- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Chatham-Kent—Leamington
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $153,134.70
- Government Page
- May/28/24 2:56:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the hunger and/or homelessness.
Food Banks Canada gives Canada failing grades, as nearly half of Canadians are financially feeling the cost of living increases. Housing costs have doubled. One in four experiences food insecurity. Food bank usage is up 11% in Windsor—Essex; 61% of Canadians are using food banks, and they are the first-time users.
We believe in bringing it home. The tragedy of the current government is that people cannot afford a home, let alone food to put into it. Is this the sunny ways that the Prime Minister promised Canadians?
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- Jun/13/23 2:11:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on the farm there is an expression: When it rains, it pours. While the weather at home is dry right now, farmers are experiencing a metaphorical rainstorm as a result of this government’s continued indifference toward fiscal responsibility. This storm consists of labour shortages; ever-rising interest rates as a result of inflation, which is a result of government deficits; fertilizer tariffs; a lack of homegrown fertilizer, but not from this chamber; and not one but two carbon taxes.
Instead of driving winds onto our fields, this storm is driving food prices up to record levels from coast to coast to coast. The entire food value chain has been impacted, from fuel to move our farm products, through to our input suppliers, retailers, and food packaging, which has seen dramatic cost increases.
Canadian farmers provide us with food security in an insecure world. The least we can do is stop drowning them in a sea of government incompetence.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, and today the voice, hopefully, of many Canadians, to this chamber. I want to begin by thanking Senator Black for bringing forward this bill to acknowledge a food day in Canada. He comes from the other place, and I want to acknowledge my friend and colleague, the member for Perth—Wellington, for shepherding it through this place.
I also want to thank him for some delicious craft beer that resides in my fridge, as he recognized that the Leamington Flyers prevailed over his St. Marys Lincolns in the western conference finals of the junior B hockey league. I also want to acknowledge that last night the Stratford Warriors, also from his riding, tied the series for the Sutherland Cup at 3-3; he and I will continue discussions on that matter later.
However, today is about food and the important place that food has in our lives, both for our physical needs and also for our social needs. It has such a major place as we celebrate with families, as we celebrate occasions and as we celebrate social events. Today, I want to spend most of my time talking about the physical aspect of how food nourishes us.
As previous members have acknowledged, many of us have access to local food, and that is great here in Canada, but the reality is that most of the food that we consume as Canadians comes to us through one of two complex food value chains: It is either food that we purchase at the grocery store, through the retail value chain, or it is through the food service aspect. After a number of us have spoken here to this bill, we will go to the lobbies and enjoy some food prepared here through the chamber. As we celebrate weddings and other social events, we have the food service industry serving us there through our hospitality venues, as well as through our hospitals. That is the other complex food value chain that often supplies us with food.
I am a farmer, and on our farm we have produced many vegetable crops and grain crops. However, I have spent much of my life also involved with the transfer of raw products from our farm to the next step, that second step, as it goes from farmers to food manufacturers or food processors, and then on to retailers, distribution centres or food service companies.
Several generations ago, most people understood the food value chain. What I really like about this bill is that it focuses on our food value chain and it gives us an opportunity to talk about it, so that we all collectively understand where our food comes from. In this chamber, we hear at times debate around supply management, where we talk about open markets or contracts or the spot market or informal alliances. In the general public, I do not think it is that well understood. Why does agriculture not just get together and have one simple way of transferring food or the value of raw product to the next step? Obviously, it is very simple to understand at the local markets or the roadside markets. In my home riding of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, we are blessed with many of them throughout the summer, and with our greenhouse industry, we often have access through many months of the year. However, as I said earlier, most of the food comes to us through a complex web of interrelationships, and that is where I have spent some time off the farm. I will speak a bit to that.
I am a proud Conservative. I sit on this side of the chamber, for now. However, I have also spent 20 years or more collectively bargaining. I am very proud of that, representing producers and their relationships up the value chain. How can I do that? I very much firmly believe in the market mechanism as the most efficient mechanism for transferring value of goods and services, but markets work only when there is a balance of power in the marketplace. Different mechanisms, different structures and at times different regulations are required to provide that balance of power. What I have noticed over my time in the food industry is that there are four factors that actually determine the amount of structure and the style of relationship between producers, farmers and the next step up, be it food manufacturers or processors.
Let us begin with them. The first one is the perishability of the product we are talking about. If we were to talk about the price of a glass of milk, or a tomato, which I have produced, or a bushel of grain, and if we were to sit down across the desk to determine the value and not agree, we might want to come back in two or three weeks' time and talk about the value of those products again. That glass of milk is going to have some problems two weeks later, if it is not properly cared for. The tomato might hang in there and have some value, but it would certainly be reduced. For the bushel of grain, be it wheat, corn, soybeans or canola, if stored properly, we can talk about it in six months, and it would be fine. Therefore, perishability determines the dynamic or the power we have to talk about it. Even with different products, we can talk about beef versus dairy. Both are products that come from bovine species, but they have totally different marketing aspects when it comes to perishability.
A second factor is the complexity of the biology or the complexity of the technology. We can take a dairy herd as an example. A dairy herd takes years to build up to a productive asset, as does an orchard or a vineyard. They are not things one plants in spring and harvests that fall, immediately; it takes time. Therefore, if there are errors, mistakes or marketing challenges, that can really mess with that operation for years.
My farm, Lycoland Farms, is an annual crop producer, so we get a new chance every spring, and we are at the point where we do a fair bit of double cropping, so often we are able to plant two crops a year. That dynamic, the complexity of the biology, determines how much structure and regulation might be required in transferring value.
A third factor is the balance of buyers and sellers, and we have talked a lot about that in this House recently. How many buyers are there for how many sellers? Is it a monopoly or an oligopoly buying, or are there a number of options I can sell to as a producer?
I think of different instances here. The grain markets are becoming more concentrated, but the reality is that I have several elevators I could transfer my corn or soybeans to, and I am not bound to take it to one if we disagree on the local basis levels. I look at our greenhouse industry, a very complex and highly technical industry, and there is a large absence of marketing structures. As they specialize more, they are starting to move toward contracts, but the reality is that in that industry, several years ago, there were over 60 marketing agencies willing to transfer the value of greenhouse product to the retailers, to the market. That has shrunk down somewhat, but there are a number of options. That balance of buyers and sellers, monopolies and oligopolies, plays into how much structure a market needs to function effectively.
Last, there is the international scene. How is agriculture treated in other countries? Canada is a trading nation, so we cannot eat all the wheat we produce or all the pork we produce, and our orange juice production and our coffee production suck. We need to trade, and how other countries treat agriculture is also extremely important in our relationship.
Those four factors, over time, play into how an industry transfers value, and this is largely between the primary producers one step up in the value chain. These factors are not static. Innovation, changes in technology and changes in how other countries interfere with or support their agriculture become very important.
I am reminded of 2008, when the grain markets rose significantly. That actually led to the Arab Spring. When the average consumption of a country's population drops below 1,800 calories per citizen, often civil unrest follows, so countries around the world are interested in their agriculture and their food supply. Food sovereignty is important to every nation in the world, and that plays out in many different ways.
In the few seconds I have left, I just want to touch on two points. First of all, there is a myth that it is field-to-fork that brings the food to our plate. I, as a primary farmer, have so many suppliers. I have relationships with input suppliers, seed suppliers and farm machinery suppliers, so our food value chain extends before the farmers. I do not want to leave anyone with the wrong impression.
In conclusion, the legacy of Anita Stewart from Perth—Wellington is to be honoured, and that is a point of pride for our agriculture communities and for our whole food value system. I am honoured to address that today.
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- Jun/21/22 2:17:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every Canadian and every human being should have access to food.
On June 8, I attended the retirement of Jim Cornelius, the accomplished executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank for over 24 years, five of which overlapped my time with that organization.
Established in 1983, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank has a footprint that can be seen all across Canada in growing projects in farm fields. Local community groups, farmers and church groups dedicate the proceeds of a crop, which are matched by additional Canadian donors and then matched again by the federal government, to efforts to alleviate hunger. My own riding has several such growing projects in Chatham, Leamington, Wheatley, Blenheim and South Buxton, with over 220 across Canada.
Collectively, we were making progress toward ending hunger, but conflicts and war have reversed those improvements. Now, with Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the world needs more Canadian grain, more Canadian energy and more Canadian expertise in food production.
A recent U.S. president stated, “The world needs more Canada.” I agree. Our own security is enhanced when global destabilization does not happen because of global food and energy insecurity.
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- Jun/16/22 8:32:16 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, next week I will give a member's statement acknowledging Jim Cornelius and his role.
Yes, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, with a footprint across Canada in the agricultural community, grows food here, sells it into the market and then uses those funds to acquire food. In my remarks, I just touched on how Canada delinked our food aid to the rest of the parts of the world, so we are not destroying local markets when we source food to address food insecure parts of the world. We actually improve their own markets and lead to more sustainability from that perspective.
That is an area in which the Canadian Foodgrains Bank led by lobbying the Canadian government back in 2008 to delink that aid. We are actually leading the world when it comes to that, certainly in our efforts in the Horn of Africa with conservation agriculture. As I said earlier, things Canadian farmers do almost by nature these days are not done by nature in other parts of the world. Certainly, that is another area the Canadian Foodgrains Bank has been a leader.
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- Jun/16/22 8:23:05 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.
I wish I were speaking more about Canadian food security this evening than speaking about global food insecurity.
Prior to being elected, I farmed for most of my life. I have spent a lot of time in agricultural organizations and I also worked with an internationally focused NGO. It has been mentioned here tonight, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which deals with hunger, and so, with that background, I have spent a lot of time working for food and talking and thinking about it.
If I had to title my remarks today, I would title them with the axiom that we hear at the farm, “nothing cures high prices like high prices”, and its corollary, “nothing cures low prices like low prices”. Ag pundits often cite this expression when they are talking describing volatile agricultural markets, but we might ask ourselves what this has to do with global food insecurity and why should Canadians care.
Embedded in that expression actually lies one of the solutions to this crisis that we are facing, albeit it is a bit more of a longer-term solution, but respecting and understanding market dynamics is something we all need to collectively do. This works if governments and we collectively respect how markets work. High prices of anything, food and any product, encourage more production and increase supply. Low prices encourage demand and eventually high prices. I will come back to this in a moment but with the corollary that governments understand this dynamic.
Let me speak for a second to why Canadians should care. Obviously, we are all experiencing increasing grocery prices and grocery food. Canada is a rich country. On average, we spend about 10% of our disposable income on the cost of food, which is much lower than in many parts of the world. However, the vulnerable in our own society feel the brunt more than many of us.
We know that many problems do not respect international borders. We are dealing with greenhouse gases and climate. That does not respect the border. As we have learned, travel mandates and things like that have not slowed the spread of COVID-19. So too the effects of global hunger in other parts of the world will affect us.
I am reminded that World War II was not declared in 1939 when Hitler crossed boundaries into Poland and Czechoslovakia. World War II came from a conflation of various regional conflicts. Whenever in any part of the world a population's average caloric daily intake falls below 1,800 calories, there is civil unrest, food riots, hunger, all sorts of other problems. Let us think back to the Arab Spring.
It is important to put a few stats on the record. Global food hunger was actually decreasing through 2014. It has been mentioned that conflict around the world has actually been driving those numbers up. It was down to under 600 million people. The latest figures put it at over 800 million, with 50 million people actually facing acute starvation. There are two issues. As I mentioned in a question earlier, the price and availability of food require both short-term and longer-term responses.
To address food instability, food needs to be available. My former employer worked in this space. Certainly, in a short-term response, we do need to supply cash. The Canada Foodgrains Bank led Canada to delinking our food aid back in 2008, which is a good thing, but what we need to do far more is to drive the cost of food down as well.
For that, our Canadian agriculture needs all of the tools at its disposal, certainly fertilizer and access to fertilizer. Restrictions on the use needs to be balanced with our environmental responsibility, but we cannot be putting policies in place today that impact Canadians' ability to produce food.
The carbon tax has been talked about as well. As I said, high prices cure high prices. More supply is attracted by high prices. For the world's poor, we absolutely need to put more food onto the market, which will lower the cost, which is the second possibility.
Let us put our collective efforts toward those aims.
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- Jun/16/22 8:07:15 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, would my colleague agree with the statement that world hunger is being induced by two causes? The one we think of right now is the lack of availability of food and the situation in Ukraine causing or exacerbating that, but the second thing that is causing hunger around the world, particularly in the global south, is simply the cost of food. It is becoming unaffordable in so many places.
I wonder if he has a comment on that dynamic.
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