[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, October 31, 1996
.0937 
[English]
The Chairman: I'd like to call the meeting to order.
[Technical Difficulty - Editor]
It's important to have an opportunity to go out into the communities across rural Canada and talk to the people who are dealing with this issue on a daily basis, and hear some of the challenges and recommendations they have for us as a government, that they feel we should be undertaking to assist in the whole issue of rural development.
I'm pleased to have as our first witness today Barbara Steinwandt from the Manitoba Women's Institute.
Ms Steinwandt, we appreciate your making the journey here, as well as your flexibility in the scheduling.
Ms Barbara Steinwandt (President, Manitoba Women's Institute): On behalf of the Manitoba Women's Institute, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be part of this consultative process.
Marlene asked if we would appear at this process to bring a women's perspective, and that's what we've tried to do in our presentation. As I've only been president of this organization for a couple of months, this is a totally new experience for me, so I hope you will bear with me.
I have some background information on our organization. The Manitoba Women's Institute is a grassroots volunteer organization that began in 1910 to provide education to women and families on a variety of topics, including agriculture, health, home economics and cultural activities. Our organization is non-partisan, non-sectarian and non-profit. It operates under the Manitoba Women's Institute Act of the Manitoba legislature and is administered by the Manitoba Department of Agriculture.
Our mission statement reads: ``Manitoba Women's Institute is a women's organization which focuses on personal development, the family and community action, both locally and globally''. Our organization is a member of the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada and the associated Country Women of the World.
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Our membership numbers in excess of 860, with 58 local branches located throughout the province. Provincial membership has recently been made available to include individuals. Of our members, 95% live in rural Manitoba, with 36% living on farms.
Because of our ties to the farming community and our history of involvement in rural issues, we are naturally concerned about any development that impacts rural Manitoba. As women we tend to look at community or economic development moralistically and consider the ramifications of that development not only on farming but on the community as a whole.
I'd like to reiterate some of points we raised at our recent presentation to the round table meeting on infrastructure and adaptation funding, because these are also very relevant to the natural resources sector. One of the points we raised was that infrastructure funding is essential for rural Manitoba if we are to take advantage of the economic opportunities in our resource sector. I'm referring to infrastructures such as roads, natural gas and water pipelines. In addition, the increased capabilities in the areas of telecommunications and distance education will impact significantly on rural residents.
In today's society, farm spouses - primarily women - are better educated than their predecessors. Both their education and experience have allowed greater exposure to modern telecommunications. Today's farm women are more likely to train for new occupations, qualify for a broader range of employment, prefer long-term employment, and may be more entrepreneurial. Both training and employment programs should reflect these realities and provide flexible arrangements.
Barriers to advanced training needs for rural women may be overcome by offering courses through distance education. Studying at home may help remove the cost of travel and external child care, which are basically related to accessing traditional training and retraining....
[Technical Difficulty - Editor] ...in rural areas of our country are highly talented in various arts and crafts.
Today, where it's available, artists and artisans can, via new technologies, communicate and cooperate in the production and marketing of uniquely Canadian works of art that in many instances utilize natural resources.
On the more directly technical side, where the infrastructure is available, women are and can be increasingly involved in telecommuting for such industries as credit card companies, car rental companies and the like.
It must be noted - I think this is an extremely important point - that urbanized living standards, expectations and values are being progressively adopted by rural residents, and because of this they pursue off-farm work to help realize these economic, personal and familial goals. I think we live in a very mobile society, and because we happen to live in a rural area, that does not preclude us from being part of an urbanized setting. We know what's in the cities and we want the same kind of things.
Manitoba Women's Institute is aware of the trend of adding value to the primary production of our resources or commodities, and if rural citizens are to take advantage of these opportunities, a process must be put in place to provide education and training that will help them fully understand the concept and scope of value-added. Only with that knowledge will the necessary attitudinal changes come about that will perhaps help rural residents see the possibilities in value-added.
While recognizing that there are a multitude of opportunities for adding value to any given resource, communities must be mindful that this type of economic development does not necessarily lessen their dependence upon a single industry or resource, or shield them from the cyclical nature of these primary industries. For example, if a community has a large cereal production, decides to develop a value-added industry for barley and sets up a mini-brewery, this is a value-added process. But what must be realized is that business, for all intents and purposes, is still reliant on the production of barley. It is still reliant on not only the production but also the availability, and it is subject to the pricing of the barley. You have breweries subject to the same cyclical patterns as the production of barley. So have we really cured the problem?
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Effort must be made to achieve a balance when pursuing these economic development initiatives. Equally important is the fact that rural development initiatives must be responsive to local needs and be delivered at a local level in a format that's easily understandable and accessible by grassroots consumers.
With the increased realization of the benefit that value-added contributions such as milling, baking, preserving can make to the economy, the role of women is becoming increasingly recognized in specialty areas and products, thus enhancing the growth of cottage industries throughout rural communities. In 1994 the Rural Development Institute of Brandon University published the Agricultural and Rural Restructuring Group Working Paper Number 7, which had among its components a section entitled The Contribution of Women to Agriculture. Although it does deal with agriculture, I think many of the points raised in it are applicable to all primary industries.
The report stated that social networks and institutions play a crucial role in maintaining and reinforcing agricultural activities. In the same report, the author stated that social support institutions:
- provide a significant resource for community development and a better quality of life. They are
also an important ingredient in the ability of a local community to respond to more general
economic and social changes. This is especially important in current conditions of uncertainty
and change, in order for creative adaptation to take place, people have to know how to inform
themselves, organize themselves and mobilize resources.
In a report entitled Decline or Renewal: Canadian Agriculture and Rural Life at the Crossroads, which was prepared by Dr. Bruno Jean for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture,Dr. Jean lists three guidelines for rural development policy: a recognition of the need for genuine rural development policy that would not simply be an appendage to agricultural policy; a rural development policy that redefines the relationship between cities and rural areas; and a policy negotiated with regional partners in order to adequately reflect different local situations.
A final quote from that report states:
- Part of the answer to the actual challenges of rural development in Canada can therefore be
found in the city.
- Simply put, there must be a willingness to subsidize rural services, if necessary, for the
betterment of our country.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you.
We will begin our questioning with Mr. Asselin.
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[Translation]
Mr. Asselin (Charlevoix): I want to welcome you to our committee. I am the Bloc Québécois member for a constituency in the province of Quebec. Today we are in Manitoba, of course, withMs Cowling who sits on the Natural Resources Committee.
I know that Ms Cowling, who is an M.P. from this beautiful area in Manitoba, has been doing a great job for the last three years, fighting for the interests of the people in her community. This morning, she has invited you to appear before this committee which is deeply concerned with rural development.
On this trip, I have the opportunity to be acting as a substitute for the member for Matapédia - Matane who sits on the standing committee. I would like to have more information on how to have better education for rural Manitoba. Do you have adequate infrastructures to give our young people, who are our future, an education getting them ready for tomorrow's high technology?
Also, are workers given the training they need, right here in the area so that they may have long-term employment, jobs in high- technology industries and jobs in traditional trades?
I would like to know also whether Manitoba women are interested in non-traditional training for jobs that only men used to have. We know that more and more women are going into non-traditional occupations.
All this information leads me to one question and that is whether resources in Manitoba are being used fully.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, may I ask our witness what she is expecting from the federal government, so that this committee can put some recommendations in its report that will enhance quality of life and chances of long-term employment in Manitoba. Thank you.
[English]
Ms Steinwandt: My goodness gracious, that was really quite the question.
With regard to education, first of all, I'm going to start by saying that I am a native urbanite, having lived in Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax. I'm an import to rural lifestyle, so I'm in a situation where I think I can do some comparisons as to whether or not education is being met. It's only just in the last little while that distance education courses have been offered at our community college out of Dauphin. I think it's the route to go. I think distance education is an extremely important fact as far as preparing the young people in the communities is concerned.
It's not always so easy and simple. It's extremely expensive, as a rural parent, to have your child educated in Winnipeg or Brandon or putting them into the urban setting. That's not always a very easy thing to do if you're involved in a primary industry such as agriculture. I think there is a lot to be said for distance education and I think that is the route to go. I think we've brought that out quite clearly in our report and our presentation to you. This is true not only for the youth but for producers in agriculture who want to upgrade their marketing skills. It's a lot easier for them, particularly if they happen to be involved in livestock production as well, to do that within their own home setting.
Of course, women want to be able to be qualified to take on the more technical jobs in today's world. If we don't, we will stagnate. I think that courses and technologies, the infrastructure, have to be in place to make that happen for them.
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[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: You have told us that young people have to go to Winnipeg to get some degrees. I take it you meant college degrees. I would like to know whether those young people who go into cities for training or education in specialized fields tend to stay there and not go back to their rural areas. And if they're not coming back, you can imagine that this exodus is threatening the agricultural industry. Indeed, if a farmer cannot rely on a member of his family to take over, it can be a serious problem.
[English]
Ms Steinwandt: Yes, it is a major concern, but I think what does happen, if I look at our own community, is that our young people do go into the cities for their education. I think Marlene can attest to this. We both live in the same community; as a matter of fact, we live about seven miles down the road from one another.
Of course, many of them stay there because they like what the city has to offer them. But there comes a time when these young people are starting to consider the raising of their families and what they want to be able to provide in the way of secure family lifestyles for them. They then start to gravitate back to rural communities because of the lifestyle we have, because of the community spirit that exists in a lot of rural communities, and a feeling of belonging that perhaps is not necessarily the case in an urban setting.
Yes, we do lose them, and that stands to reason, because they like the amenities of the city. However, in their early thirties they do tend to come back.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Suppose a young man goes away to the city to complete studies in engineering or architecture, will he find work when he comes back to Manitoba after graduating. In effect, he will be tempted to stay in a larger centre where it is easier to find work. It's hard to have control over those things.
[English]
Ms Steinwandt: I would imagine that in the larger centres it does make sense that there would be more availability, but there are such things as branch offices of corporations, and perhaps that's what needs to be looked at.
Larger corporations in that area could perhaps give some consideration to establishing branch offices in smaller communities, not necessarily rural as such but a smaller community such as Brandon where they can access people from the rural areas.
Mr. Chatters (Athabasca): In your brief, you covered a number of areas wherein you saw a need for action. Some of them were education and manpower training, roads, gas pipelines, the infrastructure, and finally, social programs.
When you look at the list the primary responsibility, and sometimes the exclusive responsibility, for the delivery of those things constitutionally belongs to the province. And yet, because the federal government is the primary tax collector in the country, in many of these cases there's been a lot of overlap and duplication in the delivery. There's been a lot of confusion about whose responsibility the delivery would be.
How would you see the delivery of any new initiative coming out of this study or out of the federal government happening? Would you see it happening from the federal government directly through some kind of infrastructure renewal program, or manpower training program, or do you see that delivery more through some local agency, municipal agency or provincial agency? How would you see it happening?
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Ms Steinwandt: Probably, for it to be most effective, you have to take a serious look at partnerships at all levels of government.
In preparing for this presentation today, I did spend some time with our district manager for PFRA. I discussed some of the concepts with her to get a better understanding of this whole process. I hope you gentlemen will appreciate that I've only been here for a couple of months as president, and I'm just starting to learn the ropes on these kinds of things.
I did sit and talk with this district manager. In our consultations, what came out to me was the fact that for rural development to be successful, you really must get down to the roots of it. You really must include the people at the bottom. Instead of having it fed from the top down, it has to be a two-way street. Perhaps that may best be accomplished through partnership.
I'm sorry I don't have the expertise to be able to say to you people how it should be done. Communication is a two-way street. I think that's basically what we're dealing with. The people in the rural communities and the people at that level of government work with you people all the way up, and maybe that's the way it will be achieved and be most successful.
Mr. Chatters: You mentioned PFRA. Of course, all the across western Canada, at least, we have these economic development committees at the local and municipal levels springing up everywhere. They have a mandate to explore ways to encourage economic development. That is very local.
Then we have, as you mentioned, the PFRA, which is simply a federal agency and a program delivering programs directly to the community. Do you see that working? Do you see a need for amalgamation and perhaps a single window of delivery through perhaps some of these local agencies?
Ms Steinwandt: If you're looking to do away with the overlapping that seems to be evident, and even to someone such as myself.... It does exist. There are federal and provincial programs all basically addressing the same thing, but you don't really know which one to access. So there is an overlapping of services. If the attempt is being done to better and more efficiently deliver services, then yes, maybe there is to be an amalgamation, but I think that amalgamation has to be not fed directly from the top.
I'm even looking at our own organization. Sometimes it's very difficult for people at the bottom to respond positively if everything is fed from the top down. There's a feeling of imposition. So it's a partnership, I think, or an amalgamation, and working together is the route to go.
Mr. Chatters: I have one final question. It was suggested in the hearings yesterday, I think, by the chairman that there are a number of options for delivery. I believe one of his options was simply a transfer of funding from the federal government to the local group with provisions for transparency and accountability built into them. Would you see that as the desirable way to deliver programs?
Ms Steinwandt: Funding definitely has to be there, but I also think guidelines need to be there. You can have all the dollars, but if there aren't ideas and guidelines and perhaps a helpful way of educating and informing, then all the dollars in the world aren't going to work, I don't think.
Maybe I don't understand your question.
Mr. Chatters: How can you have federal guidelines and deliver a program locally to meet local needs?
Ms Steinwandt: You consult with the people at the bottom to find out what it is. From what I can gather, that is part and parcel of what this process is all about. You have to consult with the people at the bottom.
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The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Mrs. Cowling.
Mrs. Cowling (Dauphin - Swan River): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Barbara, if there's one thing you would like this committee to take back for when we prepare our full package, what would that be? What would be the focus or the priority you would like us to take back?
Ms Steinwandt: I'm thinking of one thing that is so necessary. I don't know whether I'm speaking on behalf of the organization or just myself as a resident of a rural part of the province. I stop and think for a minute about the impetus that Keystone Agricultural Producers has been putting on to come up with television advertising to show people the benefits of agriculture and how important it is to the overall picture and the overall economy.
I was born and brought up in the city, so I know both sides of the coin. I know that when I was living in the city, I couldn't say that I necessarily had a very positive opinion of rural dwellers. Now I'm on the other side of the coin, and I think there has to be an educational process done for urban dwellers about the value to this entire country of rural areas. Whether this is done through an advertising campaign or by those vignettes on television that have been out, I think it's a very important thing.
It's one thing to educate the rural dwellers about the benefits of rural life. We know that. We also know the things that are not so good about it. But it's quite another thing to let urban dwellers know that this whole country cannot exist within the boundaries of a few cities.
Mrs. Cowling: Mr. Chairman, I would think that what the witness is likely saying is that we should be promoting the economic growth of rural Canada, which leads me to my next question: who should be doing that? Should it be organizations such as yours, or rural residents? Or should it come from other levels?
Ms Steinwandt: Again, Marlene, I think it has to be a partnership. It's fine for us as rural residents to tell the world our story, but we have to have some assistance to do it. Is it financial assistance or assistance in the way of expertise of how to go about this? It's probably a combination of both.
But I have faith in the fact that some urban people, if they really knew about rural lifestyles, would even want to come out to join us. Maybe that's a big part of rural economic development, gentlemen, and Marlene.
Mrs. Cowling: Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Serré.
Mr. Serré (Timiskaming - French River): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your presentation. I think it's concise and precise, and you've made some specific recommendations. Quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned, I think it's one of the best presentations we've had so far.
You mentioned in your brief that infrastructure funding is essential for rural Manitoba and, I take it, for rural Canada as a whole. Would you favour a repeat or an extension of the last national infrastructure program? If so, would you have any suggestions or changes that you would like to see in the way it is delivered?
Ms Steinwandt: I'm going to be quite honest with you when I say that I think that's a little bit beyond my understanding. I'll make a point if I may.
The community I live in just received private telephone lines last December. I lived in that community for 20 years. On a party line, how can I possibly have fax machines? How can I have access to cable? How can I have access maybe even to computers? That only happened last December.
When I tell my relatives in the city that I only got a private telephone.... That service was available, but for an astronomical amount of money. Quite frankly, speaking for myself, our farming operation wasn't in a position to be able to pay that kind of money yearly to have a private telephone.
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I know I'm probably not answering your question but I am saying it's coming, it's gradually coming. I live 13 miles from the town of Grand View. In the town of Grand View cable television is available. We cannot get cable television 13 miles down the road. So that's the kind of infrastructure - not that I want 13 channels to watch television. That's not the point. The point is that there are other very vital services that are available and accessible when you have the cable structure in the community.
I hope that helped.
Mr. Serré: Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Wood.
Mr. Wood (Nipissing): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I noticed in your presentation that you talked about value-added as an economic development tool. In your mind, in your opinion, are the skills of local workers and entrepreneurs sufficient in rural areas to allow maybe a large-scale value-added processing? You mentioned a couple of things that could happen. In your mind, is there the expertise in rural Canada to carry that out?
Ms Steinwandt: I think it's getting there, Mr. Wood, but I've thought about this and I wonder whether I really understand value-added. I think we understand the surface of it. We kind of know what it means. It means to take the wheat that we produce and, instead of shipping it out, do something with it. I really wonder whether a lot of people understand how to go about value-added. Do we really understand the whole concept of it - and I think we brought that out in our report - in terms of the scope of what is out there?
When I was driving up this morning I was thinking about that very thing. Down in the Russell area there is a young woman who started a milling business, Linda Pizzey. They produced their flax and she had the foresight to see that by perhaps grinding that flax, turning it into flax flour, she was able to generate off-farm income but stay on the farm. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be a wonderful idea if someone like Linda who has been there, done that, were put into a consultative situation where she would be able to go around to communities and say this is the thought she had and this is what she had to do to get it to where it is.
I think it's one thing for us to know about it, but it's quite another thing to know how to go about it. And I don't know that this is necessarily there. It's coming, but I think -
Mr. Wood: You need some kind of tool to get the message out.
Ms Steinwandt: I think so. I realize there is a lot of printed material on it, but it's quite a different thing to sit down and read about it from what it is to talk with someone who has actually succeeded in it and who knows how to go about it.
Mr. Wood: Do you think the government should be in a position to offer ladies like Linda tax incentives or anything like that to stimulate her entrepreneurial aspirations? Do you think the government could get into some kind of a program where they encouraged people like the lady you just mentioned to do that, because I think that's what is going to be needed in rural communities. People are going to have to take advantage and think of all the other things that can be made or sold or are an offshoot of what you were just saying.
Ms Steinwandt: I think that's part of it. I'm thinking of myself. If I wanted to start and do some value-added from our operation, I don't know that I really know where to tap into the information, how to find out about going about the whole thing. Maybe that's what needs to be there. I think the how-to-do-it kind of approach is coming, whether that's tax incentives or whether it's hiring people such as Mrs. Pizzey who have succeeded - -there are others, not only women but men also - perhaps making them available on a contract basis, to go around to communities for one year and set up, not necessarily workshops, but informational things on how to go about finding where the resources are available and so on.
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In terms of how to form a business plan, how many people really know how to do a feasibility study, how to form a business plan? I think people often get the idea that they should start a business. The first thing you do is you discover whether or not there's a market for your business. If there's no market for it, save your time and energy.
I don't know that people know how to go about doing feasibility studies, how to set up business plans, how to take it from there and do the research first. I think that's an extremely important point. It's an educational process. How you go about it, I'm sorry I don't really know. But I think it's a very definite need.
Mr. Wood: Thank you.
Mr. Bélair (Cochrane - Superior): I want to follow up on what Mr. Wood has just asked and be more specific. In terms of what you just said about the business plan and counselling services, all those things are readily available within the western diversification program as well as the Farm Credit Corporation. My simple question would be, have you made use of these two programs?
Ms Steinwandt: I haven't personally because I am employed -
Mr. Bélair: But are you aware of that funding? You were talking about -
Ms Steinwandt: No. Quite truthfully, I don't know that I really am, and I think maybe that's what the problem is. These things are available.
Mr. Bélair: Yes, they are.
Ms Steinwandt: But do you tell the story? Is it a well-known fact, is it really made available to people?
It is if you deal with the Farm Credit Corporation and you're in the Farm Credit Corporation's offices. They'll tell you that, but if you don't deal with the Farm Credit Corporation, or you don't deal with and have not been involved in western diversification, would you really know that it's a starting point?
Mr. Bélair: Yes, it is.
Ms Steinwandt: It is, but I think there has to be a dissemination of that information in terms of its being available and where you can find it.
Mr. Bélair: Obviously there is a communications problem.
Ms Steinwandt: I think so.
Mr. Bélair: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Barbara. We very much appreciate the testimony. As you can see from the large number of questions, you sparked a lot of interest. We appreciate your taking the time, energy and effort to make the drive here.
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The Chairman: Perhaps we could come back to order, please.
We're pleased to have as witnesses Ron Clement and Rob Bruce-Barron from the Russell Group.
Welcome, gentlemen. Please proceed with your presentation. We'll follow that with questions.
Mr. Rob Bruce-Barron (Russell Group): Thank you and good morning. We're pleased to have an opportunity to present to you.
We're going to talk about bioregional tourism development as tools to better balance the more diversified rural and remote economies. They're not necessarily one and the same thing. There are some key words up there that we want you to notice before Ron talks to you about some of the developments over the last 17 months.
The first are bioregional - we want you to take careful notice of that as it's somewhat new - and sustainable tourism. There has been a lot of talk about sustainability over the last three or four years, but unfortunately not a lot of comprehension.
In the 10 minutes we have allotted, we're going to give you a quick definition of tourism. Then we're going to give you a definition of bioregion, and then a definition of bioregional tourism development, and then an explanation of what has occurred in the Russell and bioregional areas over the last 17 months.
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As we said, tourism contributes to more diversified and balanced economies. Please understand that where we're coming from is from a community economic development base. We don't come from a tourism top-down base of just saying that we're going to have tourism.
The other key words in here are ``select tourism initiatives'', and I'm sure those of you who are politically oriented will be very pleased to hear that. That combines travel with tourism; as you can see, travellers who travel to a community for any purpose - it's not complicated - vacationing, business, personal trip, passing through, meetings, visiting friends and relatives. This gives you a bit of an idea of what the community is looking for.
Community tourism may be defined as a collection of businesses, attractions and resources that have the collective drawing power to attract people to communities and, in so doing, generate continuous sales of goods and services for those same tourists in the community.
In ecotourism the precept is that as much money as possible not only arrives at the community but stays there, and in setting policy you have to be very sure you take that into consideration.
For those of you who are not familiar with the term ``bioregion'', it's somewhat newer but just as real as sustainability, and it is interrelated: land, plants and animals, springs, rivers, lakes, groundwater and oceans, air, family, friends and neighbours, community, native traditions/indigenous traditions, indigenous systems of production and trade.
The watershed element is key and almost always the single catalyst for the development of bioregional initiatives. If we talk where Russell is ensconced, just taking a single community, in the bioregional communities we're going to talk about, we're almost encircling Riding Mountain National Park. The interrelationship and interdependency and integration are very important.
Bioregional tourism development: simply put, independent communities - so we emphasize that - with complementary assets. If they don't have an asset, talking tourism-wise rather than community economic development-wise, they're not in it. We go through an opportunity analysis process, and not every community has tourism assets, let's face it. That's the hard fact of life in going through the selective process.
With complementary assets and/or resources, developing their own strategies and action plans: as a company, we provide them with the support to do that, but it comes from within their own area. They look very carefully to ensure as much as possible that they don't duplicate any product, because if we do that, all we do is dilute the economy. We don't diversify it, we don't balance it, we dilute it. So we pick out the strengths with them - that's a totally inclusive process - and then we start on strategies and action plans, having identified the assets.
The next stage is the critical one in rural development and rural community economic development and tourism, and that is where they start to work interdependently. All of us, both urban and rural alike - I come from a New Zealand farming family of nine - understand the difficulties that sometimes arise in parochialisms between adjacent areas. What we've found is a formula for steadily and patiently putting together communities that, without this sort of catalyst, might not work together. We have found some amazing results in terms of their starting to work interdependently and constructively with each other, and that carries through within the region and outside the region. If there's an adjacent bioregion or an adjacent region, why would that not carry on? In fact, we are starting to find there's a chain reaction.
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Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Very simply put, sustainable development is forever and ever amen for future generations, and anything that cuts across that in a sensible constructive way isn't on.
In terms of what's happened in the bioregion in the last 17 months, we started with a forum that Ron and the chamber of commerce initiated in Russell. I was asked actually at that stage to consider presenting it singularly for Russell but made the suggestion that I felt it might not be appropriate, that the region as a whole had more to offer. I flew the trial balloon on a bioregional approach, had that approved, and we went through what turned out to be a very successful two-day forum. Subsequent to that we included in this bioregion Binscarth, Birtle, Inglis, Roblin, Rossburn, Russell and Foxwarren.
In the 17 months since May of last year, since the forum, they've formed the Assiniboine-Birdtail Bioregional Tourism Association, and this isn't meant to be a rubber stamp, another association - because frankly, I think a lot of associations in Canada today are outmoded. What they do is meet where and when necessary, they talk about their interdependencies, they talk constructively and openly and inclusively about what they're developing, and they bounce it off each other.
As a consequence, at the far end of it - to take a short cut for you - when they get into the marketplace and they're very nearly market-ready as a bioregion.... They do need to be market-ready before they hit the marketplaces, incidentally. When they are market-ready, they will then be able to cost-effectively get into the marketplace through shared collateral. So they'll have their individual pieces of collateral, if you want the mechanics of it, but also an overviewed piece of collateral for the bioregion with a shared-cost element. I call that cost-effective and complementary.
In terms of the communities themselves, Binscarth has just completed a very good endeavour to do with the park in.... I'm happy with it because a lot of it has to do with retrofit, and that actually is very much involved with the precepts of sustainable development, as I'm sure you know.
Birtle has a very active group known as Into the Future, which is a community group attracting people to live in the community and utilize the land and buildings. Where buildings were falling into disarray, you now have more land and building utilization.
In Inglis, the grain elevators have just recently got heritage designation. This is one of the single best spreads of grain elevators in western Canada, so we're led to believe, if not in Canada. There's a lot of work to be done there, but it's certainly a very worthy situation. They also are taking an active part in upgrading the old Asessippi campground, which has great cultural heritage and historical elements to it. Also, we have a real banner thing emerging very quickly in the arboretum, trail and conservation centre.
Roblin, the lake of the prairies, has been slower to evolve but is now starting to get very active. This is another part of the precept. You can't turn around and tell people what to do; you can influence them to work at their own pace. We personally feel that any attempt to arbitrarily step up the pace in aboriginal communities and non-aboriginal communities alike is a cardinal sin.
Obviously the proximity to Duck Mountain is a resource that frankly in Roblin's case is currently underutilized, but we don't think that's going to stay that way for much longer, from what we heard earlier in the week.
In Rossburn there is a promotion for relocation of businesses and quality-of-life retirement. They are very active in that area.
Russell is adjacent to the Asessippi Provincial Park, which is an asset shared in common. A lot of work has been done on the Russell Trail, and of course that links the whole bioregion right through to Grandview.
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Because of the geographical situation we've developed an asset out of the history, heritage and culture of Russell, which is called the story-telling capital of Canada. As the pilot scheme for that, we are starting a Christmas village on a very small scale, the highlight of that being a Canadian unity Christmas tree that will be right in the centre of the street at the top of the rise by the Royal Bank building.
Incidentally, this is designed for all the regions, but specifically for Russell as a catalyst to make sure we attract people off the highway on a four-seasons basis. We have been doing some work with Riding Mountain National Park to help them move from operational planning to more of a marketing opportunity. Again, it's not we and they, it's complementary all the way through.
Foxwarren is a tiny community evolving a very neat pioneer settlement, and they have it in their minds that they're not only going to get it - as we see in many museums throughout Manitoba and Canada - but they're going to market it and merchandise it, and that's key.
In addition to that, we have three other dormitory communities that we haven't been able to activate yet, although we have compatibility - St. Lazare, a French-Canadian and Métis community, Shoal Lake and Waywayseecappo, the native community adjacent to Russell. That gives you a quick idea of what has occurred in bioregional development.
Ron is from the community. He's been the initiator of the project. If there's anything you'd like to ask of us, please feel welcome.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Asselin.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: I want to remind you that there are federal programs that may apply in some provinces but not necessarily in all of them.
I'd like to know whether you would be interested in the government changing the applicability of those programs by transferring them to the provincial and territorial governments who could probably build a consensus more easily on how those programs should be delivered. This way, priorities would better reflect concerns. Do you think that communities, including the aboriginal communities, should be consulted before delivery or development of such programs?
The federal government has less money to allocate, but it must be said that, on the other hand, it is concerned with developing employment. Consequently, if communities and provincial governments are consulted more, funds distribution will be more effective in creating jobs and developing the tourism industry which is one of your major concerns.
Can you tell me, however, whether you do have adequate infrastructures to provide accommodations for tourists and whether you have a training program for tourist guides who could show people around the aboriginal communities in the area you are considering as a bioregion for the purposes of tourism. Thank you.
[English]
Mr. Bruce-Barron: Let me go back to the community economic development side of it, because that's core. Tourism is only one part of the economic development mix in community economic development, and that is why I don't usually start there. Where there are the natural resources, first of all, you have to go through a consensus-building process. It may sounds like motherhood, but it isn't. With all the politics that go on in native communities with chiefs and council.... Incidentally, so far Canzeal has dealt with 46 native communities across the nation, so I'm pleased to hear you bring up aboriginal peoples.
We also deal with some 17 to 20 Inuit communities in the north. If we're talking needs, before we get to hospitality, one of the needs is for support services. For instance, often once you have done an opportunity analysis to see if there's a real opportunity for tourism or even economic development to open a store, something as simple as that, it's very difficult to option moneys to then go on with strategic planning and business plans. But to get the finance you must have it.
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Of course, very frequently it's not just relevant to indigenous peoples but throughout. In my opinion, this is something that really needs adjustment and thought, because if you're not providing support with continuity in these endeavours, then you may as well not do the first stage, because you're inducing people to have a hope and then suddenly the opportunity of actually implementing it is lessened. The same is applicable for training. However, in the aboriginal communities, with some of the provincial and national groups, including MTEC in Manitoba, those opportunities are gradually there. I helped found MTEC specifically for that purpose.
When you talk training, though, the difficulty is in the diversification of training. It is also in the training...not just at the beginning but to groom people into what I'll call the whole marketing mix, be it economic development or be it tourism as a part of economic development. You virtually need to custom build those training and grooming programs. You need to make sure it goes on with continuity right on out into the marketplace.
This bioregion is particularly well served in terms of accommodation. This is more, for instance, than we can say of another adjacent, more northerly area such as Churchill, which in terms of tourism is booked up two years in advance.
I'm a practitioner, I'm not a theoretician. I not only develop product, I go out into the international marketplaces and the Canadian marketplaces themselves. So in terms of this bioregion we are quite well served. In the adjacent bioregions starting at Dauphin, if you start into that area of Gilbert Plains, Ethelbert, Dauphin, and Riding Mountain, we have wonderful potential assets. We are very well served in tourism corridors and loops as well as in terms of egress to those.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Mr. Chairman, are you under the impression that this area of Canada has been discriminated against compared to other areas? And if so, what could the federal government do to change this and to improve quality of life?
[English]
Mr. Bruce-Barron: No, I don't feel we're being discriminated against. I work nationally and internationally. I feel there are elements that can be improved, and I've talked particularly about the support mechanisms. I'm not in favour, in terms of economic development or tourism, of seeing money indiscriminately given to people just because they are indigenous or not indigenous.
In all these endeavours I think care has to be taken to make sure development is select, and not to do that I think is criminal, because you're inducing people, frankly, in the work I do, to something that's akin to genocide. No, I do not feel we're being fundamentally discriminated against.
Mr. Ron Clement (Russell Group): Mr. Chair, I have a comment to make in response toMr. Asselin's comments and questions in the first instance.
In terms of dollars, we're looking for partnership dollars and not for 100¢ dollars. What we need is partnership dollars in the marketplace. What Mr. Rob Bruce-Barron has been talking about is the marketing approach to tourism, and that is bioregional tourism. We would welcome an address of that.
I wanted to make a couple of closing comments about the community I'm from, which is the town of Russell. You asked several questions, one relative to the kind of support services and the other one relative to training. We're a small rural community 100 miles north of Brandon, 210 miles northwest of Winnipeg. Because of that location and because we're on the Yellowhead Highway, which is our alternative Trans-Canada Highway in western Canada, the community has developed quite a proactive approach to its own existence.
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As a result of that proactive approach to its own existence, we've had a group of business people in our community who 25 or 30 years ago simply said there is not a good place to eat, sleep or stop over here, and they simply took their collective resources, human and financial, and created what is today the Russell Inn, which has grown into a success story of 70 rooms at the present time.
When I was the president of the chamber of commerce three years ago and we began to elevate tourism as a potential economic balancing act for our highly diversified agribusiness community, I asked the manager of the Russell Inn, Daymon Gillis, how important tourism was to him, and he simply said that tourism is everything to the Russell Inn. I asked him how many people he employed 14 years ago when he came to Russell, and he said ten. I asked how many did he employ today, and he replied that he had 98 full-time and part-time staff. They're looking at an expansion in 1997 that will carry them through to about 140 or 150 rooms, and likewise they will have somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 140 employees. Thirty percent of their business today is from conferences and small conventions. The minute they go through the expansion it goes to a much larger venue.
We're going to have a very significant entity in our community that will provide excellent employment in the sense of an economic balance away from agriculture. The diversification that is agriculture is very important to our rural communities, but we're all faced with the fact that it's taking fewer and fewer people year by year to produce the same or additional goods and services in the agribusiness field.
So we have this infrastructure and we need more things to support it. So we have a way, as one element of community economic development, of putting in place this economic balance.
I'm in the financial services business, and they always say the key to a successful investment program is diversification and balance. I think exactly the same thing can be said of rural communities, that we need diversification and balance. We have the diversification. It's very intensive on the agricultural side, but we need the economic balance and, through that, to balance the option of transforming the bottom line and the well-being of our main street, of our business community.
I think it's very important that we follow along with this. You asked whether we have or need the support services. We have the support services, if you will, in this sense, to house the people who come to our community. Once they go through their expansion they'll be into a totally different venue, and we're going to be attracting far wider and far larger groupings into our community. We're fortunate to have that proactive aspect in our business community.
Secondly, and as far as training is concerned, Assiniboine Community College, which is a regional community college in Brandon, also has outreach offices. One of them is in Russell, Parkland Southwest Campus. They have an outreach office in Neepawa, on the east side of Riding Mountain National Park, and they have another outreach office in Dauphin, north of Riding Mountain. So we do have the qualified professionals to provide the kind of training and the centres to provide the kind of training that was referred to.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Clement. Mr. Chatters is next.
Mr. Chatters: I'm maybe the only one here who is, but I'm a little confused about who exactly we're meeting and what group you represent. I need some clarification on those things. I presume you're representing a local economic development group, but I haven't quite made out what your connection is.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: I'm the consultant they brought in to look at a revitalization of their economy.
Mr. Chatters: So you're under salary to this group.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: We're under contract. My company, Canzeal, is under contract to the group.
Mr. Chatters: Yes, and you are the local economic development group.
Mr. Clement: My particular position within my community is the chairperson of the Russell and District Chamber of Commerce Tourism Committee, and for the area, the chairperson of the emerging Assiniboine-Birdtail Bioregional Tourism Association, which encompasses both area communities.
Mr. Chatters: You are funded by?
Mr. Clement: We are completely internally self-funded. One of the key things about this is that tourism today is basically top-down municipal or provincial or federal government oriented. The concepts of our bioregional tourism association is grassroots community-based engagement. Basically, the focus within each community is for them to develop their own planning and their own strategic initiatives, but come together in a marketing sense as an area so the whole process has a marketing approach as opposed to something that's heavy with structure.
Mr. Chatters: So there's no tax funding.
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Mr. Clement: At this point in time there is not. Each community will approach their funding independently, in their own way. If you think of each community, the focus on funding and spending will really be within each community, because you're going to wrap a program around that community with a nice bow and present it in the marketplace in its unique way.
But within the bioregion, each one of these independent communities will come together in a consultative process in which we explore our interdependencies and harmonize our activities. Then you put a marketing program around the area, tie a bow on it and present it to the marketplace.
As this matures and we get into that area, the funding for it will have to come out of the various communities. The sources of the funding will vary from community to community.
Mr. Chatters: Okay. I understand that better now.
We are federal politicians representing the federal government, and tourism is a provincial area of jurisdiction, so what would you be looking for from the federal government?
Mr. Clement: In our case, I think we need to have.... Do you want to answer that, Rob?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: You could mention the specifics of the unity tree and the development of ongoing infrastructure.
Mr. Clement: Yes. In our community we're focusing on the Canadian national unity tree. We're planning to decorate it through invitations for decorations from all of the provinces and territories of the country. It's tied together with the history, heritage and culture in the activities that we're planning with that event to make it really a celebration of who we are. We're presenting this in the marketplace as a unique component of our twelve-month story-telling village concept.
Mr. Chatters: Finally, more as a matter of curiosity than of relevancy to what we're doing, as a consultant I was very interested in listening to you make your presentation. What in your expertise and your background makes you qualified to be a consultant in ecotourism?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: For a start, what makes me qualified is that I'm a businessman. I started in business when I was 19 years old and at university -
Mr. Chatters: And what was your business?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: - in Christchurch, New Zealand. I went through a whole series of apprenticeships. I started off in the arts. Canzeal has been in Canada for seventeen years, starting with grassroots convention and visitors bureau work right through to the fact that today I sit on four marketing advisory committees for the CTC, for domestic Canada, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific area and Europe.
Mr. Chatters: What is the CTC?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: The Canadian Tourism Commission.
Mr. Chatters: Okay.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: This is why I tossed in the word ``infrastructure'' to Ron. One of the great difficulties the CTC is encountering as it emerges today...notwithstanding that I definitely believe it's going to be the envy of the world within five years. I really believe that, and that's why I'm involved in the process. One of the great difficulties is how to address small business people. How are they able to buy into that process from a marketing perspective?
I won't bore you with the number of countries that I'm in every year - including Canada - not only developing product but marketing it. I'm a marketing person across the board, not a salesperson. Sales is part of it.
In answer to the question, I think I have lots of practical expertise that is recognized nationally and even abroad.
The second piece of that, though, is the dedication of infrastructure, and for small operators and small communities across Canada on a select basis, that is definitely a problem.
Impacting on that, of course, when you talk about sustainable development and ecotourism core values, is the ability of a community - as I mentioned earlier when I dropped off that little pearl of wisdom - to retain a lot of the moneys within their community.
I believe more attention should be paid to what's happening to Canadian tourism via the mode - and I stress non-parochially - of external operators. The Japanese model is a good one to look at in terms of a country that in some ways has become vertical in several countries.
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Mr. Chatters: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clement: If you don't mind, perhaps I can make a short comment on this.
I first met Rob at a rural forum in Brandon several years ago. He was speaking about tourism and its relevance to sustainable development within the aboriginal community. My family has had an engagement with a farming reserve over the last 45 years. I found that he was most sensitive to that community, particularly as a non-aboriginal individual. He was one of the most sensitive people I had ever encountered. One thing led to another, and I subsequently found out that he was consulting to 46 different first nations organizations around the country.
Why we have developed the relationship we have in rural areas is that out here I have found that in tourism organization we're well-meaning people, but we don't have the understanding or the knowledge, and in many cases we've been spinning around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. We haven't been progressing like we need to.
Rob has demonstrated the real knowledge and the commercial approach that complement the understanding and the feelings that have evolved with my involvement. Tourism has to be commercially driven, but it has to be done inside the proper policy framework.
Through our tourism forum and our subsequent engagements with our community in Russell, we have addressed that proper policy concept. We're evolving this grassroots, community-driven approach to tourism. And I believe that as this matures over the next ten years...it may be an overstatement to say that we could end up with as much economic benefit coming out of various aspects of tourism in our small communities as we're currently experiencing from all forms of agribusiness. I believe that in some communities it actually will be the rival. We're going to end up with a dual benefit as opposed to the singular benefit we're existing with today.
Mr. Chatters: It's an interesting idea, because in so many cases tourism development boards are set up and create a bureaucracy, and in fact nothing usually changes in the community. It's an interesting concept. I'd like to take a closer look at it sometime.
Mr. Clement: Those bureaucracies always seem to deteriorate into power and control -
Mr. Chatters: Yes.
Mr. Clement: - and with this concept, the only place you can run into power and control problems is with what's going on within the individual community, not within the area. Everybody is an equal player whether you're a big community or a small community.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: The key is that those who are not doing their work and, if you want, in the private sector style are not accountable are very visible.
Mr. Chatters: Yes.
Mr. Clement: But one of the things that's going to have to happen here -
The Chairman: If you don't mind, I'm going to have to go on to other questions, because time is running out.
Mr. Wood.
Mr. Wood: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm just trying to get a handle on this. At the moment, you are advising a number of communities. Everybody throws in x amount of dollars to do their own thing. Afterwards, there will be an overall tourism marketing thing that you're going to put together for the whole area -
Mr. Bruce-Barron: Yes.
Mr. Wood: - and then it's hoped that because of the money involved.... Everybody puts in the money. I don't know how it works in Manitoba, but in my community there are matching dollars for tourism through federal agencies and provincial agencies. We seem to be able to work together. Western Diversification must have a tourism component to it. Can you activate federal dollars through that organization after you get going?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: There are some elements of Western Diversification that can be activated. However, you may or may not be aware that the Hon. Jon Gerrard -
Mr. Wood: Yes.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: - made an announcement in Winnipeg some two or three months ago. The rules have changed. I won't say I'm against the rules, but the rules are that what you borrow, you pay back.
Mr. Wood: Yes.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: In terms of something that's kitty-cornered, shall we say, to your question in cost-effectively accessing the marketplace, first it's the combination of things that give you the economies of scale. Second, in developing the bioregion you're looking all the time at where your product market matches. In other words, what is our product? Is there a market for it? If the answer is yes, that's a part of the equation. And again, if it's yes, where is that market?
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Now, in this bioregion's case, it is wonderful because part of the equation is the central North American trade corridor. This corridor is becoming very active. If you look at the traffic count on it, one of the greatest single traffic counts in North America is down this pipeline.
We're now encompassing the Yellowhead so we can interact with the Yellowhead Tourism Association and get into those marketplaces cost-effectively by piggybacking. This is all part of the marketing equation.
Mr. Wood: You've obviously been in the business a long time, and I want to tap some of your expertise. Obviously tourism is going to be the way to go for a lot of smaller communities that have a lot to offer. Do you see the trend going to groups of communities getting together and promoting their region? How difficult is it for most communities to develop viable long-term tourism opportunities by themselves? Should they be going to a group concept similar to the one you're working on now with the Russell group?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: We can look at the world tourism picture and then come back to the Canadian picture and the regional pictures.
First of all, I have to say right now that history, heritage and culture are in some ways overblown on the Canadian scene. I consider it a wee bit of an overreaction.
Nonetheless, there is wonderful interest from abroad in what I will call community culture. I'll start at this stage. However, you have to make sure you really have something to proffer. This is why I made the little iconic statement earlier about museums. There are some wonderful little museums throughout Manitoba and throughout Canada, but frankly, half of them get hardly anybody through the door. There is no point in just having a museum or just having tourism unless you're going to do something.
Museums may come a little bit into a category, because in my opinion they're a wonderful starting place for me when I go into a bioregion to look at the community culture. Most people don't do this.
In terms of the marketplace, there is demand on a select basis, but it's going to be real. This is one of the problems with setting up corridors and routeways around the nation. When you turn around, you see a beautiful name. I'll take one from Manitoba. There is the Redcoat Trail, and it is real. It has integrity. But frankly, in terms of community economic development, history, heritage and culture with integrity, they've been very slow to identify real assets with integrity along this corridor.
The Yellowhead Trail suffers from the same thing. So we get a jazzy name, which is beautiful and real and all that. But then you have to match your community economic development/tourism with integrity or people won't buy it. They'll just breeze by.
The consultative process and the consensus building is the harder part of the process or, shall we say, the slower part of the process. This is why I made the comment earlier that we do not believe in forcing people along at a pace they're not comfortable with. I believe it has to just state things and they have to just learn to understand them.
Yes, it is a slower, more difficult process. Of course, once it starts to roll, you have difficulties for the opposite reason. Everyone wants to buy in.
Mr. Wood: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you, Bob.
I have a couple of questions that I'd like to put to you. I would also like to make a couple of comments.
I represent a riding in Ontario where one out of every two jobs is directly dependent on tourism. In our particular area, for every million dollars of new tourism expenditures in my riding, 39 person-years of employment are created. It is a critical industry. Coming from a rural area very different from this one where we don't have an agricultural base, it is very important to us.
Although Dave and I rarely disagree, we will here in that the federal government has a very important part to play in tourism in this sense. The Canadian Tourism Commission has as its mandate the attraction of individuals from outside Canada. Another part of its mandate is to try to encourage Canadians who are intending to travel outside Canada to travel within Canada.
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Dave is quite right that within the province itself it is a provincial area. We don't, as a federal government, encourage people to leave Manitoba and travel to northern Ontario or vice versa. But we do encourage people from Minnesota to come to Canada. So we have played an active role. The Canadian Tourism Commission, in addition to its marketing aspect, plays a significant role in research and development to help tourism operators access foreign markets and to assist them in choosing the type of programming that would be most effective in encouraging tourism.
For instance, to come back to my area, it has been learned that Germans enjoy the winter experience of coming to Canada, going into a rural area and snowmobiling, downhill skiing, snowshoeing, ice-fishing and this type of thing. So this allows people from my area to do certain amount of marketing.
I wanted to ask you a few very concise questions about this role of the federal government. One of the concerns expressed about the Canadian Tourism Commission has been that although it can form partnerships at the very large level with Canadian Pacific, Air Canada, VIA Rail and those types of organizations, it is having difficulty coming down to the level we normally see operating in rural Canada.
Is this your observation? If it is, do you have any specific suggestions on how the Canadian Tourism Commission could have a better impact or a more meaningful impact with some of the smaller rural players?
Mr. Bruce-Barron: First, the perception is correct, but I would hasten to add something. I have been a private sector person all my life, and to put my reply into context, I have huge respect for the bureaucrats remaining in the Canadian Tourism Commission today. They are second to none, even worldwide, and I've dealt worldwide for over 20 years. So I will put it into context. I think, frankly, they're wrestling to a large degree with training the private sector partners on the advisory committees.
I don't want to sound glib, but I think there are many of us in the private sector who need to be educated on the way things are put together governmentally. That is an education process.
I absolutely agree with you. I represent many operators across Canada in domestic and international markets. There is no question about it in terms of cost-effectiveness. If we go to a trade show in Osaka, Japan, this trade show costs us for the week approximately $10,000. If there is not some form of considered amortization of costs for the smaller operators, there is no way you're going to have what is broadly said to be the problem, across the four committees that I mentioned previously I sit on. They're going to keep saying there is no developed product and there is little diversified product available across Canada.
This has implications in the marketplace. We are moving away in terms of overseas and in terms of our primary markets, which are U.S.A., Japan, France, the United Kingdom and Germany. They are moving away from the first-tier visitations, where they have gone to the west coast, Toronto, Niagara, Anne of Green Gables.
It has been an emerging trend over the last three years that they are starting to look more and more for alternative locations, for other destinations of interest. This is where history, heritage culture, the ecotourism equation, and the wildlife equation start to come into play. This is the embodiment of the small tour operator.
So if he's spending money to go to ITB in Berlin, to spotlight shows in the States and abroad, the United Kingdom, if he's going to shows in BIT Milan, Osaka and Tokyo - I go to all these shows - how does he afford to advertise? Does he have to give up his trade show work and consumer show work so he can advertise? This is the dilemma they're faced with.
This is the bad news or the scenario, if you want to call it that. What is very good is that there is not a committee I'm working on that is not cognizant of this. I work on four, including the emergent European committees I chaired on an ad hoc basis. It has taken us a year to wake everyone up.
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You know, I'm a little, small guy, and they've included me in amongst these big fellows. I was in Jasper last week on the issue of domestic tourism, and they do listen. They are very amenable to approaches in the development of marketing programs that are going to include small players. In the development of tourism, as much as I'm an advocate - you know, they call me the little mouse that roared or something like that in those groups - in terms of advocacy I honestly, realistically can't say they're going to get to that point in under two years from this day.
The Chairman: It certainly is something we have to push them towards vis-à-vis government policy.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: Absolutely.
The Chairman: I have a question for Mr. Clement, and it has to do with infrastructure. Do you believe it is appropriate for federal or provincial dollars to be spent on creating tourism infrastructure?
Mr. Clement: In the community where I come from, I think you might initially get a negative to that question. But where I'm coming from, I believe there has to be. My answer to that would therefore be in the affirmative.
The risks of doing business and in developing business in rural areas is very high. You have all of the chartered banks pulling back progressively from rural areas. They're leaving the credit unions there to pick up the slack - and they're emerging almost as the dominant single players, or they will over the next ten years. They already are in the community I'm from. So the risks are high and the resources are pulling back.
We need a marriage of public sector capital and private sector capital. There might be cases where you could say public sector capital alone should be involved, but that would be on a case-by-case basis. But I believe that if you could marry the two, particularly in significant regional undertakings around which the community of small business could then flourish.... In other words, they're like a cornerstone, long-term benefit icon around which the community of small business would then engage. Through that benefit, if they could then stabilize our communities, yes, I say there is a role for that.
The Chairman: One of the unique things we have seen in my riding has been the development of snowmobile trails. In my area there are 30 or 35 communities, but no single entity could really build a trail system that is several hundred kilometres long unless there's some sort of public involvement in it. The Ontario government has put a substantial amount of money into this, and the development of those trails in essence has created an infrastructure that allows people to go somewhere in the winter where they were not able to go before. They arrive at those destinations with little else other than their machines and their wallets, and it has been a significant boon to creating four-season tourism, where there was one- or one-and-a-half-season tourism before. That's what I call infrastructure as opposed to erecting a hotel with public dollars, which frankly I see more as a private sector investment.
Mr. Clement: I was thinking of those kinds of.... When I was answering in the affirmative, I was talking about event facilities. In our area we have a somewhat controversial ski hill that's in process, and the the issue is actually before the courts with the federal government. I believe this will be resolved in the affirmative, and once it is resolved, what I feel will come out of this is that your critics will turn to become supporters. But because we live in our economically small ``c'' conservative communities, an entity has to be up and it has to prove itself.
In general, we don't have that kind of support in a lot of rural areas for this kind of strategic planning and development. That's the kind of development I'm talking about, and then the private entrepreneur would build the hotel - or those kinds of services - that would support it.
But one of the things I believe we have to look at, and which will come out of this development once it's up and proven, will be proof for our constituency in the area that by the proper marriage of public sector and private sector money, you can build significant, important, long-term entities, facilities around which the private entrepreneur.... It's one of the catalysts that's going to drive the Russell Inn through to 150 rooms, and there will be a case in Manitoba for an alteration to our provincial attitude in public policy - and that will affect federal agreements - to actually go out in a planned way to do some strategic site development. At least, that's what I'm hoping.
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The Chairman: We're going to have to move on. It's 10:30 a.m. right now.
Mr. Bruce-Barron.
Mr. Bruce-Barron: Just as a codicil to that, I think what you intimated with Ontario is correct, and I think the key is infrastructure. If you take the story-telling village as a catalyst for the bioregion in terms of very specific property with integrity, I think that's important.
There is one final point I would like to make. In talking about your markets and the case you made for domestic tourism...a lot of people don't realize that 58% of the tourism in Canada comes from Canadians. They don't realize that some 24.1% comes from the U.S.A., and that is the burgeoning giant. As much as we hear talk about Europe, and as much as I'm integrated into that market, only 8.1% of our total tourism to date comes from Germany. So in terms of target markets, I think that's a point worth making.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Clement: Mr. Chairman, if I might make just one closing comment, there was a question relative to what the federal government can be doing for these areas. We need to have a mechanism with WD so that financing arrangements can be made directly with small clusters or groupings of communities that we have in our bioregion. We need to have direct links with WD for ongoing funding as opposed to having it come through the likes of Community Futures, which is a power and control, top-down kind of thing. We need more of the direct approach so that your bottom-up, grassroots initiatives that are coming from communities have those linkages without going through the intermediary.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. We appreciate it. We will have to take a five-minute recess.
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The Chairman: Our next witness is Bernice Palaniuk. You're from the Swan Valley Forest Capital of Canada Committee.
Ms Bernice Palaniuk (Chairperson, Swan Valley Forest Capital of Canada Committee): Yes, I am.
The Chairman: Welcome. We appreciate your taking the time and effort to be here today with us. I would ask you to have a seat to make an opening statement and then we'll turn it over to members of the committee to ask some questions.
Ms Palaniuk: I guess I've been allowed to stand. I didn't realize what kind of statement we were supposed to be making, so mine may be a little long. I just found out today how much should have been put in, so please excuse me if I overextend my time.
My name is Bernice Palaniuk. Chairperson, committee, Marlene Cowling, our local federal representative, welcome to Swan River.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to present this afternoon. A large portion of my presentation will lean toward the human resources. I will leave the facts and figures on natural resources to the professionals.
My background is business. I chair the Swan Valley Forest Capital of Canada Committee. As a fourth-generation Olfrey family living in this valley, I have a lot of concerns for the sustainability of our natural resources and the rural growth of economic development. Swan Valley will be the Forest Capital of Canada in 1998, the first for Manitoba.
Some history on the Forest Capital of Canada: The award was established in 1979 by the Canadian Forestry Association. This annual award recognizes a community in Canada that is noteworthy because of its commitment to and dependence on forest resources and the community's civic-minded recognition of this interdependence. Throughout the year we will celebrate the forest capital award.
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One of our main goals will be toward an educational focus, beginning with programs geared to the environmental management class of the Swan Valley Regional Secondary School, one of a kind in Manitoba. There are not many environmental management classes in the Manitoba area.
Our dream is for the potential of our children knowing and understanding that they are the ultimate managers of the gifts of the environment. Being awarded the Forest Capital of Canada for 1998 can now bring us one step closer to that dream becoming a reality.
One of our legacy projects will be a donation to the Rotary project, Pathway to Life. We are hoping to dedicate to the people of Swan Valley the opening of this green space in 1998, our centennial year.
Another legacy project is to develop a site for the students of the Swan Valley environmental management class to give them the unique opportunity to create an arboretum where they can plant and observe trees in all their various stages of growth.
These several acres of land, which we hope will be donated by Spruce Products Ltd. of Swan River, will be developed into interpretive trails, an education opportunity for students, residents and tourists.
Funding is very much needed to implement several legacy projects we would like to leave with our community long after the celebration of the year of the Forest Capital of Canada, 1998, has finished.
An annual event held for the past seven years to celebrate the bounty of our forest is the Loggers and Haulers Association exhibition, which features more than 100 exhibitors and displays from the model forest, the Manitoba Trappers Association, Natural Resources Management, along with many forest companies displaying and demonstrating modern technologies that relate to forest harvest management.
In 1996 our exhibition saw more than 4,000 people come through the gates. In the evening we have our banquet and awards night for the Loggers and Haulers. We sold more than 600 tickets in a time period of three hours. What a great achievement for a town with a population of less than 5,000 people.
To become nominated as the Forest Capital of Canada, a letter of intent must be submitted to our provincial forestry association. Naturally, that would be the Manitoba Forestry Association. The written bid proposal must be submitted to the Canadian Forestry Association no later than January 1, two years prior to the year in which the award applies.
Don't fear, I'm not going to go through this whole book. This is our written bid proposal. It's more than 100 pages. We presented that to the Canadian Forestry Association as our bid proposal.
The next process is the in-person presentation. We presented for the 1997 awards held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but we were unsuccessful. Grand Prairie, Alberta, did get the award. For a rural community, challenge is just an added incentive to work harder for the next year's award in 1998.
Challenge is no stranger to rural communities. When I researched the history of our Swan Valley, I felt adventure, commitment, struggle and adversity. The year 1998 is also our 100th birthday celebration of ``tent town'', just a few miles out of Swan River. In 1889, the Swan Valley was opened for settlers with the Canadian National Railway pushing its way north. People flocked in to clear the land and farm the virgin soil. Families with an overwhelming need for a better life faced many challenges.
The Forest Capital Committee has dedicated much volunteer time and energy and has come up with very many exciting programs of events that will bring together families, friends and neighbours each and every month to celebrate the bounty and beauty of our forest, not only for the year that we hold the award but for many years to come.
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A question that was in your information package asked how you turn around persistent negative attitudes about rural Canada within the urban regions. At the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development in Winnipeg on October 1, 1996, I listened to one older gentleman with dismay. The bulk of his presentation was about Swan River, Manitoba, and he told the commission how the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission public hearing for Louisiana-Pacific Canada had fractured a community, leaving it literally divided.
I spoke to that gentlemen later. Because I didn't recognize his name, I asked him if he was a resident of our community. He said no. I asked him if he was at the hearings in Swan River. He said he was not, but that twenty of his people were. I told him I now I understood where his misinformation has come from.
I feel a sense of resentment toward persons who are members of organized based groups, and who come into our community using tactics that I have come to believe only lead to the confusion of the facts. These group members do not see the disappointment, hear the loss of enthusiasm, or feel the hopelessness in the voices of our young people. But mothers do.
A promising future can be obtained in this valley without endangering the ecology and wildlife. Valley people, with federal funding, can get the honest facts, enabling them to make a conscious effort to weigh and weed out the ideals of well-organized zealots who misuse power to distribute and promote fearmongering. Rural people must take ownership of decisions, of responsibilities, and even of the consequences of our decisions that affect our communities.
We are not ignorant people. We certainly know when groups are using coercion with only one agenda in mind - theirs. Knowledge dispels fear. Gain knowledge about our rural economic and human needs and do not relinquish our power to choose. I become offended when people who have never lived in a rural community, who have never even visited Swan River, could and would presume to have the audacity to speak on behalf of my community.
A question was asked by your committee: is it your view that a natural resources company has a social responsibility to contribute both financially and otherwise to the long-term existence of the rural communities in which they operate? Without a doubt, the answer is yes, and I am proud to say some of the forest industries do just that.
Spruce Products Ltd., incorporated in 1942, has been an integral part of the regional economy of Swan River for over fifty years. This is a family-owned company, and their community involvement is extensive. They have been actively involved in over twenty non-profit organizations, including the Duck Mountain Forest Centre. This interpretive centre became reality on May 31, 1987, due to the generosity of Mr. Frank Marvin, former president of Spruce Products Ltd. The building was named in honour of Mr. Marvin's long commitment to the Manitoba Forestry Association and his gift of time and money to our valley.
Another very respected, dedicated company in our community is the Pine Falls Paper Company Limited, formerly Abitibi-Price Inc. The Swan River valley became an important source of pulpwood for the mill established in Pine Falls, Manitoba, in 1929. On September 1, 1994, 467 proud Manitoba employees took majority ownership of Pine Falls Paper Company. Over the years, Duck Mountain and the Porcupine Hills have supplied approximately 25% - over 100,000 cubic metres - of the spruce and fir purchased from this area annually.
Canadian Mental Health Association-Swan Valley has benefited greatly by the generosity of the Pine Falls Paper Company. It is an enlightened corporate sponsor, and with its contributions of time and money, CMHA is closer to fulfilling its mandate to help people with mental illness. At this time, I would like to thank the Pine Falls Paper Company for its empathy, its respect and, foremost, its awareness that mental illness has no economic or racial boundaries.
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Our newest good corporate citizen, Louisiana-Pacific Canada, has given generously to the success of the Forest Capital of Canada award and to the Loggers and Haulers Association, and many of its people volunteer time and money towards the rural economic growth of our community.
The next question was: do you believe lending to rural Canada to be inherently riskier than that undertaken in urban Canada? This question itself actually incensed me. Rural people - and I have done business with both rural and urban - are some of the most resourceful, diversified and energetic people you could have the privilege of working with. Federal funds lent to rural businesses are a must. Rural economic growth is the backbone to the stability of Canada.
For my closing comments, I would just like to go back briefly - and I do use that word with a bit of an extension - to the human needs and anxieties of our community.
University or college education for many young people just is not a reality. The majority of graduating students' families do not have the means to further their children's education. The future just becomes a pipe dream and students' zest for life becomes a dim existence of mediocrity. Rural economic growth is necessary for our young people to see and feel the sense of having a bright, exciting future for themselves. When young people lose their keen zest for life, we all lose. We all know that children are our future. Young people are our adults of tomorrow. If they start life with a feeling of loss and hopelessness, the future of our country will be reflected in their attitudes.
Children who have the privilege of remaining on their family farms or of taking over a family-run business are definitely in the minority today. A good economic future and enthusiasm for life must be placed back in the hands of our youth. Each family must make a well-informed and purposeful decision to support growth and industry in their rural communities. The dim future our children face today must be transformed by a bright light for tomorrow's adults.
As an advocate for the mentally ill, and the facilitator for anxieties, stress and burn-out self-help groups for CMHA, I have been face to face with many people - and there are no age restrictions - who feel their government has forgotten about rural Manitoba. I look at the enrolment of over a hundred persons who have participated in a self-help program this year. I hear from their conversations that they are concerned, and they eventually go back to the issue of security for the future, the security of their job to build a strong foundation for their families.
When the security of one's job is threatened, especially when that job is one of the main monetary contributions to the family, the family's foundation is shaken. The family as a unit suffers and the children feel the heaviness of the family's plight. The pain, stress and anxiety filter down to the children. They are very quick to pick up on the sense of fear for the future. The schooling of these children who are preoccupied by the pressures of everyday living becomes difficult, at best. The teacher's effectiveness to teach and the child's ability to learn are jeopardized.
Job burnout is a reality. It is one of the fastest growing disorders in our country. Between5% and 7% of the population of Manitoba suffer from stress-related, anxiety-based disorders at any given time. Clinical depression has no racial or economic boundaries. Some 15% of clinically depressed people will commit suicide, and the number could climb from 15% among our youth today.
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A person who becomes a victim of the destructive cycle of job burnout or depression is only more victimized when the security of one's future is threatened. The stress is only compounded by the realization that one is left with little opportunity to change or choose one's vocation in life. Do not allow proponents with no vision of economic development usurp your power to choose growth.
As Canadians, we have to compete in a global marketplace. Let us prepare our youth for that challenge. Federal funds pumped into our community will give us an opportunity to see a good living while remaining in our home town. That way, our children can take their rightful place in society as the next generation to have the privilege of raising their families in an environment of love and the closeness of a community that cares.
Our community appreciates this dependency upon nature and its enduring bounty. Properly managing our forests will provide us with the resources needed for our present and with a legacy for our future generations. Rural people must not relinquish their power to choose. Choose a future with economic and human growth for our valley. When it comes time to elect a government, choose a government that has the foresight to envision rural Canadians not as a burden, but as a commodity worth investing in.
The boreal forest is a renewable resource. Our children's futures are not.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. We'll turn to questions, beginning with Monsieur Asselin.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: First of all, I want to welcome you to this committee and to congratulate you for your excellent presentation. I also want to wish you the best of luck for the 1998 award that you have been coveting for such a long time.
I have two questions. More and more, provincial governments are demanding exclusive responsibility for education and vocational training in order to do away with a lot of very expensive overlapping and duplication.
Do you think that it would be a good idea if the provinces were to manage vocational training and education for our youth? As you said, these young people are our future. They will take over from us and it is important that the federal government allocates funds to the provincial governments as transfer payments so that they may manage education and training adequately according to the needs of the community. What is your opinion?
Also, you said right at the beginning that you were responsible for human resources development. The present government has just gone through a reform of employment insurance that will certainly have a negative impact on your area as well as everywhere else, even in Quebec. We know that it will be gradually more difficult for those with casual or seasonal jobs to qualify for employment insurance. Do you think that it will have a very negative impact on people in your area, for example?
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[English]
Ms Palaniuk: Could you just give me an indication of what the first question was, specifically, after the process?
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Is the federal government ready to transfer funds to the province and let it manage education and manpower training?
[English]
Ms Palaniuk: A lot of the provincial provinces are poor provinces. Our province of Manitoba is probably in the medium range financially. If we don't get money from the federal government, where does our money come from? If it's passed on to the provincial government...and I can assure you, I have no expertise in government matters, so please excuse me for not using the proper terminology. Whether the money comes from the federal government or the provincial government, moneys are needed in order to educate our youth. It is very difficult for the youth in a rural community to further their education.
We have two sons, and they've been educated outside our community. You have to send them into the city. You have to set them up in another home. You have to feed and clothe them, although we try to do that at home. It is such an enormous expense, plus you have to pay their school fees. So we do not have the opportunities that perhaps young people in the urban communities have for education, because a lot of families do not have the means to send their children outside of their homes. Federal money is definitely required.
On the one about the insurance, right now Manitoba is going through reform for mental health. I sit on the regional board with Mr. James McRae. We are trying to take the responsibility for the needs of our people with regard to mental health back to the rural people. We know their needs, and we know the way they live. When you put them in an urban situation and always send them to Brandon or Winnipeg in a police car, this really shows me that they are being victimized all over again by the system. So we need moneys.
I'm sorry, I probably can't elaborate on the insurance part of it, but as far as the people themselves are concerned, just because they suffer from a disease called mental illness doesn't mean they should be put in a police car and escorted to Brandon and be victimized all over again. They should remain in their community. We can take responsibility if we are given the funds.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: I think you have not understood my question. When I say employment insurance, I mean the old unemployment insurance.
[English]
Ms Palaniuk: Okay.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: You must have heard about Mr. Axworthy's reform. We know that people with casual or seasonal jobs will have a harder time qualifying for employment insurance. We also know that one of the federal government's objectives is to appropriate about $5 billions from the Unemployment Insurance Fund and use it to reduce the deficit.
We all know too well that the fund is made up of premiums paid by workers and employers. What consequences will it have? People that have not worked the required number of hours will not qualify for employment insurance and will have to apply for welfare. At the same time, if there are no jobs and workers do not qualify for UI, they will definitely have to leave this area.
Therefore, there are two consequences here in Manitoba. First of all, young people leave the area to get the training they need for the labour market and very often do not come back. Then, parents also leave the area to join their children who get married and decide to stay in town. This creates a tremendous chain reaction that empties rural areas of people.
On the other hand, if people cannot qualify for UI, they will have to go and work outside the area and, thus, lose their sense of belonging.
[English]
Ms Palaniuk: I understand what you're saying. As for employment insurance, you must realize that rural communities are very diversified. In rural communities, members of a family in the farming industry will go into the bush and cut some trees or work off their private quotas and sell to the companies in our area. Because our resources are very good in Swan River, many people don't have to go on unemployment. Of course, if people who are in seasonal businesses don't work long enough, they don't get the employment insurance or unemployment insurance.
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I think if you look at your statistics, rural Canada probably has a lot less unemployment insurance injected into it than urban areas. If a young person cannot get a job in the area and cannot get unemployment insurance, he or she is very embarrassed to take welfare or social assistance. Unfortunately, when you live in a small town everybody knows your business, even before you know your business. It can be very embarrassing to a family on social assistance.
I'm no professional on the insurance part of it, I just know the effects of it on the human aspect. I see the effects of it in our drop-in centre and in our self-help group. I'm sorry I cannot give you a clearer professional answer in that sense.
Mr. Asselin: Merci.
The Chairman: Mr. Chatters.
Mr. Chatters: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to the committee.
Your presentation began so positively about the forest development and those kinds of things. It's very positive stuff. I certainly would agree with you on some of the Greenpeace-type groups that come in from outside and think they are there to protect your interests. We certainly have that problem in my area.
The second part kind of bothered me when you switched to such a negative tone about the future of our children. I firmly believe that every young person in Canada must have the right to whatever education he's capable of achieving. I believe that our children have that right and that ability in Canada. I think it's there. It's not always there in their home communities, and I'm not so sure that would be entirely desirable if it were possible. I don't think it's practical to provide the ability for every student in rural Canada to receive a university degree without leaving home. My children couldn't. I had to face the same problems you did. We faced them and met them.
On the other hand, I can't agree with my colleague when he says it must be the responsibility of the federal government to transfer money to the provinces so they can provide the education and training in their communities. I think the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that every child can receive that education, but I'm not sure the delivery mechanism shouldn't be directly to the student to give him the ability to shop for those services where they choose to do that.
I think there is merit and value in ensuring students have to be dedicated in order to receive rewards, in the form of bursaries and pay-backs on their student loans and those kinds of things, for success in their programs. Those kinds of things make more sense as ways to deliver those funds to the students for their education. I'd like you to talk about that a little bit.
Your last statement that our children's future is not a renewable resource surprised me. I thought our children were the best renewable resource we had.
Ms Palaniuk: They aren't if they don't see a bright future. In a small rural community - perhaps you live in an urban or a small rural community.
Mr. Chatters: I live in a small rural community.
Ms Palaniuk: Yes, we do have the ability to apply for bursaries, but a lot of these children are the main workers on the family farm or in the family logging industry. The parents cannot give up that particular child to further his or her education because there isn't enough money injected into our community for a business to run on its own merit and actually employ people outside of the family. These children actually lose hope. And when you do lose hope you lose the ability to even search for any. Not only that, a lot of these children don't have enthusiasm for life.
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My sister is a principal at the Ethelbert School and she said of the graduates of the 1995-96 class that the whole graduation ceremony was not very exciting. They did not feel any excitement for their future, because even the ones who could afford to get an education - their families could afford it or they got bursaries - weren't assured of a job anyway. It's a great thing to have the availability of these bursaries and so on, but give them a job when they're finished, because that's what it all comes down to.
Mr. Chatters: I certainly agree with you there. There's that lack of confidence that after they borrow $20,000 dollars - -
Ms Palaniuk: That's right.
Mr. Chatters: - and they spend that four or five years, there is no job. I agree that this is of great concern, but there should be no student in Canada who isn't aware of and isn't enthusiastic about the ability to get an education.
I come from a small rural farm where from the time I was old enough to drive a tractor I had responsibilities, and I always felt, and I hope my parents did, that part of their responsibility as parents was at some point to send me away - not to force me to stay at home to drive the tractor, thereby depriving me of those opportunities - but at the same time providing me the opportunity to come back if I should choose to do that some day.
Ms Palaniuk: That's right. Often they may have the opportunity to get an education, but there is no opportunity to come back to a rural community and earn a living. There just is not the opportunity.
Mr. Chatters: Yes, that's right.
Ms Palaniuk: So an education becomes a very dim situation. Therefore, the enthusiasm to even get an education is diminished.
Mr. Chatters: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Wood is next.
Mr. Wood: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Bernice, I was looking at this and I agree with a lot of things you say to keep young people in rural Canada. As chair of the Swan Valley Forest Capital of Canada Committee, have you people looked at getting involved in trying to produce some value-added products? Have you had a chance to look at that or think about it, or have Spruce Products Ltd. and the Pine Falls Paper Company? Have they looked at maybe diversifying some of their work and getting into some value-added businesses along the the pulp and paper or forestry lines? Have you done any of that?
Ms Palaniuk: Have they diversified from the forest resources into another form of - -
Mr. Wood: They don't have to do it now, but have they looked at trying to use the forestry products they have to get into other businesses along the same line, such as the value-added products?
Ms Palaniuk: I shall transfer this question over to Mr. Dick Walker. He is a.... I told you at the very start of my presentation that I was not a professional in forest resources. Dick.
Mr. Wood: Come on up, Dick. Don't be shy.
In a lot of cases a lot of communities faced with the same situation, I guess, as Swan River have looked at doing other things with some of their waste products, whatever. Has there been any move on that?
Ms Palaniuk: Yes, there has been.
Mr. Dick Walker (President, Spruce Products Ltd., Swan River): Yes, certainly we have.
The Chairman: Excuse me for a second. Could you identify yourself for the record before you give your response?
Mr. Walker: I'm sorry. Thank you, and thanks for the opportunity to briefly address the committee. Dick Walker is my name and I'm the president of Spruce Products Ltd. in Swan River.
In terms of diversification, I think that's certainly something that each and every one of us in the forest industry are approaching with due diligence. We have to try to utilize our resources in absolutely the best manner possible for the sake of longevity and from the financial aspect, developing all the end-result material out of a product. Certainly, that aspect is being looked at.
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I'll give you an example of one of the things our company is into. You see lots of it in Quebec and Ontario, I'm sure. It is the aspect of peel chipping, producing a paper chip for the Repap mill at The Pas, which is considered basically a by-product.
We do much of this right in the woods operation itself, but it's a utilization of the resource after other products are developed - for instance, a saw log or a pulpwood pull - and you have a tree top remaining. Ordinarily that would be cast aside and lost as residue. The aspect of peel chipping turns it into a viable product. It's utilizing the resource and turning it into money.
In the basics of operations in, say, a direct lumber business, Swan River is relatively small. I guess the whole of Manitoba is relatively small in the total field of lumber production and forest products in terms of Canada. Thank gosh the U.S. didn't even see us as a major number enough to count us in as part of the tariff. We're free wheeling on that.
Getting back to the local level, our company is seeing fit to continue and to mix investments in the community. We did a major development on our planing mill operation this spring. We're in the process of establishing or building a dry kiln in our operation. We're spending a million and a half dollars on that project, and it's only a mile and a half from here. You can drive by and have a look at it. These opportunities are the enhancement of these developments that will eventually lead to value added.
Mr. Wood: This will obviously result in increased employment at your operation.
Mr. Walker: Yes, it will. It will give us the opportunity to more or less get into a year-round system and access markets on a year-round basis.
Mr. Wood: So the workers and the skills are here.
Mr. Walker: Yes. Further afield, you can take the Repap situation, if you wish, and Pine Falls Paper Company. They're continually researching better use of our resources. Repap has improved the quality of their paper. Pine Falls Paper is doing major developments in their operation, even to the point of recycling paper and continually improving the product.
I know exactly what you mean when you say diversify. You take the product you have already made and then you add something to it. There's a great deal of potential in the future for that where perhaps, instead of selling a two-by-four as a twelve footer we cut it up into five feet or whatever we can get out of it, cut it into pieces and do something with it.
Mr. Wood: I know my Reform colleague, Mr. Chatters, has been bugging me about this question, but I'm going to ask it again, and I keep asking it. In your opinion, should the government be in the business of providing direct or indirect tax incentives for value-added processing? Do you think that would help? Or would it be a hindrance?
.1225
Mr. Walker: It's certainly being done. I think that perhaps you have to evaluate each process on its merits. I wish somebody would come along and help us financially with what we're doing -
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Walker: - because we seem to be paddling our own canoe. I'm a firm believer in free enterprise and in doing your own thing. If you think a project out well enough, if you then put your money where your mouth is, and if you feel you can go forward with it, it's going to be successful. Many of the experiences pertaining to government help or grants or what not is that the key objective is to get the grant first and hope you can make it go. They're not all thought out as well as they should be.
I don't mean to sound totally negative and say that government shouldn't be involved here or there, but that's a belief that I have, and -
Mr. Wood: If the federal government could do something for rural Canada, what would it be? What is the number one priority in your mind? Where could we help the most? Would it be infrastructure dollars? Would it be some other incentives?
Mr. Walker: The creation of the ability to increase jobs and increase the productivity of a specific area is a key thing. I don't know just what that could be in terms of specifics, but analysing an area to see if something can be done to sustain or develop that mode...I think that would be constructive spending.
Mr. Wood: Good. Thank you. I appreciate that.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Wood.
Mrs. Cowling, do you have a question?
Mrs. Cowling: Yes, Mr. Chairman.
One of the things we have heard from a number of witnesses from right across the country is that our government should create a climate for economic growth and jobs. And for rural Canada, I'm wondering if in fact that should be done through an infrastructure program, as Mr. Wood has mentioned. One thing that I think has been very well received by all Canadians is the last infrastructure program. It actually helped to form partnerships among all levels of government, federal, provincial and municipal.
What are your thoughts are on that, Mr. Walker? Should we be looking at an infrastructure program that helps to continue to build that rural infrastructure in rural Canada?
Mr. Walker: In many situations that level of cooperation among federal, provincial and municipal levels is a desirable thing. I'll give you a prime example of a thing that has faced Swan River and still is facing it. It's the ability to bring natural gas to Swan River. On a personal level, I will say that our company has been waiting for this dry kiln development for about four years in the hope that natural gas would come to Swan River. That would be our source of energy to operate that thing.
In all fairness, I guess we've given up on that aspect. We've proceeded to develop our own boiler system and use our wood waste, which is a desirable thing, but in the process we've spent half a million dollars extra on this project to do so.
I think infrastructure things in the development of an area.... For instance, bringing natural gas to Swan River is a high priority. You can't even define all the possibilities of such a program. I could name you four or five things that the door would be open to in our area if we were able to access that resource, and this is where a combination of funds.... The municipality can't afford to bring it in. The provincial government probably can't afford to put in enough money to bring it in, but through an infrastructure thing it could be a possibility.
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Mrs. Cowling: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for the testimony, Bernice and Dick. We appreciate you taking the time to be here today.
Ms Palaniuk: I just want to reiterate the fact that when you volunteer in a centre, you see people come in on a regular basis to the drop-in centre who have no hope and who feel no hope, and you do perhaps come out with a bit of an attitude. Where is our government for these people? They wander the streets. Nobody even validates their existence, and it really does make me feel very sad that these people are just throw-away people, because they're not. If you have ever sat down with some of these people who suffer from mental illness and really listened to them...they are the most intelligent, insightful people you'd ever want to meet.
Again, I'm sorry, I perhaps ended it with a a harsh ending, but life is harsh for these people. They come into our centre for a cookie and a cup of coffee and just to have somebody who's going to have the time to ask them how their day was or if they have a warm coat for winter. That is where my enthusiasm comes from. It comes from the heart. We've had many businesses in Swan River with the Olfrey family and Palaniuk Holdings Company, and sometimes I would much rather work with people with mental illness than with people with an intellect.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Ms Palaniuk: Again, thank you very much. I can assure you we will have a positive spin on the Forest Capital of Canada award.
The Chairman: Before I let you go, Bernice, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the federal government has just this week tabled its task force report on Canadians with disabilities. This report has equal citizenship for Canadians with disabilities and it has 52 very specific recommendations. As part of the formulation of the report, the task force came twice to Manitoba and met with people from those associations that you are talking about -
Ms Palaniuk: Thank you. I am aware of it.
The Chairman: - and I will undertake today to make sure you get a copy of that report in the mail sometime in the very next -
Ms Palaniuk: And you are Mr. A. Mitchell?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Chairman: That's right. Thank you very much.
Ms Palaniuk: You're more than welcome. It was my pleasure.
The Chairman: I'd now like to call our next witness, from Gateway North, Darryl Balasko.
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Mr. Darryl Balasko (Marketing Development Officer, Gateway North International): Good morning. I appreciate being here today. Especially with the flight I had in, I'm really appreciative of being here today. It was a little bumpy coming in. Nonetheless I'm here. I also have the enviable position of being just before lunch, I suppose; the clatter of dishes will be getting in the way.
I'm working with an organization called Gateway North International. Unfortunately our president couldn't be here today. He had a previous engagement. He has also been told not to fly for a couple of weeks. Something happened on the airplane on the way in from Ottawa. It's his ears or something. He's grounded for a couple of weeks. But he sends his regards, and he appreciates the invitation to come here.
I want to speak to you a little about what our organization is and what we are mandated to do.
We're a marketing agency for the port of Churchill, Manitoba. I'll put up a map for some of you who are not too familiar with the north or with western Canada.
We were created in January of this year by the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, who was then Minister of Western Economic Diversification, again to market the port of Churchill, Manitoba. It was a recommendation of a task force put together before that.
I want to outline some of the aspects Gateway North International believes may be of interest to the committee within the context of the committee's study of transportation infrastructure, which I mostly can speak about. Some things I'm not an expert on and cannot speak on, but I'd like to speak on that.
First I'll give you a very brief history of what the port of Churchill is, and why we believe it has a future, because that's a question many people are asking, I'm sure, and will ask. Of course, in history Churchill was a Hudson's Bay Company trading fort. Many of you may have heard about that.
Its main utilization as a port has been for grain; 95% of the exports were grain. It also ships goods to the western Arctic region right now. Commercial goods, petroleum, housing, are all sent to the western Arctic. The eastern Arctic is served through Montreal, around the coast.
The highest output for the port, in 1977, was 750,000 tonnes of grain. Last year we had only about 240,000 tonnes of grain. This year we're happy to say there's about a 30% rise and we're over 300,000 tonnes of grain. We're also hoping for a late ship - to get an ice-strengthened ship, anyway.
Now, 25% of Canada's grain-growing area is within what is considered the Churchill catchment area, which goes through northeastern Saskatchewan and northwestern Manitoba. The advantage of Churchill, as I'll point out later, is that it's an ocean-going port. Ocean-going vessels can come to the port. On average, 30,000- to 35,000-tonne ships come to the port.
Also, there are the distances to Europe. Of course, when Churchill was first set up, northern Europe was the main trading partner. It has distance advantages that weren't available through the eastern ports, Thunder Bay or Montreal. Now, of course, northern Europe is not as much of a customer for us as Canadians are.
Under the post-Western Grain Transportation Act, post-Crow rate, Churchill does offer advantages. Here I'll get a little into talking about the rural economy and how Churchill can serve the producers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the prairies as a whole. There are advantages to be seen through a port such as Churchill.
Producers in the catchment area see immediate savings because of the freight-adjusted factor. What that means is that the actual days ships have on the ocean are fewer than would be the case if they were to go through Thunder Bay and the Lakehead system to Montreal, where the grain would have to be re-elevated and then put into ocean-going vessels. At Churchill it can go directly onto ocean-going vessels.
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The adjustment factor is something that a producer sees immediately. It is factored in through the Wheat Board that they have certain amounts for how much time the ocean-going vessel spends on the ocean. Per tonne, it costs about half. You're looking at about $6 or $7 per tonne for grain, which is charged to the producer at the elevator. At other ports, it would cost somewhere between $12 and $13. So it's half the price for the adjustment factor.
As well, in the final payment process, through an efficient use of Churchill, the Canadian Wheat Board can save money within the catchment area for producers in that area. The Wheat Board will save money and put the final payment process onto all producers. People will see more money that way as well. I'll just leave that for now.
From Churchill, the grain balance this year, to give you an idea, has gone to east Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, as well as many other countries. The Middle East is included. Under the former Western Grain Transportation Act, under full cost, WGTA freight rates cost considerably less in Vancouver. They tend to be less or on par with Thunder Bay, as well.
So my point here is that Churchill can offer producers real cost savings. These moneys in turn, hopefully, should stay within rural economies with producers to be recycled back into the economy.
I'll just get to the economic and social benefits of the rail line itself. We're involved with a port, but a rail line is, of course, very important. Without the rail line, we wouldn't have the port of Churchill.
But the rail line is much more than just for serving the port of Churchill. Of course, there's employment in northern Canada and throughout the prairie region. There are workers on the line at the port. There are approximately 70 to 80 full-time and part-time workers.
There's also the Northern Transportation Company Limited, which serves the eastern Arctic with about 30 to 40 employees, as well. Aboriginals make up close to 70% of those who work for NTCL and for the port itself. There are 67,000 people living along the lines. There are53 communities that have no other means of transportation except for air.
What this also means is that an industry such as fishing relies very heavily upon the rail line. Without the rail line to ship the fish in and out, it would not be economical whatsoever. The rail line gives the people an opportunity for local economic development. It gives them the promise of possible economic development in the future, as well as providing a livelihood for those along the line now who use the rail lines for that livelihood.
As well, here's something that some people might not be aware of. The spaceport project in Churchill holds a lot of promise for northern Canada, including northern Manitoba and Churchill. It's a rocket range. It had been used, I believe, until 1977. More rockets have been launched there than anywhere else in the world. I believe there were 3,500 every year. It's known as one of the best areas in the world to launch rockets.
In this new era of satellites, everyone's running to launch them, so it's being reopened. In fact, an agreement has just been signed with a Russian company to bring in Russian satellites, which will begin over the next number of years. They'll launch them for a number of different companies, probably mostly American.
The transportation infrastructure is essential to this rocket range. It needs the rail line to carry heavy material, such as rockets. Also, of course, they'll be using the airport and the port.
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So the whole transportation infrastructure is incredibly important to the spaceport project, which we all believe holds a lot of promise.
As for tourism, some of you might have heard of Churchill's tourism. It's really growing very large. That's predominately international tourism. I was up there in August. Of those I went up with, the only other Canadians were from Montreal; the rest were from the U.S., Italy or Spain. It was really amazing that these people had even heard of Churchill, Manitoba.
You might have heard about polar bears and beluga whales, but it's also for birdwatchers in the spring.
It has grown phenomenally. There are expectations that the chances for growth are fantastic. Last year, there were 10,000 visitors.
That is incredible in itself when you consider that it's very difficult to get there by train. I went by train from Winnipeg, and it took 36 hours. I don't know if you have ever been on a sleeper before, but 36 hours, two nights, on a train is quite a long time to spend there. At the airport, the flights only come in once a day, but somehow people will fly to get there.
As I mentioned, 70% are from outside Canada. What's also very interesting is that the people who have come into - this is from an exit survey - Churchill also spend a lot of time throughout the rest of Canada. Churchill may be their main destination; however, they're interested in northern Canada and what they call ecotourism. The average tourist spends 18 days. They tend to be higher wage earners as well and looking for something different from the tour.
Again, the railway is essential to the tourist trade. Although I'm not too sure I'd spend the36 hours again on the train, many people find that part of the experience. I know that most of the people from the U.S. to whom I spoke love trains, and without the train they wouldn't have flown there. They just wouldn't have been interested in it. Of all the people who travel to Churchill, 50% travel by VIA Rail.
I mentioned ecotourism. You might have read different articles in The Globe and Mail just about a month ago about the incredible number of people who are now looking for something different from Mexico or the Caribbean. They are looking for what's called ecotourism or heritage tourism, whereby they see something they can't see anywhere else. That area is really booming. That makes opportunities throughout northern Canada. Churchill is still lucky in the fact that it has the transportation infrastructure to get enough people there.
Just to wrap up, there's that Churchill advantage when we talk about the transportation infrastructure, what we have now and why we need to try to keep what we have, if not improve on all that we now have.
Certainly, that's so for the rail lines. The spaceport project depends on reliable rail lines, as does the eastern Arctic region, of course. As for shippers from Churchill, people do rely upon Churchill to give them their consumer goods, housing and petroleum.
Prairie grain producers reap benefits on lower export shipping costs as well. The jobs of port workers - CN and VIA - tend to rely on passenger and freight services. Of course, all the communities along the line rely on the passenger service that VIA Rail does provide. As well, as I mentioned, as for people in the remote communities, this is their only mode of transportation in more than 53 communities.
Although we are looking just at Churchill and marketing its port, we're excited about some of the opportunities that can happen there. I'll reiterate the fact that there is a definite need for northern Canada to hold on to what infrastructure it does have now, especially in the area of transportation.
Thank you.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Thank you, Mr. Balasko. Would you please take the witness chair? I can assure you that it does not eject.
[Translation]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Mr. Asselin.
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Mr. Asselin: You are here to make a presentation on the advantages of going through the port of Churchill, but I would like to know whether you are aware of the new federal transportation policies.
The new policy of the Department of Transport is geared to privatization. We know that Transport Canada has decided to privatize almost all infrastructures, whether they be railroads or ports. The federal government has also decided to withdraw from navigation services offered by the Coast Guard, after withdrawing from dredging and icebreaking operations in the Seaway, particularly on the St. Lawrence. Moreover, it has decided to charge fees to those who will be using the Seaway.
Do you think that those specific fees charged by the federal government are affecting the economy and the economic development of Canada?
[English]
Mr. Balasko: Regarding privatization of transportation, our railways, the ports and Canada Ports Corporation, we welcome this in a sense. Right now the rail line to Churchill is run by CN. However, they're in the process of selling their rail line to a short line operator. The bids are in right now and we are waiting to see who will be successful in buying this line.
As well, the port is in the midst of being privatized. Probably either the railway operator will run the port as well or another separate organization will run it. We don't see this as harmful to our cause. The problem with Churchill has been that we haven't always had what you can call a friendly carrier for Churchill. We are looking forward to working and marketing with someone who is interested in making money through the port of Churchill. We know you can make money through the port of Churchill. There is a limited area, as I mentioned, which is the catchment area. There is a limited area, but it works for those producers and it works for the people of northern Canada to keep this line open.
I would say, in response to your question, we would welcome this.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Of course, you're looking at it from the point of view of a businessman, but I am concerned about this privatization of ports and railroads because I know that the managers of those privatized companies will worry only about their bottom line. We're adding taxes for the use of the Seaway and privatizing railroads and ports. We know that everybody is in it for the money and that the consumer will end up paying for this. Do you agree with my reading of the situation?
[English]
Mr. Balasko: I don't necessarily agree that the consumer will be paying for this. I think this is a special case. When we're talking about rural economic development and we're talking about northern development, I try to impress the point that the transportation infrastructure is so important to the people of the prairie region and northern Manitoba.
Unfortunately, in this case I don't know if we really have much choice. In this day and age privatization of the rail line and a short line operator is the only way to go in this case. It has become more apparent over the last year that this is the way we have to approach this.
Producers will use the line if they can save money. This is the bottom line. We know they can save money. Many producers know they can save money as well. The problem has been that there has sometimes been a reluctance to take enough grain to Churchill. We're trying to make deals with a number of international shippers interested in coming into Churchill; however, we don't have the grain there. People will send grain there to save money. Nobody is mandated to spend money. Consumers are not mandated to spend any more money. In this case, they're just looking for the best deal.
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[Translation]
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): A short supplementary?
[English]
Okay, Mr. Chatters.
Mr. Chatters: I find this topic very interesting. Some of our presenters, some of the requests, and some of the concerns were outside the federal jurisdiction. This one is dead on. I was interested in Mr. Asselin's remarks. He should be very much concerned with the privatization and what is going on, because politics has been killing Churchill.
I think there is huge potential there. There are great things happening, but it's because of government policy in the past that Churchill has been less than successful. You can't expect a railway to upgrade and improve the line if government policy doesn't favour the use of the port of Churchill.
I have in my possession, in writing, a request from the Soviet Union to take delivery of grain through the port of Churchill. The Canadian Wheat Board refused to do this because of the politics of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the port of Montreal.
I think there are great things happening. But I hope the short line operator proposing to operate and upgrade the line has some kind of federal commitment to take the politics out of the Canadian Wheat Board's use of the port of Churchill. I think it has great potential in tourism and in the movement of export grain to the port of Churchill from the prairies, but you have to remove the politics and let the marketplace prevail.
So I think these are good things we're hearing. Great stuff.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Do you wish to give an answer to this comment,Mr. Balasko?
Mr. Balasko: There are many roadblocks Churchill has to fight. Part of it is politics and there are many other problems. The fact is that it is a port on the ocean. I believe there are not many countries in this world that have an ocean port and that would let it die off, especially with the infrastructure there now.
There is no doubt there is a need for improvement. We don't know where all this money is going to come from right now. We're mandated to market the port, but we're also mandated to find a solution now for the port. As you probably all know, over the years there have been many studies on Churchill. People are tired of this and there is a negativism around it. I don't blame people for that. There has been a lot of federal money put into studies on Churchill. We're looking for a solution now. We know there has to be a solution now, and the long-term solution is not more government subsidies for Churchill.
Mr. Chatters: Do you sense now, more than in the past, a commitment by government to the future of the port of Churchill?
Mr. Balasko: I sense there is a commitment to finding a solution now. I don't see politics roadblocking it. They are not saying we're trying to give you one more chance, but you're really going to die. I see a commitment to the idea that there has to be some kind of solution, one way or the other. The government has been good in the sense of at least giving us the opportunities. Actually, the Wheat Board has been fairly kind to us. They've tried their best, but they're hitting a lot of roadblocks as well.
This is why we're waiting now to see who the short line operator is and what we can term as a friendly carrier.
Mr. Chatters: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Thank you, Mr. Chatters. Mr. Wood is next.
Mr. Wood: When is the short line operator, or the bidder, going to be announced? You're not part of this, are you?
Mr. Balasko: No. We're strictly mandated to market the ports. We're not involved with negotiations to buy the line. We certainly don't have the money for it.
Mr. Wood: Are the successful bidders mandated to work through your agency?
Mr. Balasko: No, they're not. They might have their own marketing arm. Our organization is only funded for one more year, so we will die off in one more year. Our reason for being was strictly to give two years to build volumes up, to show that the port of Churchill can work and then to hand this off. We'll be finished by next year.
Mr. Wood: Have you had a successful operation so far? Have you been able to do that?
Mr. Balasko: I think so, because 30% more wheat went through the port this year than last year, although this is still too low. It's still losing money. However, we've spoken to a number of international shippers. We have a letter of intent from a Danish shipping company ready to come in for container service.
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We're really trying to push the pulse crops - peas, lentils - through the port of Churchill. Again, we're having trouble with the carrier in this case, but everybody else is in line. We have, as I said, a letter of intent through a shipping company in Denmark which is ready to send in eleven ships a year for containers.
We have also been speaking to Russia about ore - possibly a two-way trade of wheat for ore - bringing ore into northern Manitoba, which also adds to the economy of northern Manitoba, because then you can have value-added. You have Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting and Inco. You ship the raw ore down and process it here in Canada. Of course, now Russia doesn't receive wheat from Canada.
Mr. Wood: The spaceport obviously has some pretty high employment numbers. Are they realistic for start-up jobs? How many of those jobs, once this thing is completed and ready to go, are going to stay in Churchill?
Mr. Balasko: Those numbers were put out by Akjuit Aerospace, which is the company currently involved there. Possibly you could look at those numbers with some skepticism, but these are their numbers. They're a private organization, and that's what we have to go by.
Mr. Wood: Have they received any federal funding?
Mr. Balasko: I'm not honestly sure of that. Offhand I can't say.
Mr. Wood: But those are their numbers?
Mr. Balasko: Those are their numbers, right. They have been fairly quiet of late, but just recently there was an announcement from Minister Axworthy about the agreement with Russia to bring satellites in to launch them. That is the highest technology and those are actually the cheapest satellites you can find in the world right now, because all their war toys have been put aside and now they have all this technology.
Mr. Wood: In your mind and in the mind of your organization, how difficult is it for communities such as Churchill to develop a viable long-term tourism opportunity?
Mr. Balasko: Right now, as I mentioned, ecotourism and what they call heritage tourism are booming. Ten years from now maybe that'll be a thing of the past, of course, as people move on to something new. Right now, though, I can state first-hand, from being there, that the people were just incredibly amazed; 95% of them said they would return to northern Canada, if not Churchill, for another trip and they would suggest it to other people.
These are presidents of companies from all over the world. They can afford it. It's not cheap to go to Churchill right now. They want to spread the word.
It's a different culture. It's a different land even from what we're used to right here, although it's a flight of only two hours north from here. It's a totally different land from here. Even for a southern Canadian going there it's a whole new world. I think people are really excited about going there.
The problem is that the marketing - that's part of what we're doing as well - hasn't been there yet and people have to find out on their own. That's a problem.
Mr. Wood: How about the train ride up there, 36 hours or whatever it is?
Mr. Balasko: Well, it's 36 hours from Winnipeg, but many people fly to Thompson, which has jet service. From there it's only 11 or 12 hours.
Mr. Wood: Do they market the train trip as well?
Mr. Balasko: That's not something VIA Rail has done very well, either. Many people complain about that.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Mrs. Cowling.
Mrs. Cowling: I was up to the port of Churchill about ten days ago - it was my very first trip up there - with Country Canada. So there will be an airing -
Mr. Balasko: This Sunday.
Mrs. Cowling: - that will tell the Canadian people the story of the port of Churchill.
My question hinges around the myths out there about the port of Churchill and how the port has been subsidized. Perhaps, Darryl, you could expand on your mandate with the marketing agency, on what that mandate is intended to do and the potential of that mandate to create economic growth and jobs for rural Canadians.
Mr. Balasko: The infrastructure there now, the rail line, the airport, and the port itself, employ many people, but they also give people a sense that there is reason to believe there is still a chance for economic development. A rail line gives that to communities all along the line.
What we're strictly mandated to do is just bring more tonnage, to show that Churchill can work. We've been in existence for only one year. We have one more year to do this. We have one more shipping season. We've already shown we can do that. We've hit a number of roadblocks out of our control, but I think we've fought through those.
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I really think next year could be a break-through year where a number of different things, such as container service or two-way trade with Russia or Cuba can happen through the port of Churchill. So we're excited about that.
There's also value-added, and I've mentioned the possibility of two-way trade with Russia. Raw materials that the rural communities can process can be brought in and the finished product sent to the rest of the country or the U.S.
Mrs. Cowling: Mr. Chairman, just for the record, we started our tour in Yellowknife and listened to a lot of witnesses from rural communities in the north. I think one of the things we found, as people around this table, is the comment about ``northern Canada to southern Canada''. I had never heard that phrase before, I guess because I'd never visited the north before. Is that something you are finding yourself, with the mandate you have?
Mr. Balasko: As you mentioned, there are myths about Churchill and northern Canada, such as that Hudson Bay is ice-bound for 11 months of the year, which is not true. In fact, there are ships in there right now being loaded with grain to go out. It's true that by this time of year you need ice-strengthened vessels. There are many in Russia right now being used that are the best ice-strengthened vessels in the world, but we're having trouble bringing them in. Again, there's a lot of politics both ways.
There are a lot of myths about Churchill that we're trying to debunk as well, with international shippers and even with people in governments across Canada. First of all, there's the myth that the rail line cannot support taking cargo, which is not true. Second is that the port is ice-bound, which is not true. Our first ship left in mid-July this year. Last year, our last ship left port November 25. We're able to ship right through the season. So it's true that there are myths.
People hear about Churchill and say they should visit it one day. That's nice to say, but it's a part of Canada and it's really interesting to see how people live.
Mrs. Cowling: Thank you.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Mr. Serré.
Mr. Serré: I think we're running behind schedule.
You've given us a lot of figures. You said around 95% of the volume is grain.
Mr. Balasko: That's right.
Mr. Serré: We'll leave the 5% out for now. You said your peak season for volume was 1977, with around 750,000 tonnes.
Mr. Balasko: Right.
Mr. Serré: This year you expect about 300,000 tonnes.
Mr. Balasko: We're hoping for one last shipment to make it 325,000 tonnes.
Mr. Serré: First of all, I would like you to explain to me why there was such a reduction from 1977 to last year and this year. Secondly, you've said one cargo ship will haul approximately35,000 tonnes.
Mr. Balasko: To the eastern Arctic.
Mr. Serré: So it means roughly 9 or 10 containers. Explain why there's a big reduction in volume. Can a port be viable with 10 loads a year?
Mr. Balasko: No, we don't believe so. We know we have to get the tonnage up. In 1977 Russia was the largest buyer of Canadian grains. Of course, we all know what happened in the Soviet Union and then to Russia. It doesn't have credit any more with the Wheat Board. The Wheat Board won't sell it any more wheat. From Churchill to Russia is by far the shortest route, right over the polar region, so what happened in the Soviet Union and now Russia really hurt Churchill. That's why the volume went down.
Mr. Serré, were you talking about the eastern Arctic where they send petroleum? Is that the other question?
Mr. Serré: You answered my other question in your first statement, but can it be viable?
Mr. Balasko: No, we don't believe so, and that's why.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Thank you very much, Mr. Balasko, for your presentation.
Mr. Balasko: Thank you.
The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Some of the members are missing. Because we are somewhat pressed for time, maybe we should help ourselves to some lunch and continue through lunch, if you all agree with that. Let's adjourn for five minutes and help ourselves.
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The Acting Chairman (Mr. Bélair): Ladies and gentlemen, as I think was agreed a few minutes ago, we should proceed. I am calling now on Jeff Stepaniuk, instructor with Keewatin Community College, to come forward.
Go ahead, Mr. Stepaniuk.
Mr. Jeff Stepaniuk (Instructor, Natural Resources Management Program, Keewatin Community College): Hello. I'm here on behalf of Keewatin Community College, located in The Pas, about two and a half hours north of Swan River here, when conditions are good.
I have to make two apologies. Dr. Sam Shaw was unable to make it today and I was unable to make the 10:30 a.m. appointment. Roads were very difficult to travel.
I'm working from a few hand-delivered notes from Sam himself. I have seven categories I'd like to mention some points about: technology is a two-edged sword; how can value-added be increased for primary production from the rural communities; does rural infrastructure matter; how can natural resource management, harvesting, and distribution be enhanced; is access to capital an issue for rural Manitoba; and rural renewal starts and ends with us people.
I'll give you some background. Unemployment rates in northern Manitoba are the highest in the province. We're running at about 14% in the northern industrial communities, particularly Thompson and The Pas, compared with about 6% on average in the south. Unemployment is even higher in first nations communities - it's running at approximately 40% - followed by Northern Affairs communities, at about 30%.
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I picked out a few of these points as fast as was humanly possible from Tom Henley's Northern Manitoba Economic Development Commission report.
Impediments to economic development in the north are: distance from major centres, transportation costs for land-based single natural resource extraction industries, lack of skilled labour and - something closer to home for myself - the lack of educational facilities.
While the costs of everything - harvesting, housing, food, etc. - have gone up, prices in the primary natural resources commodities such as fish and forestry have remained stable in terms of nominal dollars and have therefore declined in real terms.
The first thing I'd like to address is the technology issue. In many of the remote northern communities the information highway is basically as accessible as a paved highway. We have the computers...which has little relevance where literacy is a problem. This is where community meetings and institutions like Keewatin Community College can actually form a people connection and meet with these people. It's a vital point.
Government has to get more involved in research and development. I don't know if this would be a provincial or federal matter, but there's too much reliance on private industry to do it and there's no incentive for someone who's developed something to share the information. Many end up reinventing the wheel, and then many projects look identical because the previous study results have never been released. It's very difficult to get your hands on information.
The second topic I'd like to discuss is how the value-added can be increased for primary production. I think opportunities are endless. What seems to be missing are the movers and shakers who can get things rolling. Northern communities, particularly first nations groups, maybe have some work to do in changing people's perceptions of what to expect in these areas. Any northern communities that have succeeded in large-scale operations have generally brought in somebody with some expertise to direct and show and possibly train the locals.
I've heard mixed reports on rural businesses buying services and supplies locally. Some lodges buy everything and hire locally. Others with airstrips fly all the supplies in. In my immediate locale, it's camper convoy after camper convoy from the States. These people may fly into these large facilities once, have a tour, and then come back the following time with the camper loaded and spend very little in the province. And this may continue for a number of years. I don't know how we could look at that to try to increase secondary and maybe tertiary spending of the money, here in the north in particular.
Rough fish have been looked at time and time again. The problem still seems to be that the raw product has to be priced low enough to make the value added feasible, but the price of fish is too low for these fishermen. Lake Winnipeg pickerel, sucker stocks and whitefish are basically taking a beating. It's very difficult economically.
I think northern Manitoba, in particular, offers many opportunities for ecotourism or package-type venues. Just look at what the Polar Bear Express has done for Churchill. Or there is the idea of a bus tour throughout northern Manitoba maybe stopping at The Pas, Flin Flon and Thompson, looking at the winter trappers festival and at the Flin Flon trout festival at Pisew Falls. I think that in particular needs to be looked at. The Grass River park area...it's an undeveloped river entirely within our border and ecotourism is screaming out for some aid.
I think the key to this is organization and possibly advertising. It's the seniors who have the time and the money these days and it might be a very good market to look at.
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Does the rural infrastructure matter? I think the lack of infrastructure can be a major problem, particularly for communities such as Red Sucker Lake and Pukatawagan Lake, in transporting heavy goods, building materials, fuel, etc., over the winter roads or rail lines. During some winters at lake freeze-up, or in slush conditions in the spring, they have to rely on flying in essential goods at astronomical cost. Unless there's some major development, I don't think there'll be an incentive for private companies possibly to build these roads.
Even then, governments should have some responsibility to help provide funding support. Even if it has been a matter of concern or awareness to some of these communities located along those lines, I'm not sure people are aware of what could possibly happen, particularly in remote communities, where rail lines are their only connection to the south.
How can natural resource management, harvesting, and distribution be enhanced? I think sustainable development is essential. Managing our resources using the political timeframe of the four years a party is in power...I'd like to see that lengthened. There are too many projects that look at the short term only, without recognizing that rational development, perhaps on a smaller scale, or slower development, will help ensure the resource or resources are available to others. Rather than expanding the natural resource harvesting, maybe you could look at making better use of what we have at a sustainable level.
Big isn't necessarily better. There's no doubt many of the resource harvesting operations ignore the local markets here in the province in pursuit of the Holy Grail of international markets, where they're simply competing with large corporations. We need to investigate the domestic markets and improve our advertising.
Access to international markets has always been difficult. Single-desk operations such as the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation offer an advantage, but there will always be difficulties with people wanting to go their own way, particularly in some of those small northern communities, so some changes need to take place. Over recent years we have seen an opening up, with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation issuing more special dealers' licences to entrepreneurs. However, in the international market, from what I'm exposed to or what I'm reading, there's a need for a more Canadian image.
About fisheries, the value-added processing has been a focus in major commercial fishing communities basically forever. Their perspective is that the local community should benefit from the processing and marketing of fish...rather than through a single agency, such as the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. I know the issue was recently reviewed in depth by the federal government commission and permission was granted on a trial basis to the Island Lake community to sell outside. It may aid some improvements. Community-based development is the key in northern communities, but we have to look at the larger picture.
About packaging opportunities, the gentleman just before me mentioned ecotourism. Maybe crafts, secondary and tertiary utilization of our natural resources, finished products, would keep the money revolving inside our communities for a greater length of time. While there will be a reluctance to subsidize, I think we'll save costs by funding some of these smaller communities. Otherwise both physical and mental health will deteriorate for a lot of rural people and we'll end up spending more money in the long run on health care costs.
Is access to capital an issue for rural Manitoba? Definitely. The megaprojects are glamorous, but they tend to have a beginning and an end here, rather than staying power. What do we do here once a dam is built? Alternatively, I think small can be beautiful in some ways and that in a rural planning concept many smalls can make a great package. This may again be back to the advertising.
.1340
I think we need more advertising and rural business development centres and programs, a sort of one-stop shopping centre. Regional economic development has become big business itself. There are hundreds and hundreds of planning communities and coordinators and layers upon layers...and for all the money that's donated to a number of these programs, you hardly ever see a follow-up or a success story in relation to the numbers.
One example that comes to mind for the province here is our fisheries enhancement initiative fund. On an annual basis they provide a summary of where the money went and it's given to the public for reaction. So I think maybe regulation or coordination in some way.... Again, I'm not sure if the federal government can aid.
Community-based development with substantial local input is probably the best way to go. I think a coordinated approach can help the local residents access different programs, many of which rely on the matched-funding issues. And better yet, there's a feasibility when it's directed at funding proposals with common overall objectives. Different rural regions here, even in the north, face different issues, so standardizing approaches on your part may not work. There has to be some sort of flexibility. However, we can standardize certain aspects, such as what information is needed and maybe how to determine interest groups.
I hadn't had much time to prepare to give you other examples. Everything was quite a rush.
I think rural Manitoba needs access to continuing education and awareness of issues. Programs offered by institutions such as Keewatin Community College are essential. We offer local training with the resources right out the back door. Offering worker apprenticeship training programs along with the course helps equip these students with the skills required by the industry itself. Specific training is becoming more and more demanding. However, we require coordination efforts of some type for the academic programs industry needs.
Any training offered in rural Manitoba should recognize that much of the work available is seasonal and doesn't fall between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. It revolves around many traditional activities: trapping, hunting, fishing. Courses and seminars and maybe informational meetings should be scheduled with that in mind. Correspondence courses or evening courses about starting small businesses would be a fantastic asset because not everybody in the north is on the Internet. Again, people connection.
However, all the courses in the world aren't going to do any good if people know about them. Numerous courses and programs are available at all levels of government, but it's often up to the individual to approach those departments and determine what's offered. Regional communities, futures boards and business development centres offer assistance but it's been my experience that a lot of people don't even know what is available to them.
How can federal policies be improved? I think a second federal infrastructure program would be just great, targeting roads or the Churchill
[Inaudible - Editor] lines. Some sort of development financing would be nice, with eligibility for smaller projects. Maybe there could be grant money as well, with low-interest loans or financed by some sort of investment funds or grow bonds. I'm not too sure if that would work.
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On the establishment of a permanent federal-provincial committee on environmental policy, I think what's required is greater or more consistent intergovernmental cooperation and coordination. I think some of the big companies want to act responsibly, but bureaucracy may provide too many hoops in some situations. Maybe some method of streamlining the process would be in everyone's favour.
Presently, many organizations hire consulting companies to meet their guidelines. These companies are generally unfamiliar with the immediate locale and provide decisions by which the community will live and breathe, perhaps for periods of up to ten years following. A permanent committee mechanism of a nature that will provide continuing consultation between the two orders of government, local residents and industry itself, might lead to a successful framework on some sort of bargaining for those issues. I think it could assist in addressing one of the inherent difficulties in Canadian resource management, and that's the absence of some sort of mechanism for allocating industries or federal-provincial groups their share of the resource rents.
Here's a suggestion worth considering. One point that I think I should mention is that federalism may not provide the elimination of the conflict, but just the very nature of having federalism involved and putting some sort of diversity into the political response will eventually be a good thing. It inevitably leads to an accommodating system and, I think, some sort of equalization, which has to be important as a means of resource revenue-sharing. I'm not sure of the ultimate value of that, but I think it could be discussed.
An example might be - I'm not sure if this is also a provincial matter - some sort of guaranteed berth. Repap, the large paper industry located in The Pas, does much better than exporting raw wood and pulp, granted, but we're forced to look at these large corporations as environmental and economic panaceas of development.
There are lots of small operations and private sawmills. One in particular, right here in the region, is Waugh's Woods. The fellow who owns it is building log homes in the region, but he can't get his hands on large wood. Whether he wants it or not for his log homes, Repap isn't able to supply him with the large wood. I think his operation could be value-added to the nth degree. Repap may bring in a tree with a butt size that's 24 inches but it's too big for their mill, so they can't provide this to somebody. The end up grinding it down and using it as pulp. There has to be some better way of utilizing our resources.
The Opaskwayak Cree Nation was in the news lately for tying up the north. Small operators have difficulty getting into these areas. Leptick Sawmills Ltd., in Cranberry Portage has difficulty even though it provides lower costs for building lumber. I can purchase a lift of two-by-fours that are of a much higher quality more cheaply from this gentlemen, but the wood isn't graded or kiln-dried. If I'm looking for mortgaging in order to build my home, I therefore can't get the financing. If there was some sort of certification for this gentleman, or if the chokers were taken off of these small outfits, the goods could be supplied locally. I think the spin-offs would be enormous, and housing costs might go down.
I think a substantial portion of the resource rents may be used as an inducement to effectively husband and develop our resources. Maybe the rents from the larger corporations could be eliminated from some sort of tax calculation. The use of equalization as a means of sharing resource revenues could have an added impact for increased provincial or rural - and even federal - integration. I think the result would be a major step towards improving some sort of climate of compromise, particularly in smaller industrial communities like the north.
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I have a few ideas on this, one of which is some sort of trust account. When looking at a major resource development scheme that has a fixed life, a direct industry charge for exemption from the tax could be dedicated as funding for resource or rural community improvement. It could be some sort of revolving credit fund that the industry puts into a rural area bank. This fund would be able to help those individuals or rural individuals can tap into it. When times are good the industry can financially improve the pot, and when it's bad industry can tap into the account again. It would end up being some sort of security net for both the rural community itself, and for the industry as a bonus or award for them putting it aside.
As an example, I don't know what Repap is charged for a cubic metre. I didn't have time to research this. If they were charged a dollar per cubic metre as a stumpage fee and sold over a million cubic metres, it would add up quite fast. There would a million dollars sitting in a bank account that could be turned into some sort of revolving credit account. Repap could be provided a tax break, and would be supplying aid for rural research and development, entrepreneurial development and much more.
Maybe a committee could be established that would set up the parameters to draw money out. Maybe the federal government could provide parameters so that the funds wouldn't be drawn out indiscriminately for operations that would ultimately fail. There could be a threshold on the account stating that if Repap was making more than $2 million, they could possibly take back some of those funds at a lesser cost than the tax.
There are two benefits here. It would provide a source of money for financing research and community betterment projects, and it would provide some sort of stability account for the industry. Maybe there could be stipulations on what Repap could actually take the money out for, such as modernization, the sustainability of the plant, silviculture efforts, etc.
I think the marketplaces for the forest resources are generally the urban centres, which are very environmentally conscious right now. I think they're certified as sustainable operations for development, but it would be nice if an entrepreneur in our local area, in our rural environment, was provided with some backing by some federally minded group that allowed national certification. Wild rice is sustainable and chemical-free. There are a number of optimum possibilities for it. Maybe advertising some sort of optimum yield rather than maximum sustainable yield would permit rural communities to say again to the Canadian Standards Association to expand certification, which doesn't exist for, say, the fellow in The Pas who is packaging sunflower seeds. Maybe some sort of method of good laboratory practices would ensure that they're following any guidelines that would be necessary.
As far as resource extraction is concerned, I think there are high costs associated with the resource extraction and marketing in the north. This results from a variety of factors primarily associated with the distance to markets and to our primary producers. The recent loss of the freight subsidy programs has impacted a number of outfits. Perhaps some sort of revised tax structure could improve this.
Some of the Department of Natural Resources offices here have seen significant decreases in staffing and budgets. Decreases to agencies responsible for resource management have hindered our ability to effectively manage the resources and protect the public's interest.
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At ACC, I teach the natural resource management technology program. These students are coming out with an 18-month degree in natural resources and they expect that there are no recruitment agencies immediately for them. They're just thrown to the woods, and much of their employment is term for periods of maybe five to ten years following their education. It's difficult. The ones who eventually do make it are demonstrating real staying power. I think there's very little research and development occurring, but how could we improve it?
I have a friend who just returned from an antelope hunting trip in Montana. He paid non-resident licence fees, hotel accommodations, food expenses, locker plant fees, costs to cut up, costs to freeze, land fees, taxidermy fees, shipping fees and more, and this person came home with eight pounds of jerky and six pounds of steak. He spent more that $1,400 in another country, and and he utilized his own vehicle. So maybe there is some way of ultimately enhancing our land and wildlife or resources.
Finally, on education - which is why I'm here - I think there's a need for further public education and involvement in natural resource management. As the demands on the resources increase, I think it becomes more and more critical. As an instructor, I find that the basic weakness - in our community in particular - is the education of the individuals in the north. Just obtaining the grade 12 entrance requirements to enter the class.... The college itself is situated in The Pas. Almost 99% of my students come from the south, because people in the north can't meet the grade 12 requirements to get into the college. I might have one person in a class of 25 or 50 who is from The Pas. That's much too low.
I think that upon entering the college, there must be some sort of check to ensure that basic learning skills are met, because there is this lack of pre-trained people. Maybe there should be an extension of aid in funding so that we can increase the program to a third year. In the first year, these students could be brought in very slowly and be taught technical skills, rather than our forcing calculus and statistics on them. Some of them do not know how to operate a computer yet, but they are expected to draft reports at a government...level. It's very difficult for them; I think they're set up for failure.
The Chairman: Excuse me. Could I ask you to wrap up? We're being pushed on our time at the other end.
Mr. Stepaniuk: Okay.
I think education is presently faced with a dilemma. We want to increase enrolment and possibly organize a longer stay here at the college. The problems that we face are with some of the communities that are located in these isolated environments. Maybe there is need for some sort of funding for projects whereby we can actually pack up a set of microscopes and travel out there to help promote education. It's difficult at this time, but I think the answer is education awareness.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Monsieur Asselin, do you have any questions?
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[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: I want to welcome you to this committee. According to your presentation, there seems to be quite a serious problem in a lot of areas from education to manpower, to harvesting and even exports.
In your opinion, should the federal government concentrate exclusively on research and development in exports and harvesting operations given the money it has and the fact that you have to start somewhere? If the fishing or logging industry cannot increase the export of its raw material to local or international markets, companies cannot expand. It also prevents small companies that use this raw material from developing.
You mentioned also that the federal government has implemented programs that proved ineffective because of tremendous squandering. What can the federal government do to improve its programs and stop the squandering of public funds given the money it has?
[English]
Mr. Stepaniuk: I think much better utilization of the funds would be generated, particularly - I know I've said it a few times - in awareness programs. People just aren't aware of what is out there, whether the money is there or not. Maybe, for lack of a better term, it should be a travelling roadshow, if necessary, or a video program, something that would be delivered to small businesses or rural areas, or the college itself, to help promote the efforts or let these people know what is available to them.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Thank you.
[English]
The Chairman: Mrs. Cowling.
Mrs. Cowling: I have a very short question. One of the things that came forward from your presentation is that you're not knowledgeable about the programs that are available through the federal government. It's hard for you to figure out which are federal, provincial, or territorial. How can we help rural Canadians such as you be more aware of the programs we have available? A number of programs are out there for you, but clearly the message isn't getting to rural Canadians. What can we as a committee do to enhance and bring that information to you so you can be part of that ongoing process?
Mr. Stepaniuk: A local office would be nice, possibly some type of literature. But rather than our just getting a pamphlet and it not being distributed within the community and ending up collecting dust somewhere on the shelf, maybe a representative could come out, with enormous amounts of notice, to the community. I had very little notice of this process taking place today. As I say, I had a day and a half to prepare.
Some sort of presenter would be nice. Maybe visits on an annual basis, just showing what is new, or somebody responsible in the community, already there, to be in charge, whether or not it's an extra duty for them, to visit the schools.... I know in The Pas there are only six schools. In Keewatin itself I was scrambling for points to mention and I couldn't get help from the members of the community I thought would be of great benefit to me. They themselves were unfamiliar with it.
Whether that has to go through the town office.... I think education is the place to start. I have small groups of students who would like to start to do actual real-life projects, and if they had funding provided them.... But they are there only on a two-year basis. By the time they applied for funding they would have graduated and missed out on the opportunity.
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Maybe some sort of fast-track funding for groups such as interested school groups, cadets, and college students, such that they would be able to attack it and get some results possibly over the summer, over the fax, and do it within a period of three weeks to keep the interest up.... It's very hard keeping up the interest of students when their ages range from 18, when they're fresh out of high school, to 35.
In the north I'm getting individuals whose education is on a sine wave. They are coming in with anything from a 50% average from grade 12 in southern Manitoba to fourth-year university. It's hard getting through to everybody in that group. I get a few interested individuals who would love to do something for the community. It's just a funding matter. They aren't able to talk to somebody in a quick enough manner.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Stepaniuk. I know you had to travel a long way to be here. We do appreciate your efforts to come here and we appreciate your presentation.
I'd like to call on our next witness, from the Assiniboine Community College, Donna Campbell. Welcome.
Ms Donna Campbell (Marketing Coordinator, Rural Development Program, Assiniboine Community College): Thank you.
The Chairman: We ask you to make an opening statement and then we'll turn it over to some of the members to ask you some questions.
Ms Campbell: Okay.
I'm a recent graduate of the rural development program at Assiniboine Community College. This program examines the issues of rural diversification and renewal within Canada. As we all know, rural depopulation has been significant since the early 1940s. Along with the population decline there has been a decrease in mid-sized farms and an ever-increasing need for employment.
Rural communities are beginning to realize that for them to continue to thrive in this global world, development within the community has to occur. The rural development program, established in 1992-93, is designed to train individuals interested in living and working in rural communities to help those communities grow and create wealth. The focus of the program is to incorporate social, economic, and environmental considerations into development projects. By having these three considerations, development becomes sustainable.
When I speak of development, it isn't necessarily large-scale development, megaprojects, but small-is-beautiful projects. For example, in Russell there is Borderland Ventures. A group of area farmers has collaborated and they're in the process of developing a gluten ethanol feedlot facility. They'll be employing approximately twenty people using a renewable resource such as wheat. Thus they are creating jobs, providing a facility for farmers to ship their wheat to locally, and adding value instead of just exporting. This scenario creates wealth within the community.
Through the rural development program individuals are given the skills and knowledge base to return to rural Canada, and skills of community development and entrepreneurship. We are the movers and shakers.
As you can see from the back of the rural development brochure I gave you, individuals enrolled in programs study various subject areas. Because of the diversity of the subjects, the individual skills are transferable. These skills do not trap individuals into activities that may become inactive.
The rural development program also recognizes that development cannot be standardized, because each community has its own uniqueness. This uniqueness is what makes Canada such a great country.
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The rural development program recognizes development must occur within the community. This increases community self-reliance, empowers the people and enhances the local capacity to plan, design, control, manage and evaluate the initiatives.
Development must be sustainable, diversified and holistic, meaning there are social, economic, environmental and cultural aspects of community that have to be involved. Development must be inclusive and benefit the community at large rather than just particular individuals. The development should arise from underdevelopment and marginalization and have medium- to long-term effects rather than being a short-term quick fix.
Please turning to page 2 in the student guide. The uniqueness of this program also extends to the delivery style of the curriculum. The program combines traditional and non-traditional curriculum delivery integrated with project-based training. As you can see, the skills training from September to December is in-class instruction. Then from January to August the students will be out in the community working with organizations such as the chamber of commerce developing projects within that area. Then they go on a cooperative education experience from May to August. They do the same cycle again in the second year.
We have very successful graduates out in the field. The program has been up and running for approximately four years. We have a wide range of people. For example, we have community economic development officers, consultants, entrepreneurs starting up their own advertising business and community workers working internationally in countries such as Zaire.
I designed my presentation to be relatively short so you can ask me further questions.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Asselin.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: I want to congratulate you for your presentation which leads me to a question about the diagram on page 2 which I find very interesting. You explain that the student or the person who decides to specialize in a trade learns the skills from September to December and then practices what he or she has learned from January to August.
I would like to know whether you have enough positions for those students between January and August and also if the needs of all those students are being met by the businesses.
Can you tell me if the students who are working between January and August are getting paid.
[English]
Ms Campbell: The maximum number of students we take into the program is 15 students a year. The community business involvement runs from January to the end of April. At this point there are enough businesses in the community interested in taking the students on. At this time the students are not paid for their services, but from May to August when their cooperative education experience starts, they are paid by the businesses that hire them for their summer practicum.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Is there a very high rate of success? Does a student who has gone through an unpaid apprenticeship with a business have higher chances of staying on with this company as a paid employee?
[English]
Ms Campbell: In some areas they have stayed on. Personally, I worked with a non-profit organization, Riding Mountain National Park. For the last two years I was their retail manager. I'm on their board of directors as a director. Now they would like me to come back into their organization as the business manager. So there is opportunity for the individuals to stay with those organizations.
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The main problem, particularly with Manitoba, is our conservative nature. We don't like to jump head first into things. Eastern Manitoba has been very successful in community development. They have various members of community development corporations and community future corporations.
Western Manitoba, on the other hand, is a little bit further behind. The communities are starting to realize they need to do something so there are significant possibilities out there for them. We have recently placed three graduates - not from this year but from the previous year - out in eastern Saskatchewan, so development is occurring out in those areas also.
[Translation]
M. Asselin: You're telling us that people are quite conservative around here, but will all students of your school be assured of finding work after they graduate?
[English]
Ms Campbell: The opportunity is there. We have to go banging on their doors to get the jobs. There is very minimal awareness of the program. The college, I feel, hasn't done a good enough job marketing the program. The communities are not aware there are professionals out there to help them start up their corporations.
We have to go out there and we have to be the shakers and makers I referred to before. We have to shake people up and start changing their attitudes about development. We have to get ourselves in the door this way.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Chatters.
Mr. Chatters: This is a very interesting program. My first impression in looking at the material and listening to you is that it must be an extremely intensive program to be able to turn out graduates in that short a time with skills to take on an awesome task like rural development.
We're travelling across the country looking for some answers. You're producing graduates in two years who are supposed to have the answers to take to the community. I would be interested in knowing your success rate. How many of your graduates get employment in the field of the program and are successful with it. What are the drop-out rates in the program as students are participating?
Ms Campbell: My class entered the program in 1994 and graduated in 1996. We had two students who dropped out of the program, and they dropped out in the first four months. Everybody else has stayed with it.
On the success rate of the graduates, it seems to be taking approximately a year for the graduates to find a position within development or to find their little niche in entrepreneurship, if that's what they're interested in.
As I mentioned previously, within the last six months we've had three graduates get jobs within eastern Saskatchewan. They were from the 1995 graduating class.
Mr. Chatters: Do you require those entering the program to have a rural background, or is this relevant?
Ms Campbell: No. All these principles can also be applied within urban centres. We're not specifically targeting rural areas. The main focus of it is rural development.
Mr. Chatters: How would the program differ from a business program in one of the universities? In a way, you are producing the same kind of graduate, except this is a two-year course and at a university it would be a four-year degree course. Basically, you're looking for the same skills.
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Ms Campbell: We're looking for the same skills. This past year I was on the student executive of the Assiniboine Community College and our president was a business administration student. She told me that if she had known about the program she would have rather gone into it.
Even though we take similar common core courses, the program teaches a different way of thinking in looking at development. Instead of just the economic side of it, there are the three cornerstones that include the social and environmental aspects of development. I would think that's a different route from the administration business courses.
Mr. Chatters: It's a more practical, down-to-earth approach rather than the theoretical, university academic approach.
Ms Campbell: Yes, definitely. In the first-year class this year there are four students who have bachelor degrees from universities. They find that their education has not given them the skills or aspects to go back out into the community that they were looking for from the university.
Mr. Chatters: Good luck. It sounds like a great program.
Ms Campbell: It is a great program. I was previously a dental assistant for 10 years and just seemed to have gotten lost.
I grew up in a rural area, and coming back to rural Canada now has made me down to earth and given me a different focus on development that goes on in the area. It has made me realize that sustainability is the way to go. We can't be out there bleeding the dollars out of everything.
Mr. Chatters: Of the people who grew up in rural Canada, 99% would return to rural Canada given the opportunity.
Ms Campbell: Definitely.
The Chairman: You have that right.
Mrs. Cowling: One of the things we've heard from witnesses right across the north - we've been into Yellowknife, Fort McMurray and Prince Albert - is that there a number of jobs out there; however, the people who are applying for the jobs do not have the skills for those specific jobs. I think that was mentioned when we were at Syncrude.
What is the criteria for people coming into your program? Are there a number of first nations people involved in your program? We're finding that there are a lot of people from the first nations community who are unemployed and do not have those particular skills.
Ms Campbell: The requirements for the program have changed this year. Before, you had to have your grade 12 math and English and also write a 600-word essay. We felt that because of the low enrolment we'd had in previous years, that was a deterrent for graduating high school students. They changed the requirements this year and just went to strictly the math and grade 12 English requirements.
As for aboriginal communities, we only have one person in the program who is aboriginal. We in the program have been told by those higher up in the college not to approach aboriginal communities because there is another similar program within the college that is aboriginal-focused. So there's a little bit of overlap in that area. The one aboriginal girl in the program is taking it because she feels that the rural development program will give her a better opportunity than the other program that's focused for aboriginals.
Mrs. Cowling: What would you recommend, then, to this committee with respect to first nations people and a number of people in rural areas of this country, to help enhance the educational end of it so we can give these people the tools they need for the jobs that are out there? Should we be involving business with respect to education?
Ms Campbell: Do you mean having cooperative education in high schools with mentorship programs?
Mrs. Cowling: Yes.
Ms Campbell: I think that would be a very good idea. I know they're starting that sort of program in the Souris school division with their students. They're having cooperative education experience along with their traditional instruction.
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There are so many university students coming out of university not really happy with what they've taken, just because they haven't had the experience in that field to help them realize that their course isn't for them, that another choice would have been better. I think that sort of initiative would be very beneficial to high school students, to have that mentorship ability, to be able to go into a community and learn the basics. Then they could go on and further their education.
Aboriginal communities have to be given the support and the initiative to go on and further their education. They realize themselves that they're not second-class citizens, but I think everybody else treats them that way.
I have a friend who's a first-year teacher just north of Ste. Rose. They've had a psychiatrist in that school division who has come in for the past five years and has degraded the students. My friend has finally stood up and said we can't do this. She went to the principal and told him this was going on and he confronted the psychiatrist, who didn't deny it. So there are professionals out there who are degrading them, but we have to start giving them the skills and enhancing their abilities.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you. This strikes me as the old statement: give somebody a loaf of bread and you'll feed them for a week; teach them how to grow grain and you'll feed them forever.
Ms Campbell: Yes, it's true.
The Chairman: I think that's exactly the case with this program. You said it was established for approximately four years. Was it a major battle within the community college to have them commit the resources to this type of innovative programming?
Ms Campbell: It's turned into a major battle. Last year they were going to cut the program. The first- and second-year students confronted the administration, brought it to their view that we knew about what they were going to do with the program. We fought with them and got the graduates together, and they have revived the program into what I've given you now.
They weren't very supportive of us, which I think kind of backfired in their faces. They realized they were creating these strong individuals who were able to go out into the communities and make changes.
The Chairman: To the best of your knowledge, is this program being replicated in other parts of western Canada?
Ms Campbell: As far as I know, it's not being replicated at college levels. I believe there's a program in eastern Canada that is at university level. I've heard through the grapevine that Brandon University is instituting a master's program. But as far as college level goes, I'm not aware of any.
The Chairman: I think Waterloo University has a degree program in economic development.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. We appreciate your giving us this opportunity -
Ms Campbell: Thank you.
The Chairman: - to see what is indeed a unique program, and I think one that could lead to a lot of success in a lot of parts of this country.
Ms Campbell: Oh, definitely. There's lots of potential out there. Thank you very much.
The Chairman: I would like to call on our next witness. Don Dewar from Keystone Agriculture Producers is here to join us.
Welcome, Don. I ask you to give an opening comment and then we'll have members of the committee ask questions.
Mr. Don Dewar (Keystone Agriculture Producers): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of Keystone Agriculture Producers, I'm pleased to be invited to address the standing committee.
Keystone Agriculture Producers is Manitoba's largest farm policy organization, representing producers of all agriculture products across Manitoba. We're pleased to have a member of this committee as our past executive member and vice-president.
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Keystone Agriculture Producers, or KAP as we're referred to, does follow rural development policy very closely and in fact has taken the lead in the recent formation of the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council. This council is a group of individuals from both industry and government who have been brought together to identify the needs of and coordinate the development in Manitoba.
I believe the initiative came about initially as a result of the changes to the transportation policy and in recognition of the need. It's intended to be a clearing house for companies or individuals wishing to develop a new enterprise or some type of diversification, such as value-added, where they can find the answers to questions, whether those questions are legal, environmental or relating to availability of resources, such as labour or water, in certain areas.
I mention the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council not specifically because of KAP's involvement, but because it's an example of industry and government working together to achieve the goal of a strong rural economy in Manitoba. The other fact worthy of note is that it was not an initiative of the government, but the importance was recognized and the council has received substantial support from our federal government.
A strong rural economy means a healthy social economy, where jobs are available for our youth and the infrastructure is maintained at a quality level. As we've witnessed a reduction in the number of farms and people on them, there has been a reduction of the services close by. This in part is influenced by the global agricultural economy, by the need to apply economies of scale to agricultural production, and again, by the amount of money left in the farmers' hands at the end of the production cycle - money that could be spent in the rural economy helping to drive the development.
At a time when input costs for agricultural production are rising at rates much higher than the rate of inflation, we are now facing new costs in the form of cost recovery programs. There have been 42 areas of cost recovery identified for agriculture. While cost recovery of services requested of government or of anyone else, I suppose, can be understood, what about the services that are offered without being requested?
Keystone Agriculture Producers believes producers affected by these policies should be involved not reactively but proactively. I have two examples I'd like to present briefly.
The first came out of Ag Canada, as it was called then. Ten years ago a review of the seed program was conducted, similar to the reviews that are being undertaken today. In fact, Mr. Dobson, I believe, did a transportation review. He conducted this review in the seed program ten years ago.
One of the results was a 500% increase in the cost of seed crop inspections. Since that time, the industry has worked closely with the government to manage the delivery of the program as resources have been gradually withdrawn and restricted.
When Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was faced with the major budget reductions two years ago, the seed industry was again faced with major cost increases. But rather than accept the cost increase and go home, the industry met to discuss ways of delivering the required services while at the same time maintaining the integrity of Canada's seed system, which is the envy of the world.
The result was the formation of the Canadian Seed Institute, of which Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is a part. The industry, that is the users, controls the cost of the program. The federal government achieves their budget objective, the seed industry is faced with less increase in costs, and the program has been maintained - a lesson in cooperation.
The second is a little more recent, and it involves the formation of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. This is a new agency being set up through the Department of Health whose objective is to clear up a backlog of pesticide registration applications as well as new ones as they are received. The program presently has a $16 million budget. This budget will be increased to$34 million, and $14 million has now been targeted towards cost recovery. The number of people on staff will increase from 129 to 408. We have no assurances that the program will function more efficiently or effectively and the cost of the program seems to be irrelevant, yet there is only one group or person paying.
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The application is originally paid for by the company applying for the registration, but they have said that this cost will be passed on to their customers, the producers of Canada. The spirit of cooperation seems to be lacking while a bureaucratic empire appears to be getting built at the expense of rural Canada.
The agricultural producers of Canada have no one to pass costs off to. It may be a difficult concept to grasp, but the buck does indeed stop here.
There's no doubt that agriculture is resource-based. Technology and research have helped agriculture develop and expand and, at the same time, have helped us to become better stewards of our land.
Basic research must be maintained, but how do we allocate our research dollars? What drives the system? Again, KAP believes that this must be consumer-driven, and in the case of agricultural research the producers are in fact the consumers.
What research must be undertaken today in order for rural Manitoba to be competitive ten years down the road? Since we are living under the fiscal restraints of today, it is extremely important that the right research is being done and that duplication is avoided. We must work together to achieve the maximum benefit from this strained system.
Agriculture's sustainable development can be defined as the balancing of the benefits and the risks in such a way that food production can be done efficiently and a safe and secure food supply obtained. Regulations for sustainable development must be formed through a teamwork effort by all of the stakeholders in the system working together to achieve the desired results.
Regulators must work closely together in consultation with those being regulated in such a way that development is encouraged rather than discouraged. The risk involved with a particular resource development must be considered along with the risk or the consequence of not proceeding with that development.
Keystone Agricultural Producers continues to encourage all levels of government and all departments of government to communicate so the departments of natural resources, agriculture and environment can work together towards common goals and so regulations concerning the development of an industry can be developed as a single package. If hearings and applications are required, there must be only one hoop for the group to go through.
With this in mind, Keystone Agricultural Producers regards the new Sustainable Development Act in Manitoba with guarded optimism. We believe that this act has the intent and we only hope we can see it work through -
Along with policies that encourage smooth and positive rural development, the physical infrastructure must be maintained and in some way improved. This has been recognized through the infrastructure construction programs, and KAP, along with the rest of Manitoba, I think, is anxiously awaiting the announcement as to how the infrastructure dollars will be allocated that were associated with the western grain transportation adjustment fund.
The transportation infrastructure in rural Manitoba is primarily roads. It has been recognized that this network requires a major upgrade to withstand the extra traffic of the future.
Where will the funding come from for major construction? The transportation institute of the University of Manitoba tells us that only 5% of the federal excise tax on automotive fuels is returned to Manitoba for road construction. In this age of user pay, I believe that an argument can be made for more direct road tax dollars coming back to their source.
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Access to the worldwide communications infrastructure must be assured for rural residents. Manitoba already has, or has been working towards, for example, a single-line telephone system. The communications network is there, but the access becomes a formidable expense at some times.
Last, in view of the need for greater economic security in the face of wildly fluctuating commodity prices recently, it brings to mind that as we watched grain production increase by a mere 5% in 1996, grain prices have dropped by 20%, and they are still falling. In light of the removal of the major safety net agriculture enjoyed, we may be reacting to a major cash shortfall in the very near future. So I believe the need for cooperation and communication cannot be over-emphasized.
Rural Manitoba and rural Canada have great potential for economic and social development, and it is recognized that direct funding is limited. Therefore we must look to our governments for indirect funding and leadership in directing programs to the areas of greatest need.
Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to attempt to answer any questions you might have on this or any other of Keystone's policies.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar.
Mr. Asselin.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: I do have some concerns because the federal government in Ottawa is constantly making reckless decisions that can affect the agricultural industry, for example when it decided to cut transportation subsidies for western grain.
On top of that, the federal government has decided to privatize railroads and implement a new fee structure for Seaway users, which will increase transportation costs. If you increase rates for the seaway system and privatize railroads, private companies wanting to make profits will drive the costs up and pass them on to the consumer.
Do you think that the policy to regulate, to privatize and to cut public funding to the agricultural industry will be harmful to rural development?
[English]
Mr. Dewar: I believe it is harmful.
One statement you made was that it would increase the costs and pass the costs on to the consumer. I suppose if you mean the consumer being the shipper and producer in this case...because if increased seaway costs and increased freight costs are part of my production expenses, then I end up paying them and the profit is made by the rail line as we go to that type of system, the profit is made by the boat owner, the people who handle the grain, and subsequently we get what is left. And we only hope there is enough left to cover the other costs that are related to the production.
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As these were cut, has it been harmful? It has increased our costs, but perhaps it was harmful in being there so long to have masked what the reality really was. Manitoba is the farthest from port, and prior to reducing the transportation subsidy, we enjoyed the cheapest freight rate. Was that correct as well? If we are going into a global market, I don't believe it is bad. It hurts, but I think if the new reality is properly projected and understood, I think good can come out of it.
Mr. Asselin: Merci.
The Chairman: Mr. Chatters.
Mr. Chatters: I apologize for missing your presentation. I was trying to get checked out and to get my bags on a different truck from the one going to the airport with the rest of the committee.
You may have addressed my question somewhat in your presentation, but as a major agricultural representative in Manitoba I'd be most interested to hear your views on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board and where that organization needs to change or does not need to change.
Mr. Dewar: That's an interesting subject. Keystone Agriculture Producers has policies supporting single-desk selling, and I guess I personally believe that brings the most money into western Canada.
Having said that, I know and KAP believes there must be changes, and not cosmetic changes. I believe we're on the right road. Perhaps it's disappointing that some action wasn't taken immediately following the report. A lot of what was in the report KAP asked for in their submission, except for dual marketing, because we have yet to understand how the wheat board can survive in a dual market system.
I've stated our policy without wanting to get into a debate.
Mr. Chatters: That's good. I understand that. However, we've heard an awful lot in the last few days about value-added production in the agricultural sector. If you have an area that is renowned worldwide for the production of high-quality wheat, or perhaps milling oats or whatever, in my view there's a difficulty to attract that industry to your area if they can't buy the product directly from the producers in that area. What incentive is there to come to that area where the product exists if you can't buy the product from the producer, if you have to buy it through a buy-back system with the Canadian Wheat Board? The two don't seem to go together to me, but perhaps you could comment on that.
Mr. Dewar: I know they have made changes in their arbitrage policy on wheat so that it more reflects the value in that position, but I haven't studied the new policy that the Wheat Board has come out with recently. I believe that's been in the last couple of months. I think there are niche markets there. If it becomes too expensive for you to mill my wheat in Manitoba because my wheat is worth more someplace else, then should I not be selling it to the highest bidder?
Mr. Chatters: Oh yes, absolutely. But that's where the value-added industry has to have access directly to the producer, so it can give the producer that incentive, that bonus, if you will, to sell to the local industry, because then you will. If it is put in the position where it has to buy through the Wheat Board and yet the Wheat Board price makes it more attractive to export that wheat, you're going to export. That's your right and it's the way you would do it. But if that value-added industry had the right to go directly to you to offer you a bonus for that product, to use in the plant locally, then that would make that plant viable.
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Mr. Dewar: I guess I don't see.... If he has to pay a bonus, or he can pay a bonus, then somebody is not paying the right price.
Mr. Chatters: No, you don't quite understand.
Mr. Dewar: I'm going to sell at the highest price.
Mr. Chatters: If through the buy-back of the Canadian Wheat Board he doesn't have to support the Wheat Board bureaucracy and can give that cost directly to the producer, that bonus is there. It's already built into the system. He's allowed to direct it and send it to the bureaucracy of the Canadian Wheat Board...directly to you as a producer.
Mr. Dewar: I'm getting a little out of my field or my authority if I proceed any farther with it.
The cost to the Wheat Board would be a very minimal premium. That's one of the changes we have talked about: reflecting the proper freight, so what the farmer receives initially for wheat in Manitoba and what the Wheat Board asks back for it in Manitoba are a true reflection without the freight. As you're probably aware, initially in Manitoba we producers were paid based on a Vancouver delivery, and if a miller in Manitoba wanted to buy it back, he paid the freight back to Manitoba.
I know that's what they worked on fixing.
Mr. Chatters: To some degree.
Mr. Dewar: That's the problem. It's the freight and how they arbitrage those prices.
Mr. Chatters: I'd like to go on with that, but I'm taking up -
The Chairman: Mrs. Cowling.
Mrs. Cowling: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Dewar.
You mentioned we are moving into an era of change, with the changes to the Transport Act and our moving on to value-added and diversification. One of the questions that come to mind is this. For rural economic development and enhancing rural Canada it would appear a transition is there. I'm wondering what you would suggest, on behalf of the organization, we should recommend to the minister for getting to value-added and meeting the ability of the community to adapt. We have those high grain prices. We also know there is a future out there; but it's getting there. What would help us get to the value-added end and provide jobs and economic growth for farm families in this area?
Mr. Dewar: I believe that is part of the mandate of the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council. I believe the federal government has had quite an input there, through the PFRA. The core funding is to be delivered through MRAC, and I think the concept is a real plus for Manitoba. That's why in the conclusion to my presentation I mentioned the importance of working together to identify those.
We don't want just dollars. We want support, whether it's organizational help.... If the MRAC works out to be a clearing house, everybody will be there. It will be a one-stop shop for someone who has an idea. Although it won't be promoting a particular area in Manitoba, if it identified an area that might best suit their needs, a speciality labour market or a good water supply, you wouldn't move so often - yet.
Mrs. Cowling: One of the things we have heard over and over again, from a number of witnesses, is the duplication of services we have in this country. I'm wondering if your organization would consider a single-window approach. It would help eliminate some of the duplications that are out there, particularly when we think of the natural resources sector, forestry, mining, energy, and agriculture.
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Mr. Dewar: I would like to see a unified or a joint approach. Sometimes it appears that one department will approach development with some ideas and another.... It may be a department of the same government or a different branch. As an example, Environment Canada very often seems to put up road blocks, and it would be nice if it could get its house in order before it comes out to the entrepreneur or the person who is trying to do the development.
Mrs. Cowling: Thank you.
Mr. Dewar: So I think it's important that we get together.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Cowling, and thank you very much, Mr. Dewar. We very much appreciate the time you've taken and the effort you've made to provide the testimony here today. I know the committee appreciates it as well.
Mr. Dewar: Thanks very much.
The Chairman: The committee stands adjourned until 9 a.m. in Huntsville tomorrow.