44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 3, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, we all know here in the House that climate change is real and that it is happening. However, when the bill first came up, another external event was COVID.
I met a farmer in the riding, and at the beginning of COVID, everyone was worried about getting paid. He came to me saying, “Scot, I don't think I'm going to plant my field this year because I'm worried about getting paid.” He said, “Look, Scott, I'm not asking for any handout from the government. I'm just looking to get paid for the produce I sell.”
Thinking about selling to a distributor, whoever that is, and not getting paid, he said, “Scot, it's $2 million to plant my field. I can sit at home and just pay the taxes and not worry about it.”
I said, “Don't do that because that's going to lead to higher food costs for Canadians and all kinds of pressures for Canadians.” That is just a little bit of background on how the bill evolved.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for York—Simcoe for this bill and for his speech. The Liberal government members just congratulated my colleague for his leadership on this issue. However, the bill before us responds to a request from the sector that dates back to 2014. This Liberal government has been in power for eight years, but, all of a sudden, it is applauding this measure. Why does my colleague think this was not done earlier?
It took a minority government, with a bill from an opposition MP, for this to start moving forward. What happened on the Liberal side?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and the Bloc for supporting this bill, along with my Liberal colleagues. It took so long to support this, but I think we are talking about it more and more.
I picked up the Liberal budget that came out last fall and leafed through it and thought that it must be missing pages because there was no vision for the country. I believe that agriculture in Canada should be number one. I know that my colleagues in the Bloc believe that. I think the party opposite on the government side here is finally, with this bill, waking up to how important agriculture is across this great country, and we have to be pushing every day for the people who are out working in the fields. Members can come to Bradford West Gwillimbury any time and look at the hands on these people who are out grinding it out every day.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for York—Simcoe for the bill. It is clearly important that we establish this kind of financial protection for our fruit and vegetable growers.
In the agriculture committee, we learned during a recent study that oil and gas profits had climbed by over 1,000% over the last three years. Would my hon. colleague agree with me that changing the law in this way and offering fresh fruit and vegetable growers this kind of financial protection would help them stand up against the price gouging that oil companies are putting on citizens of Canada?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that, and I thank the NDP for supporting this bill. I would love to see my Liberal colleagues on the other side here unanimously consent it right to the Senate tonight.
This bill is so important to fresh produce farmers. We have been talking about this since 2014. We were all elected here to get things done for our constituents. We have an opportunity tonight, and I turn it over to my Liberal colleagues now.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House to discuss and debate a bill, especially a private member's bill. That is precisely why we are here this evening. We are debating Bill C‑280, a very important bill for our farmers, especially for fruit and vegetable growers.
I believe that our agriculture and agri-food sector was very important to all Canadians before the pandemic, but it has become even more important since the pandemic. We think it is important to reinforce the supply chain, and bring in new investments and initiatives for our producers. Bill C‑280 is certainly the type of initiative that can ensure their success.
Before I go too much further, I would like to thank and congratulate the hon. member for York—Simcoe for helping to shepherd this bill through the House.
As I had the privilege of reporting this bill back before it came to third reading in debate, I know this is a bill that is supported unanimously in the House. This is an initiative that came back from the agriculture committee with no amendments and was widely supported. I would like to not only, of course, recognize the member for York—Simcoe, but also recognize that there are many members of the House, in fact, all of us, who believe in this initiative.
I would be remiss without talking about the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, the parliamentary secretary to agriculture, who has been on the record for supporting these types of initiatives. The member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford in British Columbia has also been a strong champion. Any time we had a report where he could reasonably try to find a way to get “deemed trust”, which were the words that we were using, he would make sure they were included in the report. I would say that all sides of the House see the initiative. I send my congratulations to the member for York—Simcoe for bringing it forward.
For those Canadians who are at home, perhaps watching and asking what Bill C-280 is, and wondering what these guys and gals are talking about in Parliament, this is about creating a priority under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to allow farmers who are shipping product to buyers who become insolvent to have a superpriority to be able to claim.
I think back to my days at Dalhousie law school when we start talking about priority under provincial legislation. It is when one lines up and tries to reclaim some of what one is owed from the particular buyer or creditor who is required to be paid.
It is very difficult, when one is talking about a perishable product, for that product to actually be claimed. It is not like it is a sack of potatoes, although even potatoes are perishable, but this is not something like grain, something that can be recovered and come back to the supplier to be resold or recaptured for the economic value.
The member for York—Simcoe talked about the fact that not only could a perishable product be perishable, it could also be transformed into a different type of product. One thinks about fresh strawberries that are then sliced and put into different fruit salads and things of that nature. It is impossible for our farmers who are selling that product to actually be able to, under the existing legislation, recoup the economic value associated with that.
This is a type of legislation that has no cost. This is not going to cost the Government of Canada one single cent. This is about creating legislative change that prioritizes and empowers farmers to be able to support themselves.
I want to give members an example. The member opposite, of course, talks about the salad bowl of Canada. I do not know if we have the same connotation in the Annapolis Valley, but let me tell members, between our apple producers and our horticulture producers, I am very proud of the Annapolis Valley in Kings—Hants as a growing region.
I have had the opportunity to talk to the farmers about what this type of deemed trust legislation would mean. I will give an example. Andy Vermeulen, a farmer from Canning, Nova Scotia, sells a variety of vegetables. He would normally look to Atlantic Canada, or maybe Ontario or Quebec, but he also ships to New England.
The hon. member for York—Simcoe talked about the fact that there is no alignment right now between the dispute resolution that is available to the American producers and the Canadian producers who are selling into that market because we do not have an equivalent type of legislation. That is being proposed here in Bill C-280.
This would allow our farmers to have the same access to those tools, such that if Andy Vermeulen sends his product to Boston, he would have some recourse if the seller went bankrupt or does not pay. It would give further teeth to our farmers to be able to re-collect the money that is owed to them.
With the cost of living and higher costs, including for fuel, fertilizer and materials, it is very important to find a way to help our farmers financially.
This is something that can ensure we have some financial protection. It does not come with a large cost. In fact, there is no cost to the treasury.
I think this is going to be something that is supported by farmers across the country. I will give the example from Nova Scotia. I am sure for my colleagues from Quebec, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, and everywhere in between, this makes sense. That is exactly why we can see that every member of the House is supporting it here today.
The last thing I want to say is that I think there are more opportunities for this type of thinking. Those of us at the agriculture committee often hear that people would like to see not necessarily new program spending, although those programs are great. I will get to that in a moment about some of the things that I am very proud of that this government has introduced.
Sometimes it is these little legislative tweaks, or a regulatory change here or there, that really empower farmers and our agricultural community to continue to do the amazing work they have been doing. The member for York—Simcoe talked about the hardened hands of the men and women who do really important work, and the fact that we need farmers three times a day. I think those are extremely powerful words, which I would second.
We should all be thinking about little measures that we can do, especially in the environment right now. The Minister of Finance has signalled this. The President of the Treasury Board has talked about program review and government being very smart and wise about how it spends money. I am fully on board with that, but let me also say that there is a lot that can be done on the non-cost side that could make a huge difference. We, all parliamentarians, should be looking at what we can do to build upon Bill C-280 to do even more in the days ahead. It is something that I look forward to exploring with my colleagues at the agriculture committee.
One such idea is the opportunity for an expedited pathway for regulatory approvals around seeds, feeds and crop protection products. I have talked about this at great length, but I will continue to go on the record. I will have, hopefully, even something more to say in a couple of days with this piece of legislation.
There is tremendous opportunity when we look at the applicants who come to either Health Canada, PMRA or the CFIA with existing approvals from what I would call trusted jurisdictions: the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. We know that, if a process was undertaken in one of these jurisdictions, it was science-based and credible. The likelihood of it being approved in Canada is extremely high.
We have to create a model so that, if an applicant arrives at Health Canada in this country and wants to give those tools to our farmers, we can tighten the timelines between when that application is made and when the product can be registered on the basis of using some of the strengths of science in jurisdictions elsewhere. It is a really straightforward policy, and I think it would make a lot of sense. Again, it is another initiative that does not cost money.
I am proud of what this government has done on the agricultural side. I could go into it at great length, but I am proud of what we are all doing as parliamentarians here tonight to advance the interests of Canadian farmers. This bill, of course, has had Liberal support. We look forward to seeing this off to the Senate and hopefully get it into farmers' hands and available as soon as possible.
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Madam Speaker, I feel like starting my speech in a different way. I just heard that the Liberal government is supporting this bill. Everyone is pleased to be pleased, and everything is perfect.
However, we asked if it would be possible to seek unanimous consent to send the bill directly to the Senate. That way, it could move forward and produce growers could finally get some protection when they are not paid for their produce. It seems that some members withheld their consent.
There may be agreement, but some among us plan to take their time. I have a bit of a problem with that, because the request is clear and dates back to 2015. Furthermore, the Liberal government made very definite and public commitments in this file. I mentioned 2015, but the requests started in 2014. During the 2015 elections, the Liberal Prime Minister agreed to fix the problem. Now it is 2023. How is that for efficiency? We will not get far at that rate. For now, people are pleased to be pleased. They support the bill, and good for them, but I would like to see us move forward.
Now I will close that parenthesis and explain what this bill is about. This bill seeks to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act to put vendors of perishable products such as fruits and vegetables at the top of the list. When a perishable product is delivered to a purchaser, the value of the produce is deemed to be held in trust. Why is that necessary? It is necessary because producers of perishable products are in a vulnerable situation. We need to think of every scenario.
Not so long ago, we conducted a study at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri‑Food on inflation at the grocery store. Grocery store CEOs came and swore to us that their profit margins were thin, just 2% or 3%, and that they were still the same. When we asked them to show us a breakdown of their profits, they refused, claiming that they are competitors. They promised to submit these figures to the Competition Bureau during its investigation. When we saw the Competition Bureau report, we discovered that they had not provided the figures.
When produce growers appeared before the committee, they told us they were seeing lettuce worth 99¢ being sold at a discounted price of $2.49, which means it normally costs more than that. I am talking about prices from March, and the situation is even worse today. The grower gets only 99¢, so I think the profit margins are over 2%. The profit margins are above 2% because it is a fresh product.
Negotiations are unbalanced. A purchaser can refuse the stock and say they will go and see another grower who has been negotiating for three or four days. If the grower's warehouse is full of fresh produce and they wait too long, their products will no longer be fresh and appealing. Consumers will not want them, and the grower will not be able to sell them. In that case, they will be forced to give in. This is just one example.
Government officials now agree, and that is good, but they told us for a long time that there were almost no bankruptcy filings and that the bill was therefore unnecessary. The truth is that there were no filings because there were no legal protections. Whenever it became clear that a customer was having trouble paying for merchandise or was on the verge of bankruptcy, arrangements could be made, similar to a kind of liquidation. Sometimes half the price, or even a quarter, would be accepted.
If an out-of-court settlement is not reached and the client goes bankrupt and the business owner does not have any protection, then the business owner would lose 100% of the production value. Business owners therefore end up agreeing in a panic to be paid 25% of the production value. These losses are not included in the statistics. Business owners seem as though they are happy to be paid, but they are receiving only one-quarter of the production value. That is why this is important.
I have a hard time not getting upset about this, because I cannot understand why we have not yet passed such a measure. It would be easy to do, and we have been calling for this kind of measure since 2014. It is now 2023 and there is still no legislation. What is more, it is free. It will not cost the government a cent. What it will cost is to perhaps put fruit and vegetable producers first and bank creditors second. I think maybe that is why some members are hesitating.
There are a lot of discussions going on in the House, Madam Speaker. In fact, for the past little while, I have been speaking indirectly to the very people concerned in this matter. I would like them to listen to my speech.
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- Oct/3/23 6:06:59 p.m.
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Order. It is starting to get a bit noisy in the House.
The sound is starting to come up. If members are not interested in listening to what is being discussed and wish to have conversations, I would ask them to step out.
The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.
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Madam Speaker, I always love it when the people I am talking to appear to be listening, at least.
What I was saying is that it is essential. I challenge anyone here to accept the same working conditions as those people. Rain in the summer brings us down because we cannot go for motorcycle rides or head to the beach. What do they do when it rains? They do building maintenance. They go place orders. They do their paperwork because they do not have time for that when it is nice out. They have to be in the field 14 hours a day because they have no workers. Why do they have no workers? Because the government is so slow at processing foreign worker applications and because governments failed to see the current labour shortage coming.
I would like to say a thing or two about the labour shortage. I was a high school teacher. I was not an internationally renowned scientist. I was a high school geography teacher and, in the early 1990s, I taught my students that we would have a labour shortage now. Nobody did anything to avert that, and now people are stuck in this situation. They have no workers. Locals do not want to get their hands dirty, so people have to find other workers.
These folks are facing a labour shortage. They have to mechanize a lot of the production, and that means thousands if not millions in investments that generate debt. These people are heavily in debt. They called for help in spring and early summer, when torrential rains just about wiped out their harvest. Why did they call for help? They called for help because the crop insurance programs we have, the ones currently in place, the ones that the good old ministers refer us to whenever we ask them a question, do not work. Growers are not being adequately insured because the programs were designed 30 years ago in a more stable climate.
Yes, global warming exists. At the very least, I can tell the House that there is so much climate disruption that the last three years have been a disaster for produce growers. First, there was a drought. Then there were aphids. Why aphids? Because the hot season lasts much longer. The aphids moved further north. As they ran out of soybeans to eat, they moved on to fruits and vegetables. That happened last year. This year, there has been non-stop rain. We broke all-time records, particularly in the Eastern Townships, but just about everywhere in Quebec. It is all over the board. During the same period, there was a drought in Abitibi—Témiscamingue and northern Quebec as we tried to navigate our way through the smoke from the forest fires.
All these things are real. As a society, we are going to have to sit down with these people and discuss how to share the risk factor. We cannot just keep asking growers to put $2 million, $3 million or $4 million into their fields in the spring and get nothing back but us thanking them for feeding us and telling them that if they run into issues, they will need to figure it out on their own. We cannot do that.
I am digressing a bit from the subject of the bill to illustrate the fragility of this sector. I am a bit tired of hearing politicians talk about food sovereignty and how important it is to buy local. For 10 years now, we have been talking about this kind of simple, free measure that will not cost the government a thing, and yet it still has not been done.
I wish there could have been unanimous consent to send the bill to the Senate this evening. I am angry and upset because people who are celebrating and congratulating the member for York—Simcoe on his outstanding leadership, who say they are so happy to be voting this way for farmers, did not give unanimous consent. That means we will have to spend who knows how much more time on this in the House before sending it to the Senate. We also have to hope that place will deal with this efficiently so it can come back here and be made law.
Bills like this can be hard to implement. There are jurisdictional challenges that mean negotiations with other levels of government. That is important. We have to move quickly. Our fresh fruit and vegetable farmers are looking to us. They feed us now, but for how much longer? I think they are going to get sick of it and go find something else to do. Maybe grow field crops. Maybe sell their land. That is what we are up against. Let us pass this bill pronto.
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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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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from York—Simcoe for putting Bill C-280, the financial protection for fresh fruit and vegetable farmers act, forward. It is a very important bill, and it has been a long time coming. I was elected nearly four years ago and we have been talking about this through the last two Parliaments, and I know it was talked about long before then. It is great to see all parties come together to support something that will help our Canadian produce growers, packers and shippers immensely.
During a Zoom call with The Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, I heard that 52% of perishable product sales to U.S. customers from Canadian suppliers await payment from the United States. California producers and suppliers have a similar problem with their Canadian customers. On October 1, 2014, the United States Department of Agriculture revoked preferred treatment for Canadian shippers under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. This was taken in retaliation for an action on the part of Canada with regard to establishing some type of trust protection from bankruptcy for all fresh produce shipped into the U.S. Under that status, Canadian companies did not have to post surety bonds when trying to collect payments from delinquent buyers. No other nation had such status.
Without the special status, a Canadian shipper must now post a bond for twice the amount they are seeking to collect. Taking action to recover $100,000 would require the purchase of a $200,000 bond. Current rules severely limit the ability of produce growers and sellers to collect payment in the event that their buyer declares bankruptcy.
While products like electronics can be reclaimed by the seller, highly perishable produce is lost because of the obvious. It spoils and rots very quickly, costing Canadian and U.S. firms that operate in Canada an average of $19 million per year, but there is a policy solution to this. In 1984, the United States Congress established “deemed trust” provisions through the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, also known as PACA, and that protected shippers in the event their buyer became insolvent. The PACA trust helps suppliers of perishable products ensure prompt payment by buyers.
The trust gives suppliers interest in a debtor's assets. Creating a reciprocal legal framework in Canada by federal statute for a PACA-like “deemed trust” would not draw on federal or provincial public treasuries but would offer Canadian producers and suppliers the means to collect on accounts payable from U.S. customers and give U.S. producers and suppliers the means to collect on accounts payable from Canadian customers.
My colleagues have gone into a lot of the details of this bill and I would like to take a bit of a different approach. I would like to give some personal perspective and a little history of my experience in the fresh produce sector to provide some personal context on how this legislation would benefit growers and shippers.
I grew up on a produce farm. I am a third-generation farmer and my grandparents on both sides of my family were essentially pioneers in the produce industry in the area that I grew up in, which is my hometown of Grand Bend, Ontario. My dad's parents, my Oma and Opa, immigrated from Holland and were one of the first five families to start farming in what is called the Klondike marsh. My mom's parents immigrated to Canada from Poland via Germany and moved to Grand Bend after living in the Chatham area where they first started growing vegetables.
They cleared their land and began farming in the Grand Bend bog, which used to be a shallow lake that was drained to become rich farmland. They grew potatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce and onion sets over the years. Eventually, my dad's parents retired and the family farm that my grandparents started, which now involved two families, took over growing some of the vegetables that my Oma and Opa used to grow. Farmers are innovators, and I would like to give one example from personal experience.
When I was growing up, it would be time to harvest our potatoes and my dad would go out to the field and hand-dig potatoes to see what stage of growth they were at. There are many things that farmers can automate, but this is not one that can be automated. This is still done by farmers putting their hands in the dirt and digging those little nuggets out of the ground by hand. When my dad would do test digs, he would bring all these little potato nuggets home, and we would never waste them. We would cook them up and eat them for supper. I can tell everyone that those were the most absolutely delicious potatoes.
To provide some context, back in the 1980s when I grew up, the CFIA regulations stipulated that undersized potatoes could not be packaged, and so all of those small undersized potatoes that we harvested would either be discarded for cattle feed or put in a compost pile. There was an enormous amount of perfectly good eating potatoes that became food waste because of packaging regulations. There came a point where my mom thought, “Well, jeez, we're always throwing these undersized potatoes out and they're the most delicious thing ever. Why are we doing this when they taste so good?” These little mini nuggets were so delicious that we wanted to share them with everybody else. Our farm made an application to the CFIA asking that we be able to bag these mini potatoes and sell them. So, the mini gourmet potato bag was born, and our family farm became the first farm in Canada to bring mini potatoes to market.
Now, members are probably wondering why the short history lesson on my family farm. Well, I wanted to provide context from the unique perspective that I hold as the only parliamentarian who is still involved in the fresh produce industry and produce farming.
Before my parents retired from farming, their farm was growing over 1,000 acres of potatoes in southwestern Ontario for grocery retailers. To meet grocery store expectations, we also relied on local smaller farms as well as smaller farms from across Canada in different provinces to supply us with Canadian product in our season. If we could not supply the grocery stores with the product they wanted when they wanted it, then they would not even consider us as a farm to be a supplier. However, the grocery stores had to supply year-round, and so we had to grow potatoes around North America in order to keep the supply going to supply grocery stores. We had farms contracted to custom grow for us in California, Florida, Idaho, North Carolina and Michigan. Our packing facility in Grand Bend used to process anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 acres through it per year.
Members can imagine the coordination that it would take to keep everything going when we have farms across North America supplying us. There would be a constant flow of trucks coming back and forth from all over the United States into Canada and from Canada into the States. The potatoes would be coming for us to process and package in our plant so that we could then give Canadians fresh potatoes on the grocery store shelves. We had to do this year round. With bringing upwards of 4,000 acres of fresh potatoes across the border to Canada from the United States every year, members can imagine the dollar value that would be for that product.
However, not only did we pack potatoes from the U.S., we also exported our excess crop during harvest season to the United States. The growing season in the United States is different from Canada's growing season in many parts. Being neighbours, we rely on each other to ensure a fresh food supply year-round. Canadians grow an abundance of fresh, perishable food, far greater than what we consume, and we are blessed to live in a country to be able to do so, but with that comes a huge amount of risk.
In this industry, it is standard practice to be paid 30 to 45 days from the time a product is received. As members can imagine, the shelf life of fresh produce is far less than the payment terms that sellers are working with. The intricacies of our supply chain for fresh food are far greater than anyone could ever imagine. When farmers are exporting millions of dollars in perishable food from the United States without a reciprocal agreement to ensure that they have a mechanism to be paid in the event of a dispute or a bankruptcy, it becomes a risky business. One bad deal or one dispute could literally bankrupt a family farm, especially since most companies could not afford to put up a bond worth double what they are disputing. Produce farmers work on such tight margins that one sale of a quarter of a million dollars or a half million dollars could be three to five tractor-trailer loads of goods to one customer in the States, which they might not get paid for. This could bankrupt a smaller farmer. While this might sound extreme, I have seen this happen to a young farmer first-hand.
In Canada, when there is a dispute between growers and sellers in this country, we have a mechanism to resolve those disputes, but without the deemed trust, we have no mechanism to resolve disputes between growers and sellers in the United States and Canada that is affordable for growers to access.
I am very passionate about this industry, because it has literally been my family's bread and butter my entire life. I have friends across the industry who would welcome this important change, because it would help protect the livelihoods of families, their farms and their businesses. Creating this deemed trust and having that reciprocal agreement with the U.S. would protect farms from having to bear those losses in the event of a dispute.
This will save family farms. I will always fight for Canadian farmers, their livelihoods and their legacies. At a time when food security and food sovereignty are top of mind, this is needed to protect this industry in Canada, and that is why I support this bill on behalf of my constituents and consumers.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today about Bill C-280, a private member's bill introduced by the member for York—Simcoe. Allow me to extend my congratulations to the bill's sponsor on this important work as it aims to protect our fresh produce farmers and sellers who provide Canadians with access to fresh produce for their families.
Bill C-280, an act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (deemed trust – perishable fruits and vegetables), addresses the need for payment protection in the fresh produce industry through insolvency law amendments in cases of buyer bankruptcy, receivership and large commercial restructuring.
The bill would create a special legal mechanism known as a “deemed trust” to pay the unpaid bills of fresh fruit and vegetable sellers ahead of all creditors if a buyer becomes insolvent. The deemed trust would provide important protection in insolvency proceedings to the sellers of fresh fruits and vegetables against unique payment risks faced by the fresh produce industry, such as the perishable nature of fresh produce.
Members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food studied the bill with the assistance of testimony from representatives of the fresh produce industry and the bill was reported back to the House with unanimous support. With our support of Bill C-280, we hope to increase the likelihood that the United States will restore Canada's preferential access to the formal—
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- Oct/3/23 6:28:44 p.m.
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We have a point of order.
The hon. member for Shefford.
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- Oct/3/23 6:28:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize, but I am rising to ensure the safety of the interpreters. They have just indicated that there is a telephone too close to the microphone. I am thinking of them. We know that this can sometimes cause acoustic shocks, so it is important to be careful.
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- Oct/3/23 6:28:57 p.m.
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I do not know if the hon. member's phone is perhaps on her desk.
I will ask the hon. member to move her phone. It may be vibrating at some point, I do not know. There may be some static there.
The hon. member has 30 to 40 seconds before I interrupt her.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Madam Speaker, we hope to increase the likelihood that the United States will restore Canada's preferential access to the formal dispute resolution process under the United States' Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, PACA, which regulates the fresh produce sector and provides financial protection for sellers.
I know I am about to be cut off, but PACA is a U.S. legislative and regulatory regime that regulates the fresh produce industry. I will continue at a later time.
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The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.
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- Oct/3/23 6:30:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians have seen a very tumultuous year when they look at the cornerstone of our democratic system, Canada's Parliament. I found myself going back over the questions that I had put to the government that needed more exposition, further review and another opportunity for the government to answer.
I was speaking with two great members of our team: Leah Young and Jordan Johnston. They do a great job. They are great Canadians. We were a little disappointed when we looked at the series of issues that Canadians had to witness in the news on a daily basis with respect to foreign interference and with respect to a failure to act by the government to address the real and present threats that our country has faced.
The question of the Trudeau Foundation and the foreign influence operation that targeted the Prime Minister through the foundation that bears his family's name is incredibly concerning. It gave rise, of course, to calls and demonstrated the necessity for Canada to have a foreign agent registry. This is a tool that is used by our allies and it is very effective, but there is no tool like it in Canada's tool box right now.
What happened in this particular case? We saw cut-outs acting on behalf of the dictatorship in Beijing give $140,000 to the Trudeau Foundation in an attempt to influence or gain influence with Canada's Prime Minister. This is obviously incredibly concerning. What we saw in that same time period were two occasions where these individuals acting on behalf of the dictatorship in Beijing did get access to the Prime Minister, raising a question for Canadians: Is that the price it is going to cost foreign regimes to get access to our head of government?
The individuals pulled in the Prime Minister's brother. It was the first time in his involvement with that foundation that he was directly linked to donor activity like this, taking in this large six-figure donation. The question about whether or not the influence was effective and whether or not this operation by a foreign government was effective is what undermines Canadians' confidence and creates concern about the health of our democratic institutions.
Therefore, Canadians want to know this from the government, and I am looking to the parliamentary secretary for a response: On what date can Canadians expect to see the foreign agent registry, which is one of the critical tools necessary to help restore Canadians' confidence in our democratic institutions?
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- Oct/3/23 6:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity today to, for the sake of accuracy, remind the House of a few things in response to the hon. member's question.
First, I want to point out that the agreement for the donation in question, to the Trudeau Foundation, which he raises, was made in 2014, prior to the 2015 election. Let us remember that at that time, the Liberals were the third party in standing.
Second, I will remind my hon. colleague of Mr. Alexandre Trudeau's testimony at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on May 3 of this year, in which he stated:
I must insist that there was no foreign interference, no possibility of interference and no intention or means of interference at or through the Trudeau Foundation.
No state or individual ever attempted to influence the Canadian government through the foundation.
We know that foreign interference and attempts by foreign actors to influence Canada's democracy are not new phenomena. That is why combatting potential threats to our democratic systems has been at the heart of our government's priorities, and we have maintained a clear and ongoing commitment to protecting Canadians democracy.
We are aware that threat actors have sought to erode trust in our democratic institutions and stoke tensions about government policies and decisions by targeting politicians, political parties and media outlets. Threat actors do this to influence public opinion and ultimately advance their interests, and that is why our security and intelligence agencies continue to support an integrated government response to those threats. Every day, Canada's security agencies, including the RCMP, undertake the work Canadians expect of them in order to ensure continued protection of Canadians and our democracy. Attempts to interfere in Canada's domestic affairs should not and will not be tolerated. We will continue to protect our sovereignty and our democracy.
On September 7, 2023, the government announced a public inquiry into foreign interference in the federal electoral processes and democratic institutions. This announcement followed extensive consultations and agreements with all political parties represented in the House of Commons. The hon. Justice Marie-Josée Hogue was given a mandate to examine and address foreign interference by China, Russia and other foreign state actors or non-state actors, including any potential impacts on the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Justice Hogue is also mandated to assess the capacity of federal entities to detect, deter and counter foreign interference targeting Canada's democratic processes, and to make any recommendations she deems appropriate to better protect Canada's democratic processes from foreign interference.
I would like to note that the government has, in addition, announced that it supports, as the member has raised, moving forward with a foreign agent registry.
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- Oct/3/23 6:38:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the saying goes that one eats an elephant one bite at a time, and I am happy to hear from the parliamentary secretary that we have convinced the government to take a small bite, but what we need to know is when. When is it going to implement that foreign agent registry?
One needs to be registered in this country to lobby for the food bank, but we do not register, or require registration of, people who are paid by foreign governments and are operating on our soil with the interests of their foreign government, like the dictatorship in Beijing. It took the Liberals the better part of a year, with all kinds of time wasted on their special rapporteur process, to actually name the justice who is going to be responsible for the inquiry into foreign interference.
What I would like from the parliamentary secretary this evening is for her to reassure Canadians. On what date will they introduce legislation for the foreign agent registry?
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