Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry

Issue 22 - Evidence

The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:30 a.m. to examine international trade in agricultural and agri-food products, and short-term and long-term measures for the health of the agricultural and the agri-food industry in all regions of Canada.

Senator Leonard J. Gustafson (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: This morning we have Kevin Doyle, Manager, Federal Policy Integration, Rural Secretariat, and Bob Cumming, Manager, Department Coordination, Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

We are pleased to have you with us this morning, gentlemen. I am sure there are many questions on the situation in rural Canada. We will have your statement first. I understand that Mr. Doyle will begin.

Mr. Kevin Doyle, Manager, Federal Policy Integration, Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: Thank you very much for inviting the Rural Secretariat to share with you some of the work that we are doing.

I would like to recognize other colleagues who have joined me today, if that is appropriate. This is colleague Heather Clemenson, the manager responsible for our rural research, and Pat Moore, the manager responsible for the small programming part of the work that we do.

In my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, I will speak to a short deck, copies of which have been distributed to honourable senators. It gives an overview of the Canadian Rural Partnership, which is the largest part of the work that we undertake in the Rural Secretariat.

I will start on page 2 by giving a brief overview and then giving a bit more detail on each of the elements of the Canadian Rural Partnership. The pictorial diagram on the second page gives a quick snapshot of the various components of the work we are undertaking in the Canadian Rural Partnership, which is the Government of Canada's strategy for supporting development in rural Canada.

We have developed a number of approaches as an effective way of moving this forward across the many departments within the federal government. It is very important to point out that ours is not a traditional program in the sense of a department. Our responsibility crosscuts other departments. Our primary role is to bring a coordinating role to the work that goes on across approximately 30 different departments that impact rural Canada. We try to strengthen constructive efforts on the part of the federal government by bringing greater coherence. The various activities we undertake are depicted on that page.

Moving to page 3, I will share with you the cornerstone of the partnership. It is very much a partnership within government. Our primary focus is to work across departments in the federal government to improve understanding of rural issues and challenges, which will improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of what each department does within its own mandate in responding to those challenges.

We have created a number of cross-departmental tools to help us. There is something called an Interdepartmental Working Group, which is a forum for departments across government to discuss rural issues, to share and disseminate information and to create conversation around what actions must be taken to respond most effectively to the challenges of our rural communities.

In each province and in the three territories we have created a similar structure called a rural team of federal officials. That is a forum in which federal officials come together to focus on issues facing rural Canada, within which they can bring their programming instruments, the programs and services for which they are responsible, in the most effective way to respond to those issues.

Of course, we also want to build partnerships with communities. We are beginning to establish good working relationships with a number of organizations representative of rural communities and rural citizens. The concept is very much of partnership, working together to bring our respective programming instruments to bear in the most effective way on the challenges confronting rural communities.

On page 4, one of the primary tools we have used is something we call the rural dialogue. This is an effort to understand the complexity of issues that exist in our rural communities. It is very much a listening and a learning exercise. We want to engage rural citizens in rural communities in a conversation about the challenges they face. It is very important for us within the secretariat to understand those issues. Part of our role is to share those issues with our federal department partners. The better we understand rural issues, the better our federal department partners are able to respond to the challenges that rural communities face.

We began the dialogue in 1998. It is a continuous, ongoing process. Whether we have national conferences, regional workshops or local community round tables, the process continues on an ongoing basis in order to equip us and sensitize us to what is going on in our rural communities and what are the issues that we must bring to the attention of our colleagues to help them shape their programming instruments in the most effective way.

On page 5 are depicted the 11 priorities that we have learned through our dialogue, which are encapsulated in the federal framework for action in rural Canada. These priorities are based on our conversations with rural people in rural communities. They have shared with us the challenges they face and the issues confronting their communities, the opportunities, the obstacles to moving forward and these are the areas with which we work very closely with other departments to try to ensure that whatever actions departments take are taken in the most effective way.

On page 6, we describe another set of activities. It is called the rural lens. The effort here is to see things through the eyes of people who live in rural Canada and to be able to share that with other federal departments to sensitize them to the nature of the issues and also to help them design and shape whatever actions they intend to take with a rural perspective to ensure that actions, programs, services or regulations that are brought forward take into consideration the impact that they will have on our rural communities. It is very much a cornerstone of what we do. A critical part of the responsibility of the Rural Secretariat is to help federal departments understand and learn about rural issues. The rural lens is a key tool in achieving that.

Moving quickly on to page 7, our Canadian Rural Partnership Pilot Project is another effective tool. It is a small pilot project program. The goal is to work closely with rural communities and partners and other federal departments to determine if we can find innovative ways to deal with rural issues. It is very much an effort to build partnerships around the issue, recognizing that many issues in our rural communities are not easily divided into economic, social, environmental or cultural aspects but are holistic. The partnership is to try to bring a meaningful response, working across departments, community stakeholders and even with other levels of government to find that innovative approach and to learn better how we do this at the local level.

What are the challenges and the opportunities of working closely with our rural communities?

Page 8 describes the rural research we do. Again, a fundamental responsibility of the secretariat is to be a focal point within the federal government for rural issues. To be helpful and constructive in working with our partners, we must be able to provide them with the best information, which comes through our research. We do that in concert with other departments, other levels of government or other stakeholders. The overall objective is to better learn, understand and share that information so that our overall effort can be more effective.

Page 9 describes briefly the communications aspect of what we do. It is important for federal departments to communicate effectively about what they are doing and to communicate in an appropriate way. One of our roles is to ensure that our colleague departments recognize that getting the message out to rural communities may require different tools and mechanisms than communications of people living in cities. We also want to share with our rural communities knowledge and information about what the federal government is doing through a variety of programs and services that are available to them.

Page 10 describes a specific initiative, which flows from the funds of the Department of Agriculture. A program has been created to focus on the needs of agricultural rural communities. It is recognition that communities are impacted by change, and they need assistance sometimes in managing their futures. Funds are provided from the department. The Rural Secretariat was asked to manage this because of our knowledge and experience with rural development issues. It is very much focused on the needs of agriculture communities.

Page 11 describes a new initiative, somewhat analogous to the previous page. This too is focused on agricultural communities. It is focused on minority language communities and has many of the same objectives. It flows out of the federal government's responsibility, under sections 41 and 42 of the Official Languages Act, to assist minority language communities in their development.

Page 12 brings my opening remarks to a close. To summarize, the work that we do in the Canadian Rural Partnership under the Rural Secretariat is very much horizontal work across government departments to bring together the collective efforts of all departments around rural issues. That is the primary role and function that we perform within the Rural Secretariat.

Senator Stratton: Thank you for coming. You have been in business since the 1998-1999 fiscal year. Is that when you started?

Mr. Doyle: The Canadian Rural Partnership started in 1998, yes.

Senator Stratton: Since this started, has there been any effective research done as to why some rural regions and towns are successful and others are not?

Mr. Doyle: Yes, indeed there has. Mr. Chairman, as it is a question around research, I would like to invite my colleague, Heather Clemenson, who is the manager of our research program, to give a more specific and detailed response to that. We have undertaken research on that.

Ms Heather A. Clemenson, Manager, Rural Research and Analysis, Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: My name is Heather Clemenson. I am the manager of research and analysis with the Rural Secretariat.

We have not done our own research, but we are supporting research that is examining differences between our rural communities. There is, in Canada, the Canadian Rural Restructuring Foundation. It is a group of research academics and practitioners who are doing work on what they call the New Rural Economy. It is a study that examines communities that are leading and communities that are "lagging," the differences between those communities and why some are growing and some are declining.

This research is supported through the secretariat. There is some research that is available now, which we can provide to the committee, in terms of the work that has been done by the Canadian Rural Restructuring Foundation. It has recently been renamed. It is now called the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, so it has the same acronym. We can provide that information to the committee if members are interested.

Senator Stratton: I would appreciate very much if you could do that. When will the basic package be ready? When will the research be completed?

Ms Clemenson: Its work is a long-term piece of research with various components. At this point, there are component parts that are available that we can share with you, but it is, as I said, a long-term piece of research. I am not sure of the final date of this because we are only contributing to it. We are not funding the entire research. It is a large research.

Senator Stratton: I appreciate that. I thought there would be an end date in mind for this.

In this day and age, considering that such a significant contribution is made by the agricultural sector of our country, it is surprising that research has not been done before this time. Was there anything around prior to this recent research? It is staggering that we have not considered why some communities are successful and others are not.

This has been happening for years. We analyze cities to death. I am rather surprised that rural communities are being studied for the first time. Is that true?

Ms Clemenson: I would say that there is a considerable body of research, not necessarily with agricultural communities, but with single industry communities. There is research on the decline and the history of single industry communities.

We are very broadly considering rural communities in general, not specifically agricultural communities, necessarily. There has been very little work, I understand, that has been done at that level before.

Senator Stratton: I would imagine that when you enter this partnership, you are focusing on the long-term health of rural areas and regions.

It is becoming more and more apparent that the quality of health care in rural Canada is significantly lower than in other areas. This is hearsay, but nevertheless, this is what we read in the paper. There is concern about education, transportation infrastructure, highways and, particularly, about employment for the young.

How can you help to turn that around? How do you play a role in examining rural communities so that you can put people together to do something? Give me an example, please. Do you have such a scenario?

Mr. Doyle: There are a number of ways that we would play a role in that. We could do a lot of research with other departments around those issues to better understand them. We assist in learning about and promoting understanding by federal departments on these issues. That is one bit of work done by the Rural Secretariat.

Through our on-the-ground rural teams, we will consider those issues with local managers of federal departments to determine what things can be done with existing programs and services to deal with these. In an immediate sense: can we respond more effectively? Can we bring the instruments and tools that we have to bear?

We contribute also through our modest pilot project program, where we work with communities around a particular issue or opportunity by which they may be challenged. We work as a broker, using our funds as catalyst funds to bring other departments and other levels of government into a particular project.

This is somewhat at the micro level, but we will examine particular issues to determine whether there is a better way of dealing with it and whether we can respond. Information can be shared from that learning exercise. That is the role of our pilot project.

Senator Stratton: I am interested in this area. What is of most significance that you have found to have the greatest impact on, whether a rural area or community is successful? Is it leadership? I see examples in my province of Manitoba where some communities are thriving, particularly ones that did not have access to the railroad at all. They were cut off because there was no railroad. Now they are thriving. Why is that?

The only answer I can identify is that originally they had no railroad and very few roads. They were alone in this world and they decided to act on their own initiative and leadership. Is that the most important ingredient?

Mr. Doyle: If there were a magic bullet, I think that we would have found it by now.

Senator Stratton: I understand. I am not saying that there is one magic bullet. In my view, it is not one individual but a small core group that seems to drive things.

Mr. Doyle: Through our work over the last four years, we are learning that leadership and the ability within a community to take charge of its future are critical ingredients. Some people call that "community capacity building." That can help enormously. Sometimes there are other ingredients, but that is one that we have identified. We could concur with your finding that leadership is very important.

Ms Clemenson: I would add that recently we had the benefit of hearing a colleague from Europe who came to talk with us about work being done in Europe. Researchers considered a number of communities in Europe that were growing or declining and did a comparative study to evaluate the factors that were the causation of growth or decline.

Part of their conclusion was that success depends on intangible factors that you cannot really measure: leadership, networking and the social capital of a community. These things contribute very significantly to change in the community. Certainly, investment, infrastructure and access to finance are very significant contributors as well. However, there is an element of intangible factors that do contribute to the growth of a community.

The Chairman: In your opening remarks, you mentioned getting the message out. I am wondering if it is not more important to get the message from rural Canada in, than to get the message out. It sounds to me like someone in the ivory towers of Ottawa will "get the message out" and tell us how rural Canada has to be structured in order to survive.

I can tell you, being from Saskatchewan, that if you have not been there, this would be a good time to come. You should get the message "in" because things are in a serious situation.

According to Statistics Canada, we will lose 125,000 more farmers in the next decade. We only have 250,000 farmers left in Canada. Is it a matter of getting the message into the urban centres about what is happening in rural Canada, or is it a matter of getting the message out from the departments as to how they think they will structure Canada? That is the way our rural people view it.

Mr. Doyle: I agree with you. A large part of the responsibility of the Rural Secretariat is to get the message "in," as you have described it. Rural dialogue is designed specifically to do that, to invite rural citizens in rural communities to articulate and share with us the issues and the challenges they face. It is our responsibility to convey that information to our colleagues here in Ottawa to improve the understanding of the reality in rural Canada.

There are differences between urban Canada and rural Canada. There are differences within rural Canada that we must make sure our colleagues understand, so that they can respond effectively.

The Chairman: In your research, have you collected numbers on the income of the average rural person? I mean not only gross income, because very often information is based on gross income, which means nothing because there are expenses. Do you have figures on net income in rural areas to compare with net income in urban centres? Do you have numbers on that?

Ms Clemenson: Certainly, there are numbers that we could provide to you in terms of per capita income, gross income, net income, and transfer payments as well. That information is available from Statistics Canada, certainly.

The Chairman: Would you table that with our committee or send us copies?

Ms Clemenson: Yes, certainly.

Senator Fairbairn: I would consider the issue of rural Canada as one of the most defining issues for how our country will be in the new century. Canada began as a vast rural patch. It has changed dramatically for a number of reasons, about which we all know.

I have concerns. I am from an agricultural area, but we are talking about rural Canada here. We are talking about not only why people go to cities, which is because they like them better. We are talking about why rural Canada is under such stress.

Labrador is very much an area that was sustained by a fishery that collapsed. We have rural areas in central Nova Scotia and in Cape Breton that were built around mining coal. That has been closed. We have a seemingly desperate situation developing in our lumber sector. Towns have grown around that industry. It strikes me that there are many changes that we cannot stop. There are many developments in nature that we cannot control.

In some of your material the word "access" keeps popping up. It seems to me this is a critical word if we are to sustain rural life in Canada. The solution is not just access to government. It is not just access to someone who will say what is best for a community. In Atlantic Canada we decided to create more industry, thinking that would work. It has not done so, most often.

One thing that may be common among many areas that are based on primary resources and production that are now being challenged, is lack of access to knowledge. People in this country have been experts at what they do on the land and in the ocean. They are experts. They are superb, but the skills that have been honed through generations have not necessarily had to centre on institutional learning. We are trying now to bring opportunities to rural Canada to connect with a lot of things outside the traditional experience.

I noticed in the Rural Secretariat list of activities that education is pretty far down the list. When working with rural communities, you are sensitive to expertise. Are you sensing expertise? How is that being transmitted throughout the departments of government? Are we telling people that they must do something different because what has been there and available for them no longer exists and they must learn new techniques and interests with new training and education?

I am known for being involved in literacy and learning. Is this not a central concern for rural Canada? If so, how can the Rural Secretariat and the new emphasis improve rural Canada and facilitate this in communities?

People in the communities provide leadership, but they need linkages. They need help. Technology is useful, but there are a number of ways of training people. To what degree is this part of what you do?

Mr. Doyle: It is part of what we do. You are quite right, access is a fundamental issue. Some of our partners are addressing that. The Community Access Program provides Internet linkage to rural communities. We work with other departments in Human Resources Development Canada that have a mandate for learning and literacy in order to bring their programming instruments to bear in a meaningful way at a community level.

You described non-institutional ways of learning, including networking between communities. We are contributing to that by trying to bring communities together. We are trying to work with organizations at the rural level to bring communities together. In Ontario, we work with the Ontario Rural Council. In Nova Scotia, we work with the Coastal Communities Network. We are trying to address learning needs and bring to bear tools, in the way that you have described.

It is an issue. Some things are intangible: the networking and the building of social capital in rural communities so that they can use the assets that they have, notwithstanding the tremendous changes that are impacting all resource industries at the community level.

Senator Fairbairn: People should keep in mind that in the past there was not the kind of access to institutional learning in rural areas - or the need for it - that there has been in urban Canada. We talk about the Internet and so on, but people in the communities have to know how to use it. Technology is magic, but a computer is still a print medium. We have to be able to read and we have to be able to write in order to use it effectively.

Like the chairman and many around the table, I am desperately concerned about what is happening in our agricultural community. A lot of it is beyond our control. The frustration is beyond our control. It certainly is in my area. We probably have gone through the worst drought season in the last century. We have many people who do not want to retire, but who have no option. They cannot work their land. There is no water. There is nothing to do.

In addition to trying to find alternatives for communities, there is the issue of farm retirements, for the reasons I have stated. To what degree are you considering this in your connections with agricultural communities? Are you considering that communities want to be agriculture communities but something has happened that is preventing that? How can this rural connection through the layers of government help those who are retiring, but not because of age? These people want to do something. If we cannot solve that, we will lose the towns. When we lose the towns, we lose the heart and the soul of this country. How can you, in your new mandate, help to avoid that?

Mr. Doyle: I would like to ask my colleague, Mr. Cumming, to respond to that.

Mr. Bob Cumming, Manager, Departmental Coordination, Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: It is fair to say that the Department of Agriculture and Agri-food is acutely aware of the situation across the country in agricultural communities. The minister and his provincial colleagues are actively examining that particular file. We, through the secretariat, acquire information and share that with the Department of Agriculture. It builds that into the programming that it is developing at this time.

Senator Fairbairn: I appreciate that. The Department of Agriculture is there to work on agriculture. There is no doubt about that. It undoubtedly will do everything possible to mitigate the difficulties and to help in the agricultural sense. I am saying that this is a real opportunity for you to find alternatives that can be developed to keep communities functioning at a different level when they have, in the past, been really dependent on the surrounding farm community.

I would think that would be one of your critical challenges. That would require assistance and activism outside the Department of Agriculture from other parts of government. Are you hotly pursuing the other parts of government, not just agriculture?

Mr. Doyle: The answer would be yes. We work with the other departments that would be able to bring to bear their experience at the community level. For example, Western Diversification has a mandate for community economic development. We work with it and Natural Resources Canada. We work with any department that can bring useful tools to a community level and can help find a new direction or industry based on its assets.

Notwithstanding the impact of the changes to the resource economy, communities do have assets. Sometimes they need help and guidance to identify those assets. It may never replace what is changing, but it may represent another opportunity. On the East Coast, tourism in many communities is evolving as a very good opportunity. Opportunities are developing within the context of the fishery to find smaller niche markets of various products. We work with departments that have knowledge and experience that will be of value and use to communities, to bring that information to the community level, which can assist the community in taking those first steps along the path of change, that is sometimes critical.

Senator Fairbairn: I would commend you for doing that. In some cases, that really will be the determinant of whether a town survives or disappears.

The Chairman: I would like to bootleg a supplementary comment on the important direction that Senator Fairbairn has taken. The rural resources that contribute to the coffers of our country include those of the fishery, lumber, agriculture, oil and gas, water, cattle, coal and potash mining, et cetera, which all come from rural Canada. When I was first elected in Ottawa, Alvin Hamilton, who was a great agriculturalist and probably one of the greatest agriculture ministers we have ever had, said that there was an undeclared war between rural and urban Canada for the dollars, and that we were losing the battle.

All of these resources come out of rural Canada and nothing goes back into rural Canada. We just saw on the news last night about the closing of mines in Cape Breton. We know what is happening in the fisheries and in agriculture. This is a serious situation that we face. Governments do not seem to recognize this and I also fault my own government, the Conservative government of which I was part. The current government has not recognized the serious situation that exists in rural Canada today. It was the strength that built this country.

The Americans seem to understand that better than we do. They refer to the "heartland of America" when talking about agriculture. People in New York praise "the heartland," but that is not done in Canada.

How can rural Canada get a small share of the great resources that rural areas of Canada produce?

Mr. Doyle: That is a very good question and that is a challenge for our society.

The Chairman: If I may elaborate a bit, it seems that we can circulate a lot of paper in Ottawa - at $50,000 per year incomes - but we cannot seem to channel any of those incomes back to the rural community, which is the engine of the whole country. We, as a senate agriculture committee, have a responsibility to try to communicate that to our departmental people and to you today.

Mr. Doyle: I appreciate that.

Senator Tunney: I have a few questions.

At the bottom of page 7 of your presentation, you indicate 321 pilot projects approved for funding over four years, with a maximum of about $50,000, which would be your contribution, I understand. Can you give me a few examples of those projects that you and others fund?

I am surprised that we even have this kind of agency within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I did not know that you existed. It parallels another federal program, with which I am familiar, for the rural development, the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, FedNor. Mr. Andy Mitchell is the minister. I meet with him every week in caucus. His whole department seems to be doing just what you are pretending to do. I wonder if you are running in tandem or falling over each other, or if you are cooperating in a partnering effort? If the two agencies are partnering, why would you both be doing the same thing?

Senator Stratton: Is this a new bureaucracy?

Senator Tunney: It does make one wonder. If you do not know about an agency and you find another one that seems to be doing the same thing, then you wonder if it is another bureaucracy.

On page 4 of your presentation, Mr. Doyle, you talk about opposition to the implementation of large hog production facilities and about the needs of non-farmers in those areas, those I call "urban transplants" - city people who want country living but who cannot tolerate the monstrous hog operations. That happens with poultry farms as well. Do you get involved in that?

Mr. Doyle: I will respond to the questions in the order that you raised them.

Your first question was about examples of pilot projects. Let me share with you some examples of what we have done. In Newfoundland, there was a project that was centred around micro business support services within a community. I will read briefly from a project description just to give you a sense of what this project is accomplishing.

Senator Oliver: Do we have this information in our kits?

Mr. Doyle: This specific information is not in your kits, but we would be happy to share it with the committee. This is a micro business support project in Newfoundland to respond to the needs of small business owners where they are giving each other a hand to start up new businesses and improve existing operations.

This is marketing through a predominantly home-based business structure. It is a micro business lending service that organizes business operators into groups ranging from four to seven members, and it uses the collective resources to help them reach their goals. These businesses are typically too small for membership in local chambers of commerce or large associations, and they often have a difficult time securing finances. The lending service, which is run through the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Cooperatives, provides guarantees on small loans up to $5,000 at local financial institutions.

The program also provides regional coordinators that work with groups and encourages members to help each other with issues such as accounting, inventory management, networking and marketing. This is a project in which the partnership contributed $100,000 for a total project cost of almost $300,000. That is an example of a micro learning project in Newfoundland.

Senator Tunney: Would that be on application from them to you, or do you take the initiative and advance the idea to them and then follow through?

Mr. Doyle: This would be from them to us.

A second pilot project in British Columbia is called the Virtual Call Centre Pilot Project in Nelson. This project is funded to assist in hiring 25 people who will be trained as call centre agents, who will set up and work from their homes as a telecottage industry. They take overflow calls from main call centres for corporate clients such as Sears Canada, Ticketmaster and the Home Shopping Network. This pilot project will test the applicability of this kind of model in rural communities. This is an opportunity for people to work from home in a new type of activity.

We contributed $15,000 through the Canadian Rural Partnership Fund. The total project cost was around $700,000. It is exploring an innovative way for people in rural communities to work from home using modern technology. That is another example of a pilot project.

Senator LeBreton: I have a supplementary to that. How does working from home help to address the problems of rural Canada? These pilot projects are work from home, but doing what? Where does it actually begin to address the problems faced by individual Canadians living in rural Canada?

Mr. Doyle: These individual rural Canadians would not have jobs otherwise.

Senator LeBreton: Can you describe what they do?

Mr. Doyle: These are virtual telecentres. People are working for Sears Canada taking calls, or for Ticketmaster, responding to calls that could come from anywhere. They are able to stay in their rural community and work.

Senator LeBreton: They are able to stay in a rural community, but they are not doing anything other than having a job that specifically enhances their lives.

Mr. Doyle: If they can stay in their communities, they can participate in the community. They may be members of the local Lions Club or the Chamber of Commerce, or they may be volunteers for community associations. That is what builds a community. Without a job, they would leave. If people leave, the community begins to fragment because there would be no social fabric to hold it together. These are examples of new ways to provide employment. Without employment, communities will cease to exist.

Senator Oliver: You said that this particular project costs $700,000, and your share of that is $15,000. Where does the $700,000 come from?

Mr. Doyle: The other project partners included the local Community Futures Development Corporation, Human Resources Development Canada, AT&T Canada and the British Columbia regional high technology development program at Selkirk College. The idea of the Canadian Rural Partnership Pilot Projects Initiative is to bring in other partners. We are a catalyst and are rarely the major funder. We put together broker-funding arrangements.

Senator Tunney: In my area we have hundreds of thousands of office workers who work for large corporations and never leave their homes these days. We have many people who used to be office workers travelling 80 miles to Toronto every morning, who are now working at home for the same companies to which they commuted for years. It is happening everywhere.

Mr. Doyle: Those are several examples of pilot projects. I will share one more with you, which is an agriculturally focused project in Nova Scotia. It is called an on-farm composting project that combines poultry and swine with industrial and institutional sector organics. This is a demonstration of a partnership between rural communities and livestock producers. The project has rural residents and livestock farmers working together using local resources to deal with the problem of how to resolve common organic waste issues.

In the project, organic waste is taken from domestic, industrial, commercial and institutional locations in small communities and is combined with on-farm manure composting operations. A variety of project partners - Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Human Resources Development Canada, Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Labour, Kings Community Economic Development Agency - a municipal development agency, Kings County council, and an organization called Nova Farm. Our contribution through our pilot project program was $30,000. The total project cost was $70,000. That is an example of a project in an agricultural community.

Your second question was about how our organization may be paralleling that of FedNor. We happen to share the same minister, Mr. Mitchell, who is the minister responsible for rural development. He is also the minister responsible for FedNor. FedNor's mandate is Northern Ontario. It is what I would call a quasi-regional development agency.

Our responsibility, because we are not a regional development agency, is in a coordination function across government. Our interest spreads across the whole country, and is not limited to Northern Ontario. There may be similarities in some aspects of what FedNor does and what we do, but there are major distinctions between the two, as well. We work very closely with FedNor.

Senator Tunney: Would you happen to know about a company in Trenton, a subsidiary of Domtar, called Norampac? There is a new process out now, which is the most exciting thing that I have heard about in years with respect to the handling of garbage and waste. If you have not heard of it, you should investigate it. They are just turning the ground now for a brand new factory. It is in my riding, right beside Minister Vanclief's riding. The minister should know about that.

Senator Oliver: What is the process?

Senator Tunney: The process is such that it will reduce garbage by 99 per cent. Garbage is just made to disappear.

Senator Stratton: Is the garbage burned?

Senator Tunney: No, I do not have the details with me here, but I have them at home. You certainly know about the furnaces that burn waste, but this is a process beyond that. It will take everything from nuclear waste to regular town and city garbage. With this process, the residue from a tonne of waste will not fill a shopping bag. The process is difficult to understand.

Senator Stratton: Will you obtain the information about that?

Senator Tunney: I would be happy to. It would certainly be worthwhile for this committee to understand the process.

Mr. Doyle: I invite my colleague, Mr. Cumming, to respond to your third question.

Mr. Cumming: I think you are asking about the sighting of hog operations and some of the conflicts that have occurred. That is not an issue that we deal with directly. Much of that falls under land use planning issues. Those tend to be municipal or provincial issues. The Department of Agriculture and Agri-food has an interest in it in certain areas, but it is not an issue that we deal with.

If I can leave that question and return to the discussion that we had earlier about the pilot project, one that, to some extent, dealt with how to manage animal waste from hogs and poultry. There are numerous projects that work together to respond to some of those issues.

Senator Tunney: There are enough people trying to manage this hog pollution matter now.

Senator Fairbairn: I have just a local plug, and I think Senator Tunney would remember this, too. When you are talking about the composting innovations in Nova Scotia, this is also an issue that is being worked on in the Lethbridge Research Centre station, which is one of the largest, next to the one in Ottawa. We visited the centre and we found it to be quite aromatically amazing. There are some good things going on in research.

Senator Hubley: I will ask my question first and then give my comments.

If the farm communities, or our farmers who produce the food for this country, were assured of a fair return for their product and the work that they put into producing that product, would many of the problems that we are dealing with here today disappear? I will leave that with you because I perhaps know the answer.

When you have your workshops, and you are probably having discussions with farm groups and organizations, women's groups, community groups, farmers themselves and business people from that community, what is the concern most often raised? What is the one thing that they feel might give them a heads up on some of their problems? Would it be financial, health, environmental, stress, so on and so forth?

I would like to just comment on what Senator Stratton mentioned about why one community seems to succeed where another community seems to struggle. I come from Prince Edward Island, which is a very small community, and certainly it is a visible community as far as urban and rural is concerned. We are continually trying to keep urban communities urban and rural communities rural, not only for the agricultural industry, but for the industry right behind that, which is tourism. However, it seems that some of the communities in P.E.I. that seem to be successful have a very strong religious fabric - and I am not apologizing for saying that - or a very strong cultural or heritage community. I do not know if this is evident on the Prairies, but I believe there are communities there that would be the same.

The final thing that really bothers me is attitude. There is a perceived attitude that Canadians do not support the farm community. They want to buy food at a certain price and they want the best that Canada can produce, but if that community suffers for one reason or another, many times for causes not of their own making, such as environmental concerns, the farmers in the community cave in and say, "Well, we had a good year last year," or, "We can ride this out," or, "We are resilient." There are many reasons.

Our last presentation was on the European Union. It is disturbing enough that we would have that attitude, but it is more disturbing when someone from another country says, "Canadians have a poor attitude toward their farmers." Then they explain to us how their farmers are admired in their countries. It may be okay for us not to show respect, but when someone else tells us that we have a poor attitude, that is not a good situation. If we cannot address the people in our country who produce the food - and we are talking now about the probability that the next war will be fought about food - then we have much work to do.

That gets a lot off my mind today. Thank you for the time.

Mr. Doyle: There are three questions there. I will endeavour to respond to each of them and invite my colleagues to comment on them too.

Your first question was around the issue of a fair income for farm produce and I do not know the answer to that. I think it is an issue. It is probably wrapped up in your overall concern over attitudes to rural communities. Certainly part of the work that we are endeavouring to do is to increase the understanding, not only within government but outside, of the importance, the value, the contribution that rural communities make to our society and to our country. It is a broad issue with many aspects. I understand that Minister Vanclief will be joining you next week and perhaps, on the farm income aspect, that will be a very good issue to present to him.

You had a question on the issues: what are the pressing issues that people raise through our rural dialogues? That varies enormously from community to community, province to province and region to region. The 11 priorities that are described in the deck that are part of our federal framework try to summarize what is on the minds of the people in our rural communities. They are not necessarily set out in the order of precedence that each community would have listed them. Sometimes communities may have concerns about access to capital, sometimes access to knowledge and information and sometimes it about leadership ability within the community. Sometimes concerns may be about rural health issues or why are all our young people leaving. Those are the issues with which we work on a daily basis with our partner departments in Ottawa.

In our research, for example, we help to sponsor a study on rural youth out-migration in Atlantic Canada to better understand the issues so that departments are better prepared to respond to them. Issues vary and the value of our dialogue is that we are able to share with departments a more sensitive understanding of what is on the minds of farmers on a region-to-region basis. Sometimes it is on a community-to-community basis, but that is part of the effort to make people aware in Ottawa that the reality in rural Canada, is different and it is different from place to place.

The Chairman: I have one supplementary on the subject that Senator Hubley has highlighted so well. It seems to me that we have lost a sense of the practical. I know for a fact that there is farmer after farmer who would hire someone. That would make practical common sense. Rather than setting up something artificial, if the farmer only had the dollars to pay a decent wage to an employee on the farm, employees could be hired to work on the crops, or whatever.

I read an article on this by an economist saying, there are only two ways to create wealth: either produce a product or a service. If you produce a service that is just a make-work program to say a guy has a job and you pay him $30,000 a year, why not put him to work on a real project? What you have now is farm people and rural people who are desperate, and our young people are giving up on agriculture. It is a crisis for Canada - and I would like to be quoted on that right across this country. We are in a crisis, unless someone takes hold of this thing.

I will explain it this way: this morning my wife asked me why I have been wasting my time on the issue of agriculture for the last 20 years when nothing has changed. "You are a practical person." That is what she said to me. She said, "For goodness' sakes, give up, it will not change."

I refuse to give up. Our young farmers have given up. That is a very serious thing, because we are losing a generation of people who understand what this country needs.

That will be the last message from me this morning. If we get to the root of the problem, there will be many jobs. There are farmers - who are 65 and 70 years old and should be retiring - who are working harder today than they have ever worked because they do not have the wherewithal to even hire good help. That is very unfortunate.

Senator Oliver: I am from Nova Scotia. Approximately 15 years ago, when we still had groundfish in Atlantic Canada, I recall reading a report indicating that there were more people working in the fisheries department in Ottawa than there were fishermen fishing in Atlantic Canada.

I would like to know a little bit about your organization within the department. Can you tell me how many people work there and at what levels, what your annual budget is, and how that budget is broken down regionally? How much of the budget from the work in your department goes to Atlantic Canada and how many people are employed working on rural issues in Atlantic Canada from your department?

Mr. Doyle: Between 75 and 80 people are employed within the rural secretariat.

Our overall budget for the Canadian Rural Partnership is between $10 million and $11 million.

With regard to the regional distribution of those monies, I cannot give you that information today. I can explain how we are structured and we can provide you with the numbers on what that would mean.

We have, across the country, about one dozen regional advisers. The core of the Rural Secretariat is in Ottawa. They are members of the Rural Secretariat. This is not the Department of Agriculture, which has its regional operations. There are probably about three people per province working for us, at most, and we can provide the budget figures to the committee.

Senator Oliver: Does this $10 million or $11 million include what I call infrastructure costs, such as office space, secretarial help, computers and your salaries?

Mr. Doyle: It includes everything. It also includes our pilot project program and activities under the Canadian Rural Partnership. We are a very small organization with a modest budget.

Senator Oliver: Approximately three or four weeks ago, when I was in Nova Scotia, I read an article in our provincial newspaper reporting that Mr. Andy Mitchell was in a place called Cornwallis in Digby County, Nova Scotia, holding a series of seminars on issues on rural Canada, including what could be done to stimulate investment in rural Canada. Would those be in conjunction with some of your work or would they be a separate enterprise?

Mr. Doyle: This is part of our ongoing rural dialogue activity. This year Mr. Mitchell hosted four regional conferences. One was in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, another was in British Columbia, another was in the North and one was in Ontario. It is part of the ongoing dialogue with communities, with rural citizens, to understand their challenge. It is part of our work.

Senator Oliver: As a result of the dialogue in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, is there a report prepared and is that available on a Web site somewhere? Do we have a way of accessing what was decided at that conference?

Mr. Doyle: I do not think the report is ready yet but we will be able to provide it to the committee. Most of the reports from our local dialogues are available. We are making them available. Just by chance, I have one here from another dialogue held in Sydney, Nova Scotia, about a year ago.

Senator Oliver: Do those reports conclude with recommendations to the department?

Mr. Doyle: These tend to report back on what the issues are. We share them extensively with our partner departments to help guide them in shaping their programs and services. They do not provide specific recommendations. They are reports with regard to what is on the mind of the people, in this particular case, in Nova Scotia.

There is another dialogue from the Northwest Territories. Just by a coincidence I have a report of a rural dialogue from Chapleau in Northern Ontario.

We are endeavouring to make public the conversations with rural communities and rural citizens and to share these broadly across departments to help with rural lens work. For us this is a critical tool.

Departments ask what we mean by "rural." "What are the issues people are facing?" These are the issues people have raised. This is something that can guide us when we are designing a new policy or program.

We will endeavour to make the Cornwallis session available as soon as we can.

The Chairman: When will it be available?

Mr. Doyle: I will have to find out, Mr. Chairman. I do not know.

Senator Oliver: In your commentaries today you referred to something called the Coastal Communities Networks in Nova Scotia. I would like you to tell us what that is, how you cooperate with it and how you fund it.

You also referred to the rural youth out-migration project in Nova Scotia. What is that?

Mr. Doyle: I will let my colleague, Ms Clemenson, tell you about the rural youth project.

The Coastal Communities Network is an organization in Nova Scotia that is trying to pull together local communities to create a network among the coastal communities to help them deal with the issues they are facing. We have worked with them on several occasions through the Canadian Rural Partnership program, and through its predecessor, to allow them to fund seminars and workshops to bring communities together to discuss their issues. Our goal is to foster a community-based organization within Nova Scotia, as we do in other provinces for communities and citizens to have a focal point to articulate their issues.

Senator Oliver: Does it have anything directly to do with leaving more money inside the farm gate?

My neighbour is a beef farmer. How would your projects help him get more money for his beef?

Mr. Doyle: The Coastal Communities Network originally focused on fishing communities. The one in Nova Scotia has now been broadened to try to appeal to communities from other sectoral interests.

How would it help your neighbour? It would help him indirectly by helping the community better manage its future by understanding and recognizing the opportunities that may be there for community development. It would be more of an indirect benefit to your neighbour who is a beef farmer.

Senator Oliver: I hope that it is not just a study that will chart how many young people are leaving rural areas to find out where they go. I am anxious to hear what it is.

Ms Clemenson: The study that we undertook last year was the first phase of a study on youth. The fact that young people are leaving communities is a major concern of many in rural Canada.

The first part of our study was with Statistics Canada to do what you have just described, to get a handle on how many people are leaving, how many are staying and how many are returning to rural communities. That study was done across Canada, but ACOA, in particular, funded part of that study with us. We have a specific part of that study that goes into the Atlantic Canada situation in greater detail. That is phase one of the study and we can make that available to the committee.

Phase two of the study that is now underway is actually working with rural youth themselves.

In fact, all the regional agencies have contributed to funding this particular study with us. There is a series of interviews and focus groups across Canada with rural youth to find out essentially what their recommendations are in terms of how they see their future in rural communities and what it would take within their community to help them to stay in that community. We are trying to understand this issue from the perspective of youth themselves. That is something we are undertaking now, and that study will be available by March 2002.

If the committee is interested - when that is available - we post our studies and information on our Web site. One of the committee members asked whether the information is available on the Web site, and certainly the dialogue information and some of the other material is available on our rural Web site. Information about that is in the packages given to honourable senators today. When the study is finalized on rural youth, it will be available as well.

The Chairman: I have a short question on the same line that Senator Oliver raised. It has been my observation that the Province of Quebec has done much better with rural Quebec than the rest of the provinces of Canada. Have you studied that? Why is that? I notice that even the Quebec members are quite satisfied with what is happening in agriculture and the way rural development is being approached in Quebec. Have you studied what Quebec has done that is right? We have had many witnesses at the committee from Quebec, and they are the first to admit that. In fact, they have suggested at times that perhaps the rest of us could learn a few lessons from Quebec. I believe we can. Would you comment on that, please?

Mr. Doyle: We have not studied it in great detail.

The Chairman: Have you found that to be a fact? Perhaps I am wrong.

Mr. Doyle: I think you probably are right. There are differences and those differences may be unique to Quebec. You are probably right that there is learning that can be shared that may be useful and have application elsewhere.

Senator Tunney: Following on what the chair just said, it is absolutely true, from years and years of my experience, that the farmers in Quebec fare much better in good times and in bad times by a greater attention and certainly greater support by the provincial government in Quebec than is the case in any other province in Canada. It is perhaps easier for Quebec to do that than it is for a province like Manitoba or Nova Scotia.

You must remember that a very large segment of agriculture in Quebec operates under supply management. The dairy industry in Quebec represents half of the total dairy industry in Canada. There are tremendously large poultry operations in Quebec. That is not to the credit of the Quebec government but to the credit of the federal government, which established these national plans. It just happens that there are far more farmers there in those two sectors of agriculture. However, for the others, and to their regret maybe, Quebec has overdone some things. It has certainly overdone loans, grants and funding to very large hog operations and beef cattle operations as well. Quebec does not produce the grains and oilseeds that the rest of Canada does. It buys cheap grain from other provinces, mainly of course Ontario and the Prairie provinces. It has some pretty good advantages over us. In addition to that, Quebec has absolutely the most credible and active lobbyists in Canada. The union is Union des producteurs agricoles, UPA.

Senator Tkachuk: How would a farmer in Saskatchewan get involved? Can we set up a little dairy farm there? How would that work? Would I have to get a quota and pay more than the farm is worth?

The Chairman: This has been a very good discussion.

Senator Hubley: On page 4 of your rural dialogue, I noticed under year four that you are planning four regional conferences. Have any of those been held yet?

Mr. Doyle: Yes, they have been held. There was one in Cornwallis, which Senator Oliver referred to concerning Atlantic Canada. There was one in Ontario, one in the territories and one in B.C. The regional conferences have been held. There will be a national conference sometime in the spring, which is being planned by Mr. Mitchell.

Senator Hubley: That would have been my second question. I wonder if you would extend an invitation to the chair so that perhaps some of us could attend that national conference.

Mr. Doyle: We will convey that request to Mr. Mitchell.

Senator Tunney: I attended the one in North Bay in July, which was well worthwhile. I would recommend it.

Senator Oliver: Were there recommendations?

Senator Tunney: Yes. Minister Mitchell was there. He is a neighbour. He represents the next riding.

The Chairman: Have you attended rural municipality meetings in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba? They all have annual rural meetings. I have attended the ones in Saskatchewan. They are very informative. Those rural counsellors have very good insight into what is happening in the rural community.

Mr. Doyle: Our regional advisers attend them. My colleague who works in Winnipeg covers Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He goes regularly to Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association, SUMA, in Saskatchewan.

The Chairman: SUMA concerns the villages and towns, but the rural municipalities or the rural counsellors attend. Both would be represented well, thus, they represent rural Canada.

Mr. Doyle: We attend those meetings.

The Chairman: Do you ask for a chance to address them and to get feedback?

Mr. Doyle: We tend to monitor them. Mr. Mitchell has been invited to address the meetings on occasions. We attend because they are, as you pointed out, very good fora for understanding what the issues are and part of the information intelligence is very useful.

The Chairman: Honourable senators, if there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for coming this morning. I hope that the exchange has been a positive one for the benefit of rural Canada. I encourage you to keep up the work and your communication with your ministers in the government and whatever influence you have to use for the benefit of rural Canada because we are facing many challenges. I thank you for your testimony today.

The committee adjourned.