:
Thank you. My name is Brian Gray, and I am the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch at the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food.
On page 2 of the document you were given, you will find an outline of today's presentation. I am going to discuss the role and priorities of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and then I will present an overview of climate change and its impacts on agriculture. Finally, I will provide examples of scientific activities conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to achieve greater resiliency of the agricultural sector to the effects of climate change.
[English]
Our vision for our department is to drive innovation and ingenuity to build a world-leading agriculture and food economy for the benefit of all Canadians. Our mission is to provide leadership in the growth and development of a competitive, innovative, and sustainable agriculture and agrifood sector.
The science and technology branch, which I am responsible for, conducts agricultural research development and knowledge and technology transfer activities to support a competitive, innovative, and sustainable Canadian agriculture and agrifood sector.
I have pulled out what I feel are the most important points in our minister's mandate letter related to the topic that you are studying right now, as it relates to my branch, the science and technology branch. First, I point out that the key point is to invest in agricultural research to support discovery science and innovation in the sector. Second is to work with provinces, territories, and other willing partners to help the sector adjust to climate change and better address water and soil conservation and development issues. Finally, we need to support the ministers of Natural Resources and of Environment and Climate Change in making investments that will make our resource sectors world leaders in the use and development of clean and sustainable technology and processes.
[Translation]
Let's move on to slide 5. Our branch has 20 research and development centres located across Canada. We have 35 experimental farms that are connected to the research centres. We have three regions: the coastal region, the Prairie region and the Ontario and Quebec region.
[English]
I will provide a quick overview of climate change impacts on agriculture. Climate change will bring, quite simply, longer growing seasons, due to temperature, but also more variable precipitation, resulting in more drought and also in more flooding. We'll see more extreme events. Warmer temperatures will produce more pests and disease outbreaks, and make Canada more vulnerable to invasive alien species. These are invasive species that might not have the suitable conditions to live in Canada yet, but that, with the changing climate, will. Finally, land suitability for spring-seeded small grain crops will increase, particularly in western Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. In summary, I would say that with the changing climate, we have challenges as well as opportunities in agriculture.
Globally, agriculture represents between 10% and 15% of the total anthropogenic—that is, caused by human activity—greenhouse gas emissions. In Canada, it's approximately 10% of our total greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to our own research, which I'll be talking about briefly today, we also have our department's agricultural greenhouse gases program, which provides $27 million over five years to Canadian universities and non-profit organizations for the research, development, and technology transfer of ways to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's agricultural sector.
[Translation]
Let's move on to slide 9, which outlines agricultural drivers and challenges related to climate change.
There are two key points. The first involves adapting agricultural production to climate change while being involved in its mitigation. This implies adaptation to abiotic and biotic stresses; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and supporting the development and use of clean technologies contributing to long-term, low carbon economic growth.
The second key point consists in conserving environmental resources and services while increasing agricultural production. The increasing world population stimulates demand for more food. Here we are talking about soil conservation, water and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, and sustainable intensification.
I will now provide a few examples of AAFC scientific activities. This is slide 10.
[English]
Moving on to page 11, here is one example of a collection of science. When we talk about beneficial management practices, one of the stellar examples is moving to no-till. I understand the Soil Conservation Council was here Tuesday. They would have given you quite an update on that. With that, in the west came the reduction of summer fallow. Over the period from 1951 to 2013, the net carbon sink or storage that we were able to achieve because of that change in practice, that beneficial management practice, was about 11 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent. This offsets about 15% of the agricultural GHG emissions.
The point I'd like to make is that it wasn't one or two studies. It was a series of hundreds of studies conducted over decades, not only by our department but by our partners, academia, the provinces, and our colleagues in other countries, most notably the U.S. and the USDA. Research very rarely leads from one study to a beneficial management practice. It takes a fair bit of time.
With the next couple of slides, I'd like to talk about extreme weather events.
In our branch we develop new varieties of crops. We develop new varieties of crops in areas where there is the public good space. That is, there's not an industry that's developing that variety, so it is something we do for the public good and for the benefit of our producers. An example is potatoes. At our Fredericton Research and Development Centre, we are developing varieties of drought tolerant potatoes. This is just a very quick illustration of how that's done. We're doing several crosses in the hope of eventually developing a variety that is more drought tolerant.
Next is an example of where we have too much water. In a changing climate, you'll see that we will have drought, but we'll also have periods of more intense rain. We've already seen that across Canada in the past growing season. Barley is a particular cereal that doesn't do well in inundation. Normal varieties that we have now can't last more than a couple of days being inundated with water. At the Brandon Research and Development Centre, we are developing inundation tolerant barley. On the right you can see the two varieties: the sensitive one, which is the more normal one, and the one that we're developing. It's kind of a neat project. We have mini rice fields at the research centre. We flood them and that variety on the left is now tolerant up to 10 days.
The final example I'll give you is from the agro-climate, geomatics and earth observations division within our branch. They develop tools that are available to farmers and the public. They look at current climate conditions and future projected conditions given to us by Environment and Climate Change Canada or other members of the IPCC.
If you look at the illustration of the maps, the current weather temperature conditions are on the left. If you look at the right, there's a change of 3°C. You can see that this change of heat will make it a lot more attractive for these three examples of pests. What do we do with that? This informs our scientists to develop new varieties of crops that would be resistant to these types of pests, to develop beneficial management practices that would help the system be more resilient to the pests, and finally to search out natural predators to these sorts of pests.
The next slide, I apologize, is a bit busy. It's a work in progress, as are the living laboratories. I will try to explain it very quickly.
It's an adaptive management approach with the goal of improved agro-environmental performance and sustainable intensification. It's the use of multidisciplinary teams of scientists working together with producers, designing and experimenting with new, potential beneficial management practices on real working farms. These beneficial management practices would be different than the suite we have now because we'd be looking for multiple benefits. Beneficial management practices not only help in climate change adaptation but also mitigation, biodiversity, and water and soil conservation and protection.
We've been working with the USDA in the United States, with their science division, which is comparable to ours. We had several workshops leading up to one in January. They're quite supportive on this approach and we're going to look at collaborating over the coming years.
[Translation]
At slide 16, entitled “Looking Ahead”, you can see that the Canadian government is investing in agricultural science inside and outside of AAFC. Improving partnerships is integral to our approach, be it with the provinces, the sector or academia, through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, with other federal departments and agencies and with international organizations to leverage benefits for Canada.
AAFC is well positioned to collaborate across the agricultural science and innovation ecosystem to support the sector's resiliency to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects.
[English]
Thanks. That's it for me. I'll turn it over to Tom.
:
I appreciate it, and I will try not to abuse the generosity of the committee, Mr. Chair.
I just thought I could build on some of Brian's remarks.
The main vehicle that the department, in collaboration with provinces and territories, uses to advance the goals of the pan-Canadian framework is our agricultural policy framework, known as the CAP.
The committee will be aware that since 2003 these policy frameworks have been a vehicle for federal-provincial-territorial co-operation in the agricultural domain. The current framework, known as Growing Forward 2, will expire on March 31, 2018. It will be succeeded by the CAP, the Canadian agricultural partnership.
Mr. Chair, I think members of the committee will be aware that when federal-provincial-territorial ministers of agriculture met in St. John's, Newfoundland this summer, agreement in principle was reached on what's known as a multilateral framework agreement, which is the basis of the framework. We've taken that agreement in principle and have been working over the past several months to operationalize it to give it legal effect and also, underneath the multilateral framework, to negotiate bilateral agreements with each of the provinces and territories.
Federal-provincial-territorial ministers of agriculture have identified environmental sustainability and climate change as one of six CAP priorities. Building on the efforts of past policy frameworks, the Government of Canada, together with provinces and territories, will provide funding to help the sector grow sustainably by reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions; protecting the environment, including soil and water; and adapting to climate change.
Brian shared with you some examples of research that we have conducted within the department and will continue to conduct under CAP to advance those efforts. I'd just like to touch briefly on some of the programs that we have to try to give effect to that research and innovation and transfer some of the knowledge that's generated.
An important element of the CAP is what are known as the business risk management programs, or BRM programs. These are a suite of cost-shared programs that are intended to help farmers deal with risks, market risks or other risks, beyond their control. Under the Growing Forward 2 framework, we anticipate that total expenditures under that program for a five-year period will be in the range of about $6 billion.
I won't talk in detail to each of the programs within that suite, but I would like to just highlight a couple that I think are particularly relevant to the work of this committee with respect to climate change.
There is the AgriInsurance program, which is the largest. It represents about two-thirds of total expenditures under the BRM suite of programs. It's a crop insurance program that's actuarially sound and self-sustainable, meaning that the premiums collected are based on historical farmer losses and, therefore, that the program is well placed to continue to help farmers remain resilient in the face of extreme weather events.
Occasionally when disasters strike, and the sector incurs extraordinary costs to recover, the AgriRecovery framework can be applied to develop specific programming to help producers with these unforeseen extraordinary costs. An example of where this has been done is in Nova Scotia after an unusually heavy, “once in a hundred years” snowfall in the winter of 2014-15. AgriRecovery was used to help maple syrup producers recover from damages suffered during that winter. More recently, an AgriRecovery response is being implemented for damage caused by the wildfires in British Columbia this summer. Support is being made available to help with the extraordinary costs related to feed loss, livestock mortality, farm infrastructure loss, and other damages caused to farmers.
The only other program I'd like to highlight in the BRM suite are the AgriRisk initiatives, which support research development and the implementation of new risk management tools.
In addition to the BRM suite, the CAP will have a series of cost-shared programs that are usually delivered by provinces and territories but financially supported by the federal government. On farm environment cost-shared programs, it will deliver the practices and technologies developed through innovation programming that Brian described earlier. Provinces and territories design and manage delivery of these programs, and this allows programs to be tailored to each jurisdiction's environmental priorities. These programs build producer awareness and knowledge of environmental risks on their farms, and based on these risk assessments, provide financial incentives to producers to adopt innovative, beneficial management practices to reduce these risks, including climate risks.
Canadian producers have adopted technologies and practices that both build resilience to climate change and reduce GHG emissions by improving production efficiency and increasing agricultural soil carbon. In particular, there is a lot of interest in the sector now in precision agricultural technologies, for example, which, among other things, can allow producers to reduce and better target the use of fertilizers and other inputs, and improve the efficiency of their operations while reducing their climate and environmental footprint.
[Translation]
I will briefly discuss some measures that are complementary to the previously described Canadian Agricultural Partnership initiatives, to present the government's objectives to mitigate the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector.
In Budget 2017, an amount of $70 million was allocated over six years to further support agricultural discovery science and innovation, with a focus on addressing emerging priorities such as climate change and soil and water conservation. Budget 2017 also included an amount of $200 million over four years for innovative, clean technologies for Canada's natural resource sectors, including agriculture.
Agriculture-specific funding will address key barriers to the development and adoption of clean technology in the agriculture sector. For instance, the funding will serve to produce advanced materials and bioproducts based on agricultural outputs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural operations through improved land management and energy efficiency.
I know that the committee recently conducted a study on A Food Policy for Canada. The department has just completed a consultation process on that policy. The environment is one of the four themes of the food policy for Canada. During consultations, stakeholders across the country raised food waste and its associated greenhouse gas emissions as a priority for A Food Policy for Canada. We estimate that the value of food waste in Canada is approximately $30 billion a year. This represents 3% of greenhouse gas emissions across Canada.
Through the adoption of innovative practices and technologies, the agriculture sector has made important advances in increasing efficiencies, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving soil and water, and building resilience to a changing climate.
The sector is proactively working to meet growing demands to demonstrate sustainability. For example, the Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Beef, the Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Crops and the Dairy Farmers of Canada proAction Initiative, are all working to advance the continuous improvement of the Canadian agricultural value chains, including in areas such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Through CAP and other complementary funding, the federal government, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, will support industry efforts to enhance the sustainability of the Canadian agricultural sector.
Thank you, Mr. Peschisolido.
I heard what you said about the committee not being the right forum to do a proper study. The government is in the midst of extensive consultations and is receiving numerous requests regarding the food guide. We are being told that this committee isn't the right forum to discuss the food guide and that it's a Health Canada matter. We are the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, though. We have to stop being afraid to talk about issues that affect the people who feed Canadians.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is of great interest to Canada. It is important not only for trade, but also for grain, dairy, beef, and poultry producers. It's a deal that matters tremendously to all the Canadian farmers and processors we represent. They want access to that market, which, as we all know, is vast. That is all the more important given today's news that India is imposing new 50% tariffs, a devastating blow to Canada's agricultural industry.
We mustn't close our eyes. We have to listen to our producers and give them the opportunity to be heard. The very role of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food is to give Canadian producers the chance to speak to the members of Parliament on the committee. In each of our parties, we were chosen by the people to represent their interests on this committee. We should hear what they have to say and include their recommendations in a report, which would then make its way to our parliamentary colleagues, including the ministers responsible for trade negotiations, international trade, and global affairs.
Unfortunately, we learned that the will not even be at the TPP talks next week. As far as I know, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food under the previous Conservative government always took part in those talks.
It's important that our committee send a clear message to Parliament and the government: agriculture must figure prominently in the negotiations. We cannot behave as though products come ready-made and ready to go. Our involvement is all the more essential given that, according to its most recent budget, the government intends to significantly expand Canada's agricultural production in the coming years. The objectives are ambitious, and one way to achieve them is for producers to have access to new markets.
We do, however, have to overcome a major TPP challenge: a key player has backed out. The negotiations that took place involved 12 countries originally and no longer necessarily apply to a TPP deal between 11 countries. The concessions that were made in the context of a 12-country TPP may not apply to the negotiations for an 11-country TPP. If the committee does not seize this opportunity for Canadian farmers to have their say, I can't see who in Parliament will.
That is why I urge my fellow members to think seriously about allowing the committee to discuss the TPP as soon as possible and to hear what producers and members of the agrifood industry have to say about it.
I haven't been on the committee for the past two years, but I believe it has already looked at the issue of the TPP. Have you examined it?
First of all, I do want to thank the witnesses for being here, but I will point out that we have two hours to hear from two witnesses. Therefore, I don't think it's unreasonable to take a few minutes to deal with this issue, especially since we heard today that the TPP discussions seem to be moving quickly.
Second of all, it was said that the committee should not study the matter because negotiations are in progress, but if we wait until they are over, it will be too late. By the way, the department was in the midst of extensive consultations on Canada's food policy when the committee decided to undertake its own consultations on the same subject, at the same time. That didn't factor into our decision. It didn't prevent the committee from undertaking its own study. As far as I know, the committee makes its own decisions. It does not have to wait for instructions from the government or the minister's office. Unless I'm mistaken, the committee is entirely independent.
Consequently, we can choose to conduct this study and to give Canadian producers and agrifood industry stakeholders the opportunity to tell us what they think. We can also choose not to hear from them. It's in your hands, since there are more of you. Clearly, if you choose to give witnesses and producers the opportunity to speak, we will hear from them, but if you don't, we will not.
That's all we have to say on the matter.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the comments by my colleagues across the way. However, the fact that we have an agreement, or a potential agreement, that will have an impact on every single Canadian farmer and producer in the country—
You're shaking your head, Mr. Longfield, but you're not willing to take five or 10 minutes to discuss an agreement that could possibly impact every producer, because you're worried about the two hours that we have with our two witnesses.
Mr. Drouin, I really do appreciate what you're saying, but you're saying that we can't disrupt this committee's schedule because a very critical issue, a very vital issue, came up today. You're saying, let's not discuss that because it's not part of the agenda we decided on weeks ago.
Come on, you guys. When something important comes up, that's what we're here for, to discuss these types of issues that will have an impact on our producers, our farmers, the agri businesses, and agrifood across the country. If we are continually passing on every study that we think is important, or you think is important, to another committee because it's not our job, then what are we here for? Seriously, what are we here for, other than saying that it will take up two hours of your day for no reason?
You guys cannot dispute the importance and the impact that the trans-Pacific partnership agreement is going to have on the Canadian agriculture industry. For us to say that we are not going to discuss it because it's not on our agenda that we discussed a couple of weeks ago.... This is critical.
Moving forward, what is the message? Is it that if any other critical issue comes up that will impact Canadian agriculture, if it's not something we put on our agenda months ago, it's not worth talking about? That's not the message I want to send to our stakeholders across the country, that “I'm sorry, this is something that's going to impact your livelihood, but it's not something that we have on our agenda for the next couple of weeks and it's not something that I want to take 10 minutes out of a two-hour committee meeting to discuss, because I don't think it's worthwhile.”
I want to leave that with you. I'm not trying to make this political. I know you guys have had the same discussions with your stakeholders that we have had with ours. The importance of the trans-Pacific partnership agreement, positive and negative, is something that our stakeholders are asking us to discuss, want us to discuss. With what transpired today, we have an opportunity now for a timely and very good discussion on what direction the trans-Pacific partnership agreement is going to take and the impact it's going to have on our stakeholders.
For my colleagues to make this about our already having set our agenda and upsetting the officials who are here for two hours is really disconcerting. I have to ask, are these key issues a priority for you guys or not? For us to not do this study is disappointing.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. Sorry for the rant.
:
Dr. Gray and Mr. Rosser, thank you so much for attending and providing me and everyone here with a great deal of insight into issues that are complicated and technical. It's at moments like this that I wish I'd taken chemistry and biology at university.
Mr. Gray or Mr. Rosser, I'm assuming both of you put together the presentation. Page 9 encapsulates the broad strokes of it. The first part says, basically, that we want to try to prevent climate change, but that in the process, we also want to take advantage of possible opportunities from climate change. You put it much more eloquently than I just did. We're trying adapt to it while simultaneously trying to mitigate it.
The second point you discussed was the whole notion of increasing productivity, but also decreasing the resources that you're using, basically producing more stuff, but making sure that, while producing more stuff, you're not getting more emissions in the air, but preventing climate change.
As a government, we're looking at two main areas. You have the side of laws and regulations and then funding. Not getting into the specifics, are there any particular areas of funding you think we should look at in those four areas that I talked about, beyond what you've talked about here? Also, on the regulatory side, we had witnesses, either at the last session or the earlier one, saying that perhaps the regulations are a bit too onerous, and other witnesses said that perhaps they're not onerous enough.
I'll leave that to Dr. Gray and Mr. Rosser to comment.
:
Mr. Chair, I can take a stab at the funding question, and I'll leave it to my colleague to talk about the regulatory question.
As Tom mentioned, we're in what's called Growing Forward 2. It's the tail end of the existing five-year agricultural policy framework. It has evolved over the three policy frameworks. In that, there's a program of industry-led clusters. Those are industry-led research and development clusters of dairy, beef, pork, and pulses. Those are examples of big ones. Within that, there are opportunities for industry to tell us the big things they need developed and what they need answers to. Those are complemented by the science that our branch does, which is further upstream, longer term, more risky, more foundational, and with longer periods for getting answers to questions. We collaborate together on those.
As I mentioned earlier, we're not in a position to talk about the next one. We'll let our minister announce that and speak in more detail, and I would be happy to come back and unpack that.
Producers, the producer organizations, will tell you that the way we've been doing the collaborative research led by industry and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada has been working. We've evolved through the policy frameworks based on their input and on evaluations by our internal evaluation program. Again, I can't speak to the details on funding, but in the current policy framework, there's a fair bit of money that goes out to industry that has to be matched by industry for big clusters and then for smaller research projects.
When it's appropriate for us to talk about the Canadian agricultural partnership in more detail, I would be happy to do so.