing this. They should be listening to the democratic will of the House. I simply wish the Conservatives would have a consistent position no matter what bill is being discussed in the Senate.
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Madam Speaker, I am extremely proud to be standing in the House on behalf of the fruit and vegetable farmers in my region of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. My region and the Cowichan region have a long and storied history in agriculture. I would like to remind all members that the Cowichan Valley is in fact Canada's only Mediterranean climatic zone. The Halkomelem language is the language of the Quw'utsun; the Cowichan name is the anglicized version of that, and it roughly translates into the “warm lands”.
We are an agricultural powerhouse in the Cowichan region. I have been proud to call that area my home for over 30 years, and I am proud to be standing in this House in support of Bill C-280. This is a measure that has long been talked about in this very chamber, and we now have an opportunity to actually change the law. As many colleagues have pointed out, this is going to be of no cost but of huge benefit to the people it directly concerns.
I want to thank the people who have spoken before me: the sponsor, the member for York—Simcoe; the member for Kings—Hants; and the member for Berthier—Maskinongé. I have the pleasure of serving with two of those colleagues on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I have been the proud agricultural critic for the NDP since January 2018, so I know this subject very well. This is my third Parliament on the agriculture committee, and this subject has come up time and time again.
I do not want to delve too much into the details. We know that this issue matters because of the nature of the product we are talking about. Fruits and vegetables only have a tiny bit of shelf life before they have no more value. This is a unique product, and that is why we need to have this kind of a deemed trust.
It is not as though farmers, who are taking all the risk, can recoup losses by taking the product back; it is perishable in nature. We know that farmers deal with high costs. They have high input costs. It is expensive to buy machinery and erect greenhouses. In fact, almost all farmers' money is tied up in infrastructure, whether that is machinery or land. They are, in other words, land rich but cash poor.
This is a business model that is based on the tightest of margins, and anything the Parliament can do to ease up and make the payment process more guaranteed is something we should look at seriously. I am happy to say Bill C-280 would do that.
I would argue that, instead of this being just a Conservative bill, this bill is expressly non-partisan. I know the NDP has been fighting for this, as part of our electoral promise to Canadians, since 2015. Moreover, it is non-partisan by virtue of the fact that the second reading of this bill was unanimous. It sailed through committee. We had three meetings; we heard from a variety of witnesses. However, we decided as a committee to report this bill back to the House without amendments. It has the committee's stamp of approval, and I hope members in this chamber take note of that and seek to give it rapid passage.
This bill has been the subject of many committee studies. I have almost lost count of how many times, at different committees and different parliaments, we have seen a recommendation for this type of measure to be enacted by the House of Commons.
The time is now. I would like to see this bill pass through third reading, get to the Senate and start getting the traction it needs. The Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and the thousands of people they represent are watching us. They are waiting for action.
I will conclude my remarks by proudly saying that I will be supporting this bill, along with the NDP caucus. We look forward to its speedy passage to the other place; hopefully, it will eventually find its way to the Governor General's desk and receive the royal assent it deserves.
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- Feb/15/23 2:16:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today is Canada’s Agriculture Day, and I want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank the amazing and hard-working people who produce such an amazing abundance of food and drink in Canada. This is a day to showcase the innovative ways our agriculture and agri-food sectors are confronting the challenges of food production in the 21st century.
Food matters, and its journey from the farm to the factory to the fork is an important topic of discussion. This is especially true when so many Canadians are struggling to feed their families and so many farmers are struggling with debt while corporate grocery chains are making record profits. My NDP colleagues and I are committed to taking on those corporate profits and reinstating fairness for both farmers and consumers.
Let us raise a fork to the food we love and to the people who produce it. As the NDP’s critic for agriculture and food price inflation, and on behalf of the entire NDP caucus, I wish all my colleagues a happy Canada's Agriculture Day.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Huron—Bruce for getting Bill C-234 to this stage in the legislative process. It is important to underline we would not be at this stage if not for the co-operation and collaboration of all opposition parties. It kind of highlights how delightful it is to work in a minority Parliament when we can outnumber the government at times and control policy.
As the agriculture critic, and I have served now on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food since the beginning of 2018, I have to say that of all the standing committees of the House the agriculture committee absolutely, despite some of our policy differences, is a fantastic place to work. It comes from a recognition that ridings across Canada, this great country of ours, have farmers and agricultural activities represented by Liberals, Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and by New Democrats. There is a desire at that committee to put aside some of our more confrontational aspects to work really on behalf of farmers and try to make sure we are presenting good policy on behalf of farmers.
The great theme we need to talk about of course is the threat climate change poses. Farmers will tell us right away they are on the front lines of the battle with climate change. They are the ones who have had to deal first-hand with irregular weather patterns, intense amounts of precipitation, wild forest fires and heat domes. I have often talked about my home province of British Columbia that, in 2021, in the space of three months went from a heat dome to an atmospheric river. The term “atmospheric river” is now part of our lingo, and no one ever really had experienced that kind of torrential downpour. It was particularly brutal in the Lower Mainland, in what it did for many farmers.
Farmers are absolutely trying their best and are going to be a key part of the solution, not only from the carbon sequestration or the different farming techniques they are employing but also just from the efficiencies that have been generated. If we look at the amount of fuel that is burned now to take off harvest from the land, our farmers have definitely been some of the leaders in taking up new technologies in trying to make their farms more efficient.
If we look at the volatile nature of prices for fossil fuels, it is absolutely in farmers' best interests to try to find alternatives to that. If we look at the very tight margins many of our farms operate by, they absolutely are trying everything they can to save money.
With Bill C-234, I have heard the arguments from the government against this bill. I understand concerns with any attempt to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. I believe a price on pollution is important. It is important to try to get that innovation to alternative fuel sources. However, that only works if there is a viable alternative. What we have heard repeatedly at committee from members of the agricultural community is that when it comes to drying grain there currently are no commercially viable alternatives. That was said repeatedly and it was presented with evidence. Sure it might come in time, but at present there just simply is not an alternative.
I listened to the Liberals talk about their concerns. It is important to understand that, when they first brought in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in 2018, when they authored that act at a time of a majority government, they took the time to identify in the definitions what a qualifying farming fuel was. They took time to define the activity of farming, what eligible farming machinery was and what eligible farming activities were. They did that so in the bill, their original act, they could carve out exemptions for agricultural activities.
The Liberals, in 2018, realized that for certain agricultural activities exemptions needed to be carved out from the application of a price on pollution because there were no alternatives that were commercially viable. That is an important fact we need to remember within the context of our discussion on Bill C-234.
The agriculture committee had about 30 witnesses, and the overwhelming majority of witnesses who appeared before the committee were in favour of Bill C-234. Going back to the collaboration and co-operation of all opposition parties, I was glad to see some of my amendments pass. They were very helpful in narrowing the scope of the bill so that it applies specifically to buildings that have a verifiable agricultural purpose.
To send a signal to agricultural producers that this is a temporary measure, it was very important to have the sunset clause. The provisions of this bill would expire in eight years, and at that time, Parliament can take up the cause to review the state of the technology in the industry and decide whether further amendments are needed. It is very important to underline the fact that this bill is going to be in effect for eight years only. That, in itself, is an important price signal and is going to encourage the development of alternative forms of fuel and energy.
We did our due diligence at committee. Language was put into the bill. It was amended in a way that has tightened its scope, and it has an important sunset clause. I know from having spoken with many agricultural organizations that there is widespread support for this, and I am happy to continue my support for the bill. When we get to a vote, I will definitely be voting to send it off to the Senate. Hopefully the other place will make short work of it.
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Madam Speaker, I offer my congratulations to the member for Montcalm for bringing forward this bill for us to consider. I appreciate having this bill because it allows me to talk about my riding and the long, storied and very rich agriculture history of the Cowichan Valley. We have multi-generational farms there.
For Cowichan tribes, in the Hul'q'umi'num language, Cowichan means the warm land. We are blessed with a beautiful little microclimate in the Cowichan Valley. We get copious amounts of rain in the winter, but we are absolutely blasted by the sun in the summer. It allows for a very unique growing climate where there is a very strong connection between local farmers and the population that they grow food for.
As to supply management, I am very lucky to have a number of dairy farms in the Cowichan Valley and a number of egg farms. In my seven years as a member of Parliament representing that amazing riding, I would be remiss if I did not point out how welcoming supply-managed farmers there have always been to me. They have always extended the courtesy of an invitation so that I can go and tour their farms to see how modern they are, how efficient they are and how the supply management system is able to give them a good income and also allow them to plan for the future.
That is a real strength of the system. It is a system that rests on three key pillars. It was brought in because a lot of farmers back in the 1970s and before were suffering through very wild price fluctuations, especially on commodities. It was really hard to try to plan for the future. Many farms experience that to this day. If one does not know what one's income is going to be in the year or years ahead, it makes it that much harder to do financial planning around the farm, and that is critical.
If one wants to stay competitive and have an edge, investment in technology and machinery is absolutely critical. Supply management has always allowed farmers to do that. When one goes to some of the dairy farms around the Cowichan Valley, one can see that they are actually serviced by remarkable robotics. It is quite incredible to see the level of technology on display.
Those three pillars are production control, pricing mechanisms and import control. Like a three-legged stool, if one were to weaken one of those pillars, the whole system would be at risk. It needs all three to work in tandem, in harmony, and to also be strong.
Under our system, we have not had so much trouble with production control, which is issued through quotas, or on the pricing part. The part that has always been targeted by governments of a variety of stripes is import control. The way we do this is through tariff rate quotas. We do allow imports of certain dairy products such as eggs and poultry. They can come in at a certain rate, but once they go over the maximum amount that is allowed, a huge tariff is placed on them. That is to protect our homegrown system.
I am sure if one were to ask any Canadian, their preference would be to always have locally sourced food. I think it is a point of pride that we have developed a system where our farmers can not only thrive but also produce that good local food for their local communities.
That brings me to why Bill C-282 is before us. I can understand why this bill was brought forward. I was here in the 42nd Parliament. I remember hearing the news of how the TPP had been negotiated, the CETA and also, later on, CUSMA. Each one of those agreements started carving out more of our supply-managed market and allowing more foreign imports to come into Canada. That was despite repeated pleas from the industry to the Liberals to leave their sector alone. Now we have a bill that is going to specifically address that and curtail the ability of a foreign affairs minister to negatively impact it.
I have been very curious to see where the Conservatives will land on this bill because, in the previous Parliament, when Bill C-216 was brought before this House, I believe the Conservative caucus was split. About a third of them supported it and two-thirds were against.
I can understand the awkwardness for the Conservative Party because at one time it almost had mad Max as a leader, the famous man from Beauce. He was almost the leader of the Conservative Party. It went down to, I think, the 13th ballot. Maxime has always been very vocal in his opposition to supply management, which is a very curious thing given the region he comes from, and it may explain why he is no longer here as a member of Parliament. It will be interesting to see, when this bill comes to second reading vote, what the blue team will be able to do on this.
I will read out a few facts and figures. Last year, Canada had over 9,000 dairy farms. It is an industry that contributes 221,000 jobs and nearly $20 billion to Canada's GDP. We have over 5,200 poultry and egg farms. One statistic that has always stood out for me is that Canada, with a population of around 36 million people, has over 1,000 egg farms. In the United States, which has 10 times the population, there are just over 100. This shows the differences in the systems.
We have a system that has allowed 1,000 egg farms to thrive on a population that is a tenth the size of our southern neighbour. We know the state of Wisconsin produces more milk than our entire country. Farmers there, unfortunately, have suffered negatively from wild price fluctuations. I know, from talking to farmers, that many of our southern neighbours do look north in envy of the system we have in place here.
Bill C-216 was successfully referred to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade and reported back to the House. Unfortunately, in 2021, we had to deal with an unnecessary election, which had the effect of killing the bill outright. I hope we have enough runway for this bill to make a longer push this time. I am certainly going to be giving my support for it to be heading to committee, just as I proudly did last time.
If we look at the mechanics of this bill, we need to take a look at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act. Section 10 basically spells out all of the functions, duties and powers the minister of foreign affairs has. For example, the ability to conduct diplomatic and consular relations on behalf of our country and foster the expansion of Canada's international trade and commerce. These are a few examples of what the powers and duties are, as they currently exist in the act.
What Bill C-282 seeks to do is to basically prevent the foreign affairs minister from making any kind of a commitment by international treaty or agreement that would have any effect of increasing the tariff rate quota, so basically allowing more foreign imports to come in, and of course reducing the tariff rate on that particular quota that is coming in.
Again, it is born out of the experience of dealing with Liberals over the last seven years, where they repeatedly stood up in the House and said that they were the strong defenders of supply management, but every single trade deal that came through the House and was enacted was always slicing a bit more of the pie away. I understand why this bill is before us.
I am always happy to have the opportunity to talk about farmers, not only those across this great country but also those in my riding, and I am always happy to stand here as a strong defender of supply management, as all New Democrats always have been. I look forward to this bill getting another turn at committee. I congratulate the member for Montcalm for bringing it forward.
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- May/17/22 5:20:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the contrary, as the NDP's agriculture critic, I am very proud to say that the technology already exists. Canada's farmers are leading the way. If the federal government wants to make a real difference, it will help farmers in rural communities make that transition to things like regenerative agriculture, paying attention to soil science and making sure that soil carbon sequestration is a centrepiece. I believe that our farmers have an important role to play in this whole conversation. They want to be placed on that pedestal as climate leaders. They are already doing this, but they need a partner in Ottawa to do it, not investments in an unproven technology.
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Madam Speaker, as the NDP's agriculture critic, I look forward to supporting this bill so that we can have a closer look at it in the agriculture committee, just as I did with Bill C-206 in the previous Parliament.
We often are talking about the punitive aspects of policy, but the member did talk a bit about the work that farmers are doing. I was wondering if he could expand on the amazing potential that exists on farms for renewable energy sources. If we look at the area that is on barns, we could help farmers with solar panel installations. There are also some tremendous possibilities to use natural gas that is naturally derived from the decomposition of materials on farms. Could the member expand on how Ottawa can maybe partner with those farms, instead of having an Ottawa-knows-best approach, and really try to put those farmers on a pedestal, show good examples and maybe increase the knowledge transfer so that all regions across Canada are benefiting from that knowledge?
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- Mar/4/22 10:45:23 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, allow me to return the compliment to my friend. I have had the pleasure of serving on that committee with him. I think he and I are the two longest-serving members on that committee.
We have heard repeatedly from farmers about their willingness to do the right thing and be a central part of the conversation on how we combat climate change. When it comes to the hard choices that farmers have to make when they are purchasing new equipment or finding an energy source, we first want to make sure that viable alternatives exist, which is why until they are developed and until they are commercially viable, we prepare the necessary tax breaks to help them through those tough times.
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