- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Chatham-Kent—Leamington
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $153,134.70
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to the chamber. I do hope that my own voice will last for the 10 minutes I have been allotted.
It is an honour today, especially, because we are talking about Canada and our relationship with Ukraine, specifically about Bill C-57, which addresses a possible trade agreement enhancement. I not only bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, but I also feel an affiliation with Canadians with an ethnic heritage from Ukraine. I put myself in that latter category. All four of my grandparents were born in Ukraine, of Mennonite background, and I have personally visited Ukraine three times. I will come back to that later in my speech. Today I literally wear my heart on my sleeve, as well as on my lapel, and the colours of my suit and tie are meant to signify my solidarity with Ukraine.
Conservatives were the first to successfully negotiate the current CUFTA agreement, brokered by then international trade minister, my colleague, the member for Abbotsford. With the opportunities facilitated by the 2017 CUFTA for Canadian and Ukrainian businesses, Canada-Ukraine bilateral trade reached its highest level ever in 2021, with Canada's merchandise exports to Ukraine totalling $219 million and merchandise imports from Ukraine amounting to well over $200 million.
We want to ensure that Bill C-57 is beneficial for both Ukraine and Canada, especially for Canada. At a time when our world is becoming increasingly unstable, an agreement that is favourable to both of our countries would go a long way toward bringing about much-needed stability to both countries and, of course, to our allies. We are committed to looking at this bill, with its 600 pages of text, and consulting with stakeholders from across Canada to ensure that we do get it right for the benefit of Canadians, including Ukrainian Canadians, and for Ukraine.
Ukraine has always been considered one of the breadbaskets of the world. At a time when so many nations are facing food shortages and food insecurity, there is nothing we would like to see more than Ukraine's reclaiming this title once again. Ukraine has 25% of the world's topsoil. My grandparents farmed there. They came to Canada and they farmed here. I am the third generation to live on the home farm. In my home office, I have a small sample of the topsoil from both my paternal grandparents' home farms.
My first visit to Ukraine was in November 2005, a year after the Orange Revolution. I distinctly remember the drive south from Kyiv with an Australian tomato grower, a friend of mine, Louis Chirnside. It is about a 700-kilometre drive to Nova Kakhovka, the city that has been in the news recently. It is built up the road from Kakhovka, “Nova” meaning new. It was built in the 1950s when the dam was built there, the dam that was recently destroyed on June 6 of this year.
A few hours into the drive, we noticed a trench being dug alongside the highway to facilitate the burying of a cable of some sort. Both Louis and I, coming from farm backgrounds on opposite sides of the world, asked our driver to stop. We got out and looked into the trench, down about four feet. We were looking for the horizon line, the line between topsoil and subsoil. We could not see it. It was pure topsoil. As a youth, I remember the stories of my grandfather Epp who grew up on the banks of the Molochna River. He used to say that if a horse passed away, it could be buried standing in their backyard with six feet of topsoil over its head. He was also prone to exaggeration, a quality that was not passed down genetically. Ukraine does have the natural resources in place, if the conditions are right, to return to being the breadbasket of Europe.
In July, 2022, there was a glimpse of hope on the horizon when Russia signed on to the Black Sea grain initiative. The first ships left Ukrainian ports on August 1, 2022, making over 1,000 voyages from Ukraine's Black Sea ports and exporting over 32 million metric tons of Ukrainian-produced corn, wheat, sunflower oil, barley, rapeseed, soybeans and other products. It was successful for almost a year, until its termination on July 23, a year later almost to the day. Russia announced its intention to exit this agreement. Upon withdrawing from the deal, the Russian foreign ministry provided a lengthy justification for its decision that included criticisms of the implementation of the agreement and its impacts on global food security.
The free world saw this for what it was: an attempt by Russia to exert its control and dominance over the rest of the global community by creating food insecurity and further dependence upon Russia. According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, ironically, Russia is also accused of having stolen nearly 6 million metric tons of Ukrainian wheat and selling it as Russian product. Interestingly, the contribution of agriculture to Russia's GDP increased by 22% from 2021 to 2022. That is according to World Bank data. I wonder how that happened.
The impacts of the BSGI were global and helped to ease the world's food crisis. In addition, this initiative allowed the easing of global grain prices, which hit an all-time high in March 2022, in response to the invasion. Under the deal, the UN World Food Programme, the WFP, was able to export 80% of its wheat purchases from Ukraine, shipping over 725,000 metric tons of wheat to alleviate food insecurity in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Earlier I referenced my three personal visits to Ukraine. My first, in 2005, was actually at the invitation of a company that had established a mayonnaise and ketchup factory in Nova Kakhovka. It is called Chumak. I was invited, along with my Australian friend, Louis, and a Scotsman processing tomatoes in Turkey, as part of a benchmarking exercise to compare the growing Ukrainian tomato-processing industry to the rest of the world, to compare its competitiveness.
Our host company was founded in the early 1990s, after the Berlin Wall fell and Ukraine became independent. Within a decade, many fledgling industries, once opened to capitalism, were growing rapidly, including processed tomato production. Ukrainians were reaching out to the world, to their allies for tech transfer. Canada and Ukraine in particular have two broad sectors where we should be natural partners: agriculture and agri-food and our natural resources.
Let me be clear. In order for Conservatives to agree to this legislation, it would have to be reciprocally beneficial for both Canada and Ukraine. The deal would have to allow both countries to be profitable, and the advantages would have to be for both countries as well. Conservatives would like to see the exports of our abundant natural resources, such as LNG, to Europe, including Ukraine, to break the European dependence on Russian energy and the subsequent consequences for world peace.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and the Liberal government do not seem to agree with that sentiment. If Canada truly wanted to make an impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, exporting our LNG, to replace coal and Russian-sourced energy, would top the list.
When the Prime Minister took office, there were 15 proposals for natural gas export terminals on his desk. Not one has been completed. This is just one more example of the government's failure to get major projects built, when the world needs LNG. Again, I restate that Canada should continue looking for ways to use our economic strengths to support the Ukrainian people, including by exporting our LNG to break European dependence.
The world needs the energy security Canada can supply. Now, more than ever in our history, the world needs Canadian LNG. Only Canada's Conservatives are focused on securing energy security for our allies and restoring the faith in our nation as a trusted partner on the world stage. As we did in 2017, Conservatives will always work to ensure that trade agreements are in the interest of Canada and of all Canadians. By working closely with our stakeholders across the country, we will get feedback on this legislation. We believe in supporting our Ukrainian allies in all ways, including trade. Again, we will ensure that this deal is jointly beneficial. I cannot say that enough times.
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- Oct/23/23 2:05:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight long years, the NDP-Liberal government creates so many questions for Canadians. Canadians question the charade of a 12-month price freeze that retailers have imposed on producers, which will only see major price increases later. This was done just so the Prime Minister can put this problem off until after the next election. Canadians want to know how these suppliers absorb the increase in the carbon tax applied at every step of the food value chain. How do producers absorb the costs of higher interest rates and un-thought-through label and inspection charges imposed by the CFIA? Why is the government allowing a price ceiling to be imposed by retailers on suppliers, which are forced to absorb these costs? Why not instead remove or reduce the costs? The Prime Minister is all hat and no cattle; he is not worth the cost.
Canadians want to know, and Canadians want the Prime Minister to go.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise to bring the voices from Chatham-Kent—Leamington to the chamber.
When I started farming professionally some three and a half decades ago, I am not sure if I would have personally supported a measure like the one we are debating today. I would have thought it unnecessary.
I live on a home farm, and I am a third-generation farmer. When my father began farming, everyone was either from the farm, had an uncle on the farm or had a personal farm connection. Today, it is much different.
We often hear of the 80-20 scenario, where 80% of a product or service is delivered by just 20% of a population, those who are providing that service. With food production, farming in particular, if we go back and look at census data, 2% of our Canadian population are farmers. Under the census, that means they produce more than 7,000 dollars' worth of farmed goods per year. In reality, half of 1% of our farmers produce 85% of the production grown on our farms.
If we look in the chamber, there are 338 members. With table officers and others, there are around 400 people on a full day. The means two people would be the represented population.
I do celebrate this day and the opportunity to speak because it provides us an opportunity to educate people and talk about local food. More importantly, we can talk about the whole food chain.
I want to credit Senator Black for his leadership in the Senate and my colleague from Perth—Wellington for shepherding it through this chamber. I also want to credit Anita Stewart from Wellington County who pioneered the first Food Day.
The member for Perth—Wellington said in his speech about a month ago, “Since that first Food Day in 2003, it has indeed grown into a wonderful celebration of the food our farmers grow and the food that all Canadians enjoy every single day, whether at their kitchen tables or at restaurant tables across the country.” I add my voice to that celebration and that encouragement of local production.
I live in a part of the world where we have access to fresh fruits and vegetables produced locally almost 10 months, or even more than 10 months, a year, depending on the vegetable, because of our innovative greenhouse sector.
Our roadside markets are plentiful, with direct lines from the producer to the consumer, which is great. However, for much of Canada, roadside markets are not accessible all year round, especially in the winter. We all know winter is coming.
Canada is a trading nation. We produce so many good foods, but our coffee production and our orange juice production is not top-notch. We do not have access to it and, as Canadians, we cannot eat all the wheat, canola or pork we produce. We are a trading nation. We rely on food chain systems, both here in Canada, for our own domestic production, be it at our kitchen tables or at restaurants, and with our international trade.
I wanted to say that to lead into three points today. The first is that this day offers us an opportunity to enhance food literacy to our general population. We rely on this agri-food value chain to feed us year-round, and because, as I shared earlier, such a small percentage of our population has a true connection to the farm, food literacy has dropped in Canada.
This gives us an opportunity to describe how complex our food system is. Given that it is so complex, and given the times we are in, food is becoming more expensive. September's food inflation rate, year over year, increased 11.4%, and that is growing. Here in Canada compared to much of the world, we are still lucky as Canadians.
In 2020, 11% of our disposable income was spent on food. In 2021, in calculations by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, it was 10.7%. They declare that day one day earlier, on February 8, 2022, when the average Canadian has spent their percentage of disposable income to purchase all the food they needed for the year. I suspect that will be much later in 2023. That is unfortunate for many low-income Canadians.
Why are food costs rising? I can share that the food inflation rate has certainly outstripped general inflation, and yes, the commodity markets are strong. A lot of crops that are negotiated in price relative to the strong commodity markets have also risen at the farm gate. The costs to our farmers have outstripped the prices they have received at the field.
Fertilizer tariffs and shipping costs have sky rocketed. There is an exemption for on-farm gas and diesel, but there is the carbon tax and everything else. There is carbon tax when it is shipped to the farm and on the barns being heated, and the grain is still being dried this year.
I would implore this House to pass Bill C-234. I had the opportunity to speak to it earlier.
Make no mistake. Farmers are conservationists. The fact they need an exemption so they can compete with the rest of the world and reduce the cost of producing food is not a reflection of their ability as conservationists. I could spend a whole 10 minutes just talking about the advances that our farm community has made on that.
I want to touch on another cost driver, labour, which is affecting every sector of our economy. I hear that from our farm community. I want to celebrate the fact that Canada has a temporary foreign worker program. It is critical to so much of our farming sector and is also of great benefit to the host nations from where many of these valuable workers have come. It is one of our best foreign aid mechanisms, and many parts of the world are jealous of this opportunity. Again, I could spend 10 minutes just on that.
Another cost driver is obviously the borrowing costs to finance assets and the growing cost of crops, which is another thing our farmers are facing.
Farmers are often called the first step in our food value chain. This leads me to the third and final point that I wish to make today.
We often hear our food system being described as field to fork, but that is a bit of a misnomer. Farmers are not the first step in our food chain. I note that the bill's title refers to establishing a national food day, not a national farming day. I think it is rightfully titled. As farmers, we have so many suppliers that supply us with our crop inputs and everything from steel to bearings to financing. We are not the first step. I want to acknowledge that. In this food value chain we have in Canada, and actually much of the world, food manufacturers and processors are next, and then it is on to food distribution, whether it be the retail or the food service mechanisms.
We hear two statements being bandied about, “record retailer profits” and “retailer margins are not changing much in percentage terms”, throughout the pandemic. Both those things have been in the news recently. Both of these statements can be true at the same time. Because the pandemic has shifted, somehow much of the food supply has come to our bodies more through home cooking and the grocery retail chains. The volumes being sold through retail have increased and food service has diminished. With increased volumes, even though the margins of our retailers have remained roughly steady within a certain range, between 2% and 4%, the profits have actually increased. Today we are in a state in Canada where we have an opportunity to address some of these mechanisms in our food value chain if we get it right.
What I am talking about is a grocery code of conduct. I had two excellent meetings last week with Restaurants Canada and Food and Beverage Canada. They mentioned labour availability as being their number one issue and talked about the temporary foreign worker program, but that is not where I want to go. Restaurants are telling me the very same things our farmers are experiencing. We have all gone out and noticed that the cost of restaurant meals has also climbed, but their margins are also shrinking because of the cost structures they are experiencing.
A grocery code of conduct actually gives us the opportunity to address some of the behaviours in the food chain, the fines, levies, listing fees, and the like, all those mechanisms that the value of our food production is being transferred from the food processors and manufacturers to the retailers. Manufacturers are spending on administrative costs and keeping an eye on that. Food retailers are spending on administrative costs in that mechanism.
The United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia have all gone down the road of a grocery code of conduct and have actually experienced greater profits throughout the transmission chain of food, the value chain. Most importantly, food costs for consumers have relatively dropped because costs have been stripped out of that system. That is the big point I want to make. Canada has an opportunity to get that right. I want to mention the 10,000 independent grocers across this country that are very critical to our rural fabric.
I know my time is quickly running out. I want to thank the sponsor of this bill.
I would just note that we have inflationary pressures driving up costs. We have an opportunity through a grocer code of conduct to address these inflationary costs.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the chamber and speak on behalf of the residents of Chatham-Kent—Leamington and, indeed, on behalf of agriculture across Canada.
I am also pleased to speak to my colleague from Huron—Bruce's private member's bill, Bill C-234, which affects so many constituents, including our own family farm.
The bill seeks to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act by adding natural gas and propane to the list of qualifying farm fuels, and that is for the purposes of both grain drying and heating and cooling farm buildings.
I did have the opportunity to speak to this bill's predecessor, Bill C-206, in the previous Parliament where it was passed, only to die in the other place when the Prime Minister called the unnecessary election.
Our farmers are the first environmentalists and our farmers are great competitors. They can hold their own against anyone, but not with one arm tied behind their back. They cannot continue to be first-rate environmentalists when they are hamstrung by policies that their competitors do not face.
Before getting into the specifics of this bill, I wish to remark on four different framing points that will outline where I am going.
One, as I just stated, as individuals, farmers are environmentalists by nature and by necessity. The drive to leave the land in a better condition than when they found it is innate to every farmer that I know. Farmers are environmentalists by necessity. It is the condition of their land, the condition of their flocks and of their herd that supplies the farm family with a return on their labour, on their investments and on their inputs, so it is in their own self-interest to leave the vehicle of their own prosperity in better condition for the next generation.
Two, collectively, agriculture has a strong record of reducing its environmental footprint, be it through the adoption of low till or no till; be it through the refinement of working through nutrients, such as through the lens of the 4Rs, putting the right nutrient at the right place at the right time with the right amount; be it through more intensive use of cover cropping or rotational grazing. Farmers have largely done all of this without regulation and without additional taxation or without an additional government-imposed price signal. I will come back to that point in a moment.
Three, agriculture has a strong record of innovation, of adopting new technologies, such as the use of GPS technology on the farm, the use of variable rate technology in seeding and in crop protection products, robotics in our dairy sector, and climate controls and automation in our greenhouse sector. Believe me, as soon as a viable commercial alternative to fossil fuels is available in rural Canada, farmers will adopt it and quickly, without the stick or a price signal embedded in a tax. That leads me to my final framing point.
Four, by and large, farmers are price takers. They cannot effectively pass along cost-input increases to their buyers.
Let these four points set the stage for my remarks on Bill C-234. When we initially debated its predecessor, Bill C-206, the harvest from hell in 2019 had just occurred in western Canada. That really demonstrated the need for this carbon tax exemption. It was a particularly wet fall where, with frost and rainfall, et cetera, interrupting the harvest, the use of natural gas and propane was required to put the grain into a storable condition.
Farming in Ontario and in eastern Canada requires the use of grain dryers each and every year, particularly for grain corn, but also for soybeans, wheat, canola, oats, et cetera.
When we studied Bill C-206 in the previous Parliament at committee, we did look at alternatives to fossil fuels. In many parts of our economy, electrification is a potential alternative, but given the obvious nature of agriculture being situated in rural Canada and the lack of our grid capacity, this is simply a non-starter.
We also looked at a second option, and that was the use of crop residues as a fuel source. That means gathering them after harvest and then burning them in heaters. While there are some prototypes being trialed, they are simply not available at scale.
Even more problematic with this approach, crop residues are incorporated into the soil or are left on the surface, and they become organic matter for our soils. They sequester carbon and they increase soil organic matter levels, which help both with crop production and our climate goals.
The voluntary adoption of reduced or eliminated tillage provided improvements in soil moisture retention, a reduction of soil erosion and, of course, an increase in carbon sequestration, all without the imposition of a tax. This is something that was not acknowledged in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act.
It does not make sense to apply a tax to reverse the environmental improvements that the farmers put in place voluntarily. However, the question remains, does it make any sense at all to apply such a tax on fossil fuels to increase the agricultural community's focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels? The answer to that is no, for several reasons.
There simply are not commercially viable, scalable alternatives to using natural gas and propane available today, but because there are not viable alternatives, the demand for fuel tends to remain unaffected by price. That makes these additional fuel charges simply an additional tax and an inefficient policy to lower carbon emissions. This very fact was confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The recent budget, which has been alluded to in other speeches here this evening, did put some more funds into the agricultural clean technology fund to upgrade present drying systems to a higher efficiency, but these funds only have the potential to update 500 of the 50,000 grain dryers across Canada. That is 1% of them.
Also, as opposed to granting an exemption from paying the carbon tax, they have proposed in Bill C-8 a rebate program to maintain, in their words, a “price signal” to the farm community to change their ways even though there are no viable alternatives.
I explored with several of my constituents the impact of these two approaches. My riding is a large rectangle and in the northeastern corner, Ron and Francine Verhelle farm with their family. This past year, they needed 89,670 litres of propane to dry their almost 7,000 tonnes of corn. They paid over $5,550 in carbon tax. If the 2022 conditions on their farm are the same, they are anticipating that cost to go up to almost $7,000 this year. Under the Liberal plan, the eligible farm costs on their farm would have to be over $3.2 million using the planned $1.73 per thousand in eligible farm expenses in order for that rebate to recoup their carbon tax cost. Farm input costs are definitely skyrocketing, but fortunately they will not be that high or no farmer will be in business this coming year.
Paul Tiessen and his family farm just down the road from my home farm. They are a third generation grain farm and their total natural gas bill for 2021 to dry 107,000 bushels, or just over 2,900 tonnes, of corn this past year was $10,010, of which almost $2,500 was a carbon tax. Under the Liberal proposal that would have been in place for 2021 rebating back $1.47 per thousand in expenses, they would only get a fraction of their carbon tax cost returns from this past crop.
My final point is simply to call for basic fairness in the marketplace. Our Canadian grain competes directly with American grain. It is priced off of the Chicago Board of Trade. No customer of grain will pay more for Canadian grain because it incurs a carbon tax, not if they can source it from the Americans.
The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act did exempt gasoline and diesel fuel on the farm for this very reason and Bill C-234 is looking to correct the oversight regarding natural gas and propane for grain drying and barn heating and cooling.
Surely if the government cannot control its spending ways, it does not have to use farmers' bank accounts as a cashflow mechanism to finance its own spending. Making farmers pay this carbon tax in the fall and then having them file their taxes the following spring to apply for a rebate, all that does is return a portion of their costs plus now incurring all the administrative costs on the farm and the administrative burden on government to manage this program.
In fact, this past budget estimated that cost for the government alone to be $30 million. What does that do? All that does is serve to increase the size of government and not add any additional value to our climate goals.
In conclusion, I would again urge all members of the House to support passing a bill that removes the potential of being at cross purposes for lower greenhouse gas emissions. Please support the removal of a tax where the users have absolutely no viable options and please support basic inherent market fairness.
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