44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 15, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is always great to rise to speak in this most honourable of House.
I would like to first offer thanks to the member for Foothills for his work with regard to the agricultural sector in Canada. I know the hon. member is a champion for the agricultural sector in the area he represents. We all come here championing our causes and issues, and I would like to speak to the hon. member's private member's bill this evening.
The government welcomes the opportunity to speak to the importance of supporting Canadian farmers. Now, more than ever, farmers face increasing hardships. These range from sustained supply chain issues to the rising costs of doing business.
Moreover, the effects of climate change and the risk of harmful and deadly animal diseases are only compounding these difficulties. It feels like farmers cannot catch a break. It is crucial that we provide these hard-working Canadians and their families with the tools they need to do their jobs safely so that they can be competitive and ensure the safety of their animals or livestock.
I would like to take a few minutes to speak to importance of the agri-food system in Canada and the actions that our government is taking to support Canadian farmers across the country.
The agriculture and agri-food system is a key pillar of Canada's economy. In 2021, it employed 2.1 million people in Canada, representing one out of every nine jobs. In the same year, Canada exported nearly $82.2 billion in agriculture and food products, making us one of the top 10 exporters of agri-food and seafood in the world, something of which we can be quite proud.
It is safe to say that agriculture touches every Canadian. In fact, the agriculture sector is very broad and encompasses federal, provincial and territorial governments, industry partners and farmers. Each of these groups plays a unique and indispensable role to keep Canadian livestock safe and healthy.
I can proudly say that the Government of Canada takes its role seriously in supporting Canadian farmers and in supporting the Canadian agri-food sector. We have a long record of championing initiatives that protect and grow our agriculture and agri-food sector.
Just recently, budget 2023 announced a number of initiatives to respond to the emerging needs of the Canadian agriculture industry. These included $333 million to establish a dairy innovation and investment fund to increase revenues for dairy farmers; $34 million to support farmers for diversifying away from certain fertilizers; and $13 million to increase the interest-free limit of loans under the advance payments program to provide additional cash flow to farmers in need.
Budget 2023 also announced $57.5 million over five years to establish a vaccine bank for foot and mouth disease so that farmers can maintain market access for their livestock and protect their livelihood in the event of an outbreak.
In addition, the government has a history of working closely with provinces and territories to support economic growth for the agriculture and agri-food sector.
For example, the sustainable Canadian agricultural partnership was launched on April 1. The renewal of this important five-year policy framework will benefit farmers and processors from across all of Canada. The sustainable Canadian agricultural partnership has set aside $3.5 billion, up 25% from the previous 2018 to 2023 agreement, to strengthen the competitiveness, innovation and resiliency of the agriculture sector.
This partnership agreement recognizes what we already know, that farming is a difficult job. That is why the government is also committed to supporting the mental health of Canadians, including farmers and their families. For instance, under the Canadian agricultural partnership, it provided $7 million for two multi-year mental health initiatives to support farmers.
In addition, the government funds the Wellness Together Canada portal. This portal operates 24 hours a day and seven days a week. It provides free, credible information to individuals to help address their mental health and substance use issues. The Wellness Together Canada portal also provides information and self-assessment tools, peer support networks and access to psychologists and other professionals.
This government recognizes that meaningful support to farmers must recognize both economic and psychological hardships.
I understand that Bill C-275 tries to protect farmers by minimizing risks to on-farm biosecurity. Let me be clear that the government takes these risks seriously. Disease outbreaks can have major impacts on animal welfare and food supply, and result in economic losses. We also know that farmers are also focused on biosecurity as they too care about the health and well-being of their animals.
It is important to note that the health of animals and biosecurity measures are a shared responsibility among the federal government, the provinces and territories, industry associations and farmers.
Recognizing the importance of biosecurity in preventing the spread of animal disease, the Government of Canada has championed efforts and has provided funding to strengthen on-farm biosecurity. For instance, federal funds helped support the development of 14 commodity-specific national biosecurity standards. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, industry, academic institutions, and provinces and territories developed these voluntary national biosecurity standards, protocols and strategies to protect animals from disease.
Additionally, through the federal AgriAssurance program and its predecessors, the government has provided industry associations with funding to develop on-farm assurance programs that include biosecurity protocols. Several of these associations, such as the Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Chicken Farmers of Canada, have on-farm programs that include biosecurity requirements.
In addition, under the Canadian agricultural partnership, federal, provincial and territorial governments have advanced a number of cost-shared investments that support biosecurity. Some recent examples include funding of up to $1.5 million for the poultry biosecurity preparedness initiative in Ontario, and up to $45.3 million to fund efforts that enhance Canada's African swine fever response, including actions to mitigate risks to biosecurity.
These examples all highlight the important work and investment that farmers, industry associations, provinces and territories, and the Government of Canada have all made toward on-farm biosecurity. There is a collective recognition that on-farm biosecurity is an important measure to safeguard animal health and to minimize the risk of animal disease outbreaks in order to protect the livelihood of Canada's agri-food producers. To really help farmers, we should be championing the use of these on-farm biosecurity standards and protocols and encouraging their use.
In conclusion, the government recognizes the hard work, day in and day out, of Canadian farmers, their families and agriculture producers along the complete agricultural continuum, and it is responding to the sector's needs. The government is interested in supporting legislation that builds on the investments that various partners, including farmers themselves, have already made to improve animal health on farms.
We look forward to studying Bill C-275 at committee and discussing ways that it can be amended to recognize and build on the great work farmers, their families, the communities involved and others are doing to support biosecurity measures on farm.
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Madam Speaker, we are in the House this evening to study Bill C‑275, which amends the Health of Animals Act. This bill was introduced by the Conservative member for Foothills, in Alberta, and is now in the House at second reading.
Briefly, Bill C‑275 proposes to “make it an offence to enter, without lawful authority or excuse, a place in which animals are kept if doing so could result in [their] exposure...to a disease or toxic substance that is capable of...contaminating them.” So it amends the Health of Animals Act, and it is under that amended act that penalties will be applied.
The Bloc Québécois supports the principle of Bill C‑275, subject to a thorough study in committee. We are in favour of it because it is an important bill and subject. Fundamentally, it is about trespassing. These are criminal acts rooted in extremism. Of course, extremism has never solved anything.
I would like to clarify a few things about this bill before I move on.
First, it is not an indictment of veganism, but an indictment of extremist activism and certain antispeciesists.
Second, this is not about freedom of speech. People absolutely have the right to protest and denounce practices they do not agree with. However, we cannot condone that being done through illegal acts that could also harm both farmers and animals. Obviously, one's personal freedom ends where another's begins.
Third, this bill does not condone animal abuse. We all have a personal and collective responsibility to prevent animal suffering. Once again, that does not mean we are exempt from the law or our duty to go through the designated authorities. In Quebec, the ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food, or MAPAQ, is responsible for this.
Fourth, it is about making people aware that there are biosecurity standards to be respected on farms in order to ensure the safety of animals and livestock.
What is biosafety? MAPAQ defines it as the set of tools, measures and procedures for preventing and addressing the dangers associated with the transmission of pathogens through various pathways for contamination. Mad cow disease, H1N1 and H5N1 influenza, circovirus, scrapie and wasting disease of cervids are all examples of transmitted diseases with serious consequences for the entire agri-food complex, public health and the balance of biodiversity. When humans come into contact with animals or their habitat without taking the appropriate precautions to avoid contamination, the risk of disease increases tenfold. For a breeder, an outbreak can obviously lead to serious financial losses. In the case of a spread outside the farm, the consequences can be devastating.
It is interesting to learn that this bill was drafted partly in response to a specific event that occurred on December 7, 2019, when 13 vegan and antispeciesist activists broke into a hog farm in Saint-Hyacinthe. The farm was named Les Porgreg. They were there to protest the breeding of animals for human consumption. They entered the hog barn, filmed and demonstrated for almost seven hours in front of the pig pens in an attempt to expose the pigs' quality of life.
Several Sûreté du Québec officers had to enter the building to remove them. As a result, some 30 people who should not have been there contaminated the premises.
According to the owners, the incident caused a rotavirus outbreak, which considerably increased the maternal mortality rate of the herd.
Moreover, the criminals were fully aware of what they were doing, and what they were doing was completely illegal.
Events like those in Saint-Hyacinthe are unfortunately not isolated. What is interesting in this particular case is that it was discovered that MAPAQ followed up a year later. That helped move the issue forward and raise public awareness of the situation. The MAPAQ inspector noted that there were too many animals in certain pens at the Les Porgreg pig farm. The pens were soiled with manure, lacked proper ventilation, contained too many flies and so on. The good news is that on March 16, 2020, the farm followed the inspector's recommendations to the letter. Yes, the farm had committed a number of violations, but is this type of stunt allowed, or should it be allowed? The answer is, quite clearly, it absolutely should not.
My brother Alain is a farmer and has been a goat farmer for a number of years. I can say that it is an extremely—
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- Jun/15/23 5:46:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate today to talk about this bill and its objective of trying to maintain biosecurity on farms. As the member who was just speaking was talking about, we owe a lot to farmers. They do a lot of hard work. Farming can also be challenging financially, particularly in bad years; even in good years, there is a lot of upfront investment that folks need to make in order to be able to have a successful farm. When disease strikes the livestock population, it can be devastating for farmers, financially and otherwise. It stands to reason that there is a real concern about how to protect the biosecurity of farms.
This is a bill we saw in the last Parliament as well. It went to committee. Ultimately, it did not pass. I do not know if it got through the House, but because of an early and untimely election call, it certainly did not get through Parliament. Therefore, here we are debating the same issue again.
It is a legitimate goal to want to protect livestock operations from bacteria and other biological threats that would create problems in the livestock population, and this bill talks about that. Any time one is talking about food, many Canadians are going to have an interest. People want to know where their food comes from and how it is produced.
There are folks who have expressed concern about this bill being more about trying to keep people off farms for the purpose of not talking about how things are produced, but it seems to me that there ought to be a balance that can be struck between these two legitimate concerns. I think, in the last Parliament, in a similar bill, some of that work was being done at committee; there had been some progress made on striking the right balance.
I am optimistic that the right balance can be struck again. This is why it is important for this bill to go to committee, so that work can continue. As I said, this work is not starting from nothing. There are many members who sit around the committee table in this Parliament who were there in the last Parliament, just as my colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford was our critic on that bill in the last Parliament and is now again. I am optimistic that the work can be undertaken in a good way and that they are not starting from scratch, even though it may seem like that on paper, here in this Parliament.
I am pleased to rise to put some of those thoughts on the record and express my support once again for this bill going to committee. There, committee members can hear from folks in civil society, both those with experience running farming operations and others who are concerned about some of the, perhaps, unintended consequences of this legislation. I look forward to the conclusions of the committee after it has had an opportunity to do its work.
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Madam Speaker, I was saying that, as a young boy growing up on a farm, I watched the care that my dad and uncle took with the animals. I wanted to portray that and make sure people realize that our producers are second to none in the world in ensuring the security and safety of animals on their farms. That is why this bill is so important.
There have been cases in B.C. and Alberta where people did not have the knowledge of how animals should be treated or of the possibility of spreading diseases from farm to farm by protesting, and I want to portray what kind of impact that has on family farms. It goes from distraught animals and the diseases that could be carried to farms to the mental health of the farmers who look after those animals. That is what it comes down to.
Farmers' livelihoods depend on the safety of these animals. There is nothing more important to them than making sure the animals are secure. When people go to farms to protest, they have to realize the unintended consequence of their actions, and that is transferring diseases from farm to farm. Even if there are no diseases, unknown people on farms can cause animals to stampede, to trample each other and to get really upset. Being distraught can result in a lot of stress on animals. There are examples where they just drop dead; that has happened.
I am glad to hear that my Liberal, NDP and Bloc colleagues will support this bill going forward. In the last Parliament, we did not quite get to the finish line, which is a shame. There was an election call that was probably unnecessary. It was really a $600-million cabinet shuffle. I want to ensure that people realize the intention of Bill C-275. As I said in my earlier comments, peaceful protests on public property would still be allowed. There would also still be opportunities for whistle-blowers to report wrongdoing on farms, but animals on farms need to be taken care of.
Saskatchewan is an agricultural community, and agriculture is still the backbone of the province and drives its economy. I cannot be more clear in saying to people that our producers take amazing care of their animals, whether they are producing beef, dairy, pork or chicken. They have the best of intentions for their animals.
The scary thing is that people, while possibly well intentioned, do not realize how quickly diseases can spread. That is really at the heart of this bill. African swine fever could devastate our hog industry in this country, putting billions of dollars at risk. An outbreak of avian flu is devastating to our producers. People should think of the impact this would have on the mental health of these amazing producers if a flock of birds were wiped out because someone trespassed on private property. This is devastating not only to the community but also to the chicken and poultry community as a whole. It is the same with the African swine fever.
We have seen it in other countries, such as the United States. We have seen these outbreaks and how much they affect these industries. Right now, our agriculture industry is trying to work with a government that continues to tie one hand behind its back, whether it be with carbon tax 1 or carbon tax 2. The industry is trying to make the best of a bad situation.
This bill gives the agriculture producers a leg up, the opportunity to ensure their farms and private properties are safe and secure. That is something we really need to take into consideration moving forward. In fact, we have all-party support on this non-partisan issue. Ensuring that agriculture producers have the opportunity to have security on their own farms is the reason we need to get this bill to the finish line.
I am very excited that my colleague from Foothills brought this forward. It is a strongly worded bill. He did take pains to ensure he talked to all parties to bring forward a bill that everyone could vote in favour of. It is very important to work along non-partisan lines, and we are able to see that from the support this bill has had in the House of Commons. That is how this place should work, in a non-partisan way.
Hopefully, once it is passed in the House of Commons, the Senate will move quickly to pass it as well. It will help our agriculture producers across the country ensure that they, their animals and their families are safe and secure on their own private properties, so they can do the best possible job in raising the amazing world-class livestock we have in this country.
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Madam Speaker, it truly is an honour to once again rise today as the representative of the people of North Okanagan—Shuswap to speak to Bill C-275, put forward by my hon. colleague from Foothills.
Bill C-275 would amend the Health of Animals Act to “make it an offence to enter, without lawful authority or excuse, a place in which animals are kept if doing so could result in the exposure of the animals to a disease or toxic substance that is capable of affecting or contaminating them.” This is an important bill for farmers.
I come from a community in North Okanagan—Shuswap where we grow just about anything that can be grown in Canada. We also have some incredible ranchers, chicken farmers, hog farmers and dairy farmers who truly care about their animals. I have toured their farms and seen the care they put into making sure their animals are healthy, safe and secure. However, I have also heard about farmers finding foreign objects in their grain auger, such as a bolt that should have been nowhere near the grain auger system and could have caused damage to the auger, basically crippling the ability to feed the chickens that were on the farm. That is just one example of what farmers believe to be trespassing and attacks on their farms.
Earlier this year, I had the honour of hosting the shadow minister for agriculture in my riding. We did a round table with farmers and members of the agriculture sector. One of the things we heard from those farmers, who were quite open, is something that had not been evident before: their concern for their mental health and their family's mental health.
There are so many stresses placed on our farmers these days. Many of them are carrying mortgages or farm loans to carry on their operations. Those stresses, along with being responsible for supporting their family, meeting deadlines and paying bills, just add to the mental health stress put on these farmers. Also, the added stress of not knowing who might come onto their farms and what they might be doing in the dark of night or at any time not only affects them and their families, but also affects their livelihoods and the animals they care so much about. This added stress was one of the pieces they raised with us about their mental health situation, because they are under so much stress.
These farmers really pay attention to their animals. They know when the animals are stressed, they know when the animals are comfortable and they know when things are not right. It is interesting how birds can be very sensitive to that, and I have experienced it while touring a chicken farm. When I entered the barn, the farmer actually instructed me to move slowly and cautiously so as not to alarm the birds, because it would throw them off their laying cycle and so on.
This reminded me that, a number of years ago, my sister and brother-in-law started an ostrich farm. They were raising ostriches and set up a barn for the hatchlings to grow in. My brother-in-law was doing most of the interaction, with feeding, checking up on the birds and so on. He could walk into that barn at any time dressed any way he chose and the birds were calm and relaxed and would carry on as if nothing was going on. However, if my sister entered that barn, it did not matter whether she put on his clothing, his coveralls or his hat, doing everything to disguise herself as him. There was something that those birds knew instantly, and it would send them basically into a state of stress and they would be running around. Ostriches are very susceptible to leg problems, such as knee joint problems, in their very young stages, so they had to be careful about who went into the barn and when.
The same thing can happen in many situations. We know that dairy farmers for years have played music on the radio. It has a calming effect on the animals in the barn. Having strangers come onto a farm for nefarious reasons or to ignore the biosecurity measures that have been put in place is something that needs to be addressed in legislation and law.
There is so much at stake with farmers across this country feeding not just Canadians but people around the world with the food they produce: the grain, the beef and the chicken products. So many different products feed not just Canadians but people around the world. We need to be certain that those products and that supply chain are stable. I believe this bill would go a long way toward making sure there is no disruption in that process.
I mentioned biosecurity. When we visit a dairy farm or a chicken farm, we are often expected to change our footwear or to walk through a type of wet bath for our footwear so that any toxins or biohazards on the footwear are cleaned off by the product in there. People going in without authorization would not be doing that. They could put that entire farm and neighbouring farms at risk if they are not there for the right reasons with the right authorizations.
As I mentioned, we have heard of farmers who have found potential damage to their equipment. We have had, in my hometown of Salmon Arm, protesters trying to protest trucks coming into a hog abattoir and blocking the processing of food for Canadians. I do not believe this bill would cover that aspect, but it sends the message that our food production is so important here in Canada that we need to take every step we can to make sure we secure it and keep it safe. I do not think that people who have not been exposed to farm life can understand that.
I think I mentioned that I grew up on a dairy farm. I spent my formative years there learning about taking care of animals. They had to be fed every day. They had to have water every day. They had to have a place of shelter every day. It was not something I could do part time and then just leave until I felt like coming back again. There was responsibility with that, and that responsibility is something that farm life has instilled in so many young people across our country today. However, it is not often understood by people who have not been exposed to farm life.
I hope that many people will listen to the speeches that have gone on about this bill, Bill C-275, which is from my colleague from Foothills. What is such an important piece for people to understand is that farmers, almost 100% of them, want to take care of their livestock. There are the odd bad apples out there and they get found out, but the vast majority of farmers care so much about their livestock that they would put their own health and their own mental health at risk to make sure those animals are fed, to make sure they get water and to make sure they are safe from any threat. This bill would go a long way toward reducing at least one threat to the animals and to the farmers' livelihoods and would improve their mental health, as they would not have to worry quite so much about the possibility of someone coming onto their farm without authorization.
I want to thank my fellow colleague, the member for Foothills, for putting this bill forward. It is an excellent bill and I look forward to supporting it.
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