Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 25 - Evidence, May 8, 2007
OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 8, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 7:02 p.m. to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good evening, honourable senators, witnesses and to all those watching our Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Last May, this committee was authorized to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada. Last fall, we heard from a number of expert witnesses who gave us an overview of rural poverty in Canada. On the basis of that testimony, we wrote the interim report, which we released in December, and which, by all accounts, really struck a nerve.
We are now in the midst of our second phase of the study, where we meet with rural Canadians in rural Canada. Thus far, we have travelled to Athens, Ontario and to the four Eastern and four Western provinces. Along the way, we have met a truly wonderful and diverse group of rural Canadians, who have welcomed us with open arms into their communities and sometimes even into their homes.
The committee, however, still has a lot of work to do. We still have to visit rural communities in Northern Ontario, Quebec and our Northern Territories. We want to hear from as many people as possible. In short, we have to ensure that we get this right and understand rural poverty in its core. To that end, we continue to invite witnesses to Ottawa.
Our first witness this evening is Ms. Marie Logan, who is with the Canadian 4-H Council and who comes to us by video conference from Taber, Alberta.
Marie Logan, President, Canadian 4-H Council: I actually live in Lomond, Alberta, a few minutes from Taber.
The Chairman: All right, Lomond. I know it well.
Ms. Logan: Most people, if they have been there, it is because they are lost.
Senator Dawson: You are on national television.
The Chairman: We had some interesting visits with our committee when we were in the Taber area. We went to Warner, and I am not sure it will be ever be the same — we had with us one of our committee members, Senator Frank Mahovlich, who really was a big hit at the arena in Warner.
We are pleased to have you here, particularly to hear about your experience with Canadian 4-H Council. That is an organization that some people in other parts of the country and at this meeting tonight need to know is available in all parts of the country. Therefore, it is very good to have you here, Ms. Logan. Could you start with a bit of a background on the organization and your experience with it?
Ms. Logan: I want to go back a step. You mentioned the Warner girls' hockey school. I am vice-chair of that board. We also have the baseball academy. We do many activities with students and children.
With regard to the Canadian 4-H Council, it is a national organization in which all the provinces are represented and of which I am presently the president. I will be finishing my term in May and then I will be vice-chair.
The Canadian 4-H Council is going through a government review and is moving toward a visionary board. We supply programming for youth across Canada and each province does things at the grassroots level. Much of our work is done in that area, but there has been a huge decline in our membership that very much parallels the decline in population in rural Canada.
We are a youth development organization, basically. A large amount of work in public speaking and all kinds of hands-on projects take place.
The Chairman: It is a very special committee, and certainly young people across the country have had a good start in life by being involved in 4-H.
Could you give us any numbers? It is a special kind of organization. In this day and age, are there still a good number of these groups across the country that are very active?
Ms. Logan: Alberta has the largest population of members and leaders. I believe that is followed by Ontario. To give you a history on numbers, in the 1930s, we were at approximately 30,000 members and peaked in the 1970s to approximately 80,000 members. We are now back down to 30,000 members. We are just under that figure, across the country.
The Chairman: Why would there be that drop?
Ms. Logan: I believe it just parallels the decline in the rural population.
There has been an interest in looking at going into more the acreage areas, et cetera. I am the leader of a club that I have led for 30 years, actually, and our club has steer, horse, cow-calf and heifer projects, but we also have drama, scrapbook making, cooking and many others. Most of the village children belong to our group. We usually have between 35 and 40 members in our club, which is basically half of the students in our school from kindergarten to grade 12. Our village has a grand total of 177 people.
The Chairman: Never mind; it is a good community.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Logan, first, thank you for being there and thank you for what you do in the community. It is extremely important. I have had the good fortune of working my entire career in volunteer organizations with good people such as you. Although I have not worked with 4-H, I know their good work by reputation.
The decline in numbers, as the chair talked about and you talked about it being because of the out-migration. Is it exclusively because of that out-migration, or is it the creeping interference of what we consider urban life but it is really not that, it is life in general these days, with access to everything via computers, television and so on? If someone is in a rural home with the drapes drawn, they might not know that they are not in downtown Toronto with everything that is there. Is that having an effect on your membership?
Ms. Logan: With the technology maybe not. In my area not everyone has high-speed Internet; our area has a large amount of dial-up. Our farm has high-speed Internet because we subscribe to a special wireless operator. Children in rural areas are often disadvantaged, because they do not have the same services. There is sparseness and distance involved. My granddaughter is here in the room with me today, because we do not have daycare in Lomond. It is a lucky thing to find a baby sitter. If the parents are not available, hopefully a relative or a grandparent can fill in.
As many things, the farms are bigger but the population has shrunk. Where everything used to happen in our little community, now if we want to be on a hockey or a soccer team, often it means travelling to a bigger community to be involved. Therefore, parents are on the road much of the time. Not everything is done in the smaller communities anymore. The biggest our club ever got was 45 members when our school had a population of 200. We are still between 35 and 40 members, and our town population is down to 200. In our community, 4-H has managed to hang on to the numbers, but there are fewer people around.
I would say the decline across Canada has happened because there are fewer communities. When I was a child, there were three communities within 10 minutes of me; now there are none.
Senator Mercer: We have heard this story before, Ms. Logan. In some parts of the country where there were five farms, there is now one. Where there were five cheese factories, there are now none.
I might not have heard you correctly. How many years have you been involved in your local 4-H club?
Ms. Logan: For 30 years, I was a leader, and I was a member for approximately eight years.
Senator Mercer: Are you still a leader of your local 4-H?
Ms. Logan: Yes.
Senator Mercer: This is magnified in rural Canada, but it is also an indication of what is happening in most volunteer organizations. Are you having difficulty recruiting new people to take your place as a leader in 4-H?
Ms. Logan: Right now, we have a member crunch across Canada. The numbers are going down, but our next issue will be the number of leaders. Many of us, who are leaders, have gray hair such as me. I have remained the leader of our group, and I do all the general paperwork. However, I have anywhere up to seven project leaders working under me, but all they do is the project.
In a community such as mine, everyone who volunteers is wearing seven hats. Our little community survives on casinos. Everyone does a casino to make the extra money they need. Everyone does seven jobs. A little village such as mine can be described as a take-away society. The elevators are lost, for example, and then it always seems as though the community is losing things. I was director in the library system, and it had all the libraries in the south online and a delivery van. It is one of the few services besides our school that could be described as having improved.
Senator Mercer: You mentioned in your opening remarks about the 4-H going through a governance review. Is that driven by the challenge of the number of volunteers that you have nationally and regionally? Is that what is driving it, or is it the natural evolution that seems to be happening with many not-for-profit organizations that are going through governance review because of some legal issues as well as volunteer challenges?
Ms. Logan: It was the governance review that allowed us to become visionary, to be able to respond in a timelier manner, to get things done more quickly and to become more effective. Really, I believe it was done because we cannot afford to frustrate volunteers; things need to work easily because they have limited time and are busy people. As I said, they are often wearing seven hats.
Senator Mercer: All of us, who are parents, have gone through the challenge of being the taxi or the bus driver for our children from place to place, but that becomes magnified in rural Canada because of the distances. How serious do you feel the transportation issue is in rural Canada as you have seen it through 4-H?
Ms. Logan: "Serious'' in what way?
Senator Mercer: You have already mentioned the number one issue that people mention, namely child care. The second or third issue they mention is transportation. That is, the lack of availability of transportation and the fact that to get anywhere they need a car. If they are financially challenged, they still need a car. If they need a car, they need insurance and that puts added pressure on families in rural Canada that might not be there for families in urban Canada.
Ms. Logan: It is very much that way, as well as the problem of the wear and tear on vehicles. Many of us have miles and miles of gravel on which to travel. We might not be on a major route to be ploughed regularly. There are many issues. Our family has lived in the area for six generations, so my grandchildren are now in school, but if we want them to take dance lessons or something that is in Lethbridge, then it is a fair commitment on someone's time to drive there.
If seniors cannot drive they have to rely on someone to take them places. For any kind of sports activities, often the small schools cannot afford busing, so parents have to be prepared to volunteer to drive. If they do not have a car or the ability to drive, they have to rely on their good neighbours to help them.
Senator Mercer: Thank you, Ms. Logan. I would like to come back to talk to you about more of this, but on that point, when we were in Pitcher Butte, Alberta a few months ago, on the bulletin board in the community centre were advertisements for people offering to drive others to town for doctors' appointments. It had a cost, but obviously that underscored the transportation problem.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you, Ms. Logan, for being available to answer our questions about 4-H.
I come from a rural province, Prince Edward Island. I am well aware of the need for strong leadership in the rural communities, probably more so now than ever. The Canadian 4-H Council is certainly a program that develops those leadership skills. I know many youth who have gone through the public speaking and other aspects of your program and who have gone on to be great leaders in the community. Do you find that a larger percentage of youth that take the 4-H program do go on to be community leaders?
Ms. Logan: There is a study out called "Measures of Success,'' which was done by Ipsos-Reid, and it certainly shows that 4-H members are achievers. They all go on to post-secondary education of some kind, usually give back to the community and end up in a higher income bracket than the average citizen. It is an interesting study that shows 4-H definitely causes our members to go on and do well and become leaders.
Senator Callbeck: When was that study done?
Ms. Logan: This was just done between 1999 and 2002. It is very recent.
Senator Callbeck: I can certainly believe that from what I know about 4-H. Is 4-H in every province across Canada?
Ms. Logan: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: Do representatives from 4-H from every province get together from time to time, or do you work individually?
Ms. Logan: No, we work together. The Canadian 4-H Council has an annual general meeting in May and another meeting in November. Representatives from all the provinces attend. We also have a national resource network where they share all material. If a province is developing something on beef or drama, for example, it is put up and shared among provinces. We try not to duplicate material. They also have a national fundraising network now, and they share information on fundraising. The provincial officers or the staff work with 4-H and share information regularly.
Senator Callbeck: Do you get any funding from the federal government, or is it all from the provincial government?
Ms. Logan: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: You get it from both governments?
Ms. Logan: The Canadian 4-H Council is funded through the Renewal Opportunities Program, ROP. It is called the next generation, but it is renewal under the Agricultural Policy Framework. Some of the provincial ones are funded by government and some are on their own. It depends how it is works in their province.
Everyone has major sponsors. In the Alberta program, about $700,000— I am not sure of the exact number, but I believe it is somewhere under $1 million — was raised through sponsorship most years, beside government support.
Senator Callbeck: How much federal funding do you get?
Ms. Logan: On the national Canadian 4-H Council?
Senator Callbeck: Yes.
Ms. Logan: I believe it is about $600,000. There have been some special Aboriginal programs and some other special programs at times.
Senator Callbeck: With what is happening right now in our rural areas, if we look down the road 10 years, where do you see 4-H?
Ms. Logan: I feel 4-H will be crucial if we want to have leaders, but I also see us moving into the acreages and the areas surrounding cities. There has been a suggestion that this program would be wonderful in some of the urban centres. We just did a program called Make Your Escape. It was a national advertising program — the first one ever — done by our 4-H members for youth. Farm Credit Canada put up almost $600,000 to run this program across Canada. When it was running, there were over 300 hits at a time in, I believe, Toronto. Many city kids were interested in this program. At the moment, we do not even have the capacity to go there.
I see us moving more into some other areas. The leadership aspects of 4-H work anywhere.
Senator Callbeck: Yes, and those leadership aspects are so important.
Senator Milne: I come from Toronto, but I did marry a farmer's son, who went through 4-H, and then when he was working as an agricultural engineer with the Ontario Department of Agriculture led 4-H programs here in Ontario. I am well aware of the value of the program.
In an area such as yours, with a decreasing population — you have lost two of your local communities — how is that affecting the resources that you can use and call on for leadership for the 4-H clubs?
Ms. Logan: Our area has always been very strong in 4-H. I have some of my third generation in it. They are very willing to lead, so I have not had that problem. However, I am sure in other areas there is an issue trying to find the next generation, because everyone certainly does have gray hair now. I honestly do not know. As I said before, finding our leaders will be our next issue.
Senator Milne: They tell me here that the average age of farmers now is 51 years old, but the average age of people living in rural and small town Canada is 39 years of age. The agricultural community is aging and diminishing in numbers, but rural residential is going up in most areas of Canada. Is it going up in your area as well? Are these people also taking part in 4-H?
Ms. Logan: If they move into the community, they tend to do so. However, when Alberta did a study here, they put us in with the Town of Hanna along the eastern side of the province. We have the oldest population, the least job opportunities, and are the fastest declining town. It has not shared in the golden corridor along Central Alberta. We are not seeing the rise in population. Ours is still declining and, as we get away from urban centres, I believe the population is still declining in many areas. It is impossible to get farm workers in our area. Our school population has stayed stable because of the Mexican Mennonites. They are the farm labour supply now. English is their second language, and often there is tremendous poverty in those families that now live in our communities, and the communities have to try to address this, too.
Senator Milne: When you refer to the Mexican Mennonites, do you mean that group of Mennonites from Canada, who made the poor judgment call to move to Mexico about 40 years ago, or earlier than that?
Ms. Logan: Yes. They have come back now. They are the labour force in Southern Alberta. In my school jurisdiction, some of our schools are 80 per cent Mexican Mennonites. We have the second highest ESL in the province of Alberta in our school jurisdiction, which most people find hard to believe, being situated in Taber.
Senator Milne: That is interesting.
I believe I heard you say that you do not have high-speed Internet in your area, but you subscribe to a wireless provider that lets you access high-speed Internet. It is none of my business how much that costs, but I have been told at a meeting that I attended yesterday that it is extremely expensive.
Ms. Logan: Our signal comes off a tower. It is not entirely reliable. We do not always know whether we are online, but it is not too expensive. It costs about $40 a month.
Senator Milne: I was told that in some areas of Nova Scotia it costs $1,000 to subscribe and well over $100 a month to use the service, so it becomes very expensive. What percentage of the population in your area is on the Internet?
Ms. Logan: I recently heard that there are only four families in our area that are on it. I do not know whether more have come on or not. Our high-speed service has a $500 up-front fee.
Senator Milne: This is another aspect of rural life, where living in rural Canada is a great disadvantage because of the higher costs, and high-speed Internet is almost essential to a modern farm operation.
Ms. Logan: Yes. We are a pedigreed seed farm and have our own web page. It was important for us to have the service.
Senator Milne: Since you are the national president of the Canadian 4-H Council, can you tell me how many 4-H clubs there are in our three territories and how many are in the northern parts of the provinces? Is it promoted in those areas?
Ms. Logan: As far as I know, there are none in the Northwest Territories. In Alberta, we are spread across the province pretty evenly. There are not as many clubs in the far North as in other areas. I cannot tell you about where the clubs are situated in other provinces.
Senator Milne: You said there was an Aboriginal program.
Ms. Logan: Yes, that was in the provinces. There were pilot projects in certain provinces. It appears to have been very successful. I am not sure if the federal funding for that is continued.
Senator Milne: That is another good point to follow up on. Thank you very much.
Senator Oliver: You said that in the village where you live there are 177 people. Of the 177, how many, if any, would you say are among the rural poor?
Ms. Logan: I do not know if I can answer that. However, the last statistics from our health authority said that 20 per cent of the children in our area live in poverty. I would think that number is pretty close to the truth. Many farm families tell us that they live poor and will die rich with their estates.
Senator Oliver: Does the 4-H club or your community have a support mechanism set up to give assistance to the rural poor?
Ms. Logan: Our 4-H club waives fees for anyone who cannot pay them. Many of the activities and programs that we do are entirely free with no charge to members. At one time, 4-H was entirely free. Now that Alberta 4-H charges a fee, our club charges approximately $35 per member, but we do waive that if they cannot pay.
In the local school, school fees can be waived. Our club gives the school supplies, so that if a child comes to school without supplies, they are provided.
Communities tend to be quite caring in rural areas. They try to help out as much as possible.
Senator Oliver: Some senators have already asked you general questions about infrastructure. Could you briefly describe the type of infrastructure you have in your area in terms of hospitals, schools, roads, transportation and snow removal from in front of homes? What is the infrastructure there like?
Ms. Logan: Our school goes from kindergarten to Grade 12 and has less than 100 students. A building that is close to 100 years old houses our library. We are part of a regional library system. Books are delivered by courier. The school jurisdiction provides buses, but that is the only busing in the area.
The county plows bus routes first and then major routes. Therefore, depending on the weather, your road may or may not get plowed. The village relies on a town worker for that. The streets of the village are not even paved. There are dirt streets.
Senator Oliver: Is there a fire station there?
Ms. Logan: There is a fire hall and First Response, which has local volunteers who have taken courses — usually at their own cost. There is a hospital in Vulcan with limited care. The regional hospital is in Lethbridge.
There is also the Alberta Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society, STARS, the air ambulance that will fly in. However, my husband had a major bleed on the brain a few years ago, and due to ambulances getting lost, et cetera, it took seven hours to get to the hospital in Calgary. In rural areas, you have to depend on yourself a fair bit, or on local volunteers to help out.
Senator Oliver: Would you say that the infrastructure in your town, with 177 people, is comparable to that throughout rural Alberta?
Ms. Logan: I would say that communities as isolated as Lomond are very similar. Our hockey rink was built sometime in the 1960s. It is certainly in need of upgrading. I am on the board of directors of Rural Alberta's Development Fund. The government provided $100 million to be given to community projects. For the first three months, all we heard about was the tremendous infrastructure needs across the province, and now the government has addressed some of those. Everything is getting old.
Senator Biron: In 2000, I believe, the federal government made a subvention so that broadband access would be available to all the rural areas in Canada. Do you know if this program has been implemented? Do you communicate with most of the members of your 4-H club via the Internet?
Ms. Logan: Are you referring to the Community Access Program, CAP? I was on that committee, which brought the Internet into all the libraries in Alberta. It paid the set-up fees and was continually added to. I believe we are on CAP 5. However, I believe the federal government is planning to end that program. I wrote a letter on behalf of the library trustees in the province saying that it was a great program and that if they were going to end it, perhaps they could look at a program that allows continual evergreening. Once you start with technology, there are always upgrades needed.
As far as I know, all of the small communities in my area have the Internet at the local library. Yes, I use the Internet and faxes to talk to people. I do not do much videoconferencing, but I am on quite a few conference calls.
Senator Dawson: I was looking at the statistics on participation. I do not know if you have seen them. Would you know the rate of participation in 4-H clubs in Quebec?
Ms. Logan: There is the English-speaking Quebec, and the Quebec Young Farmers' is affiliated with the Canadian 4-H Council, I believe. Are you familiar with that? That is the main body.
Senator Dawson: The anglophone community network of Quebec has a strong participation. They are based in Quebec City. I was wondering if the francophones participate at the same level.
Ms. Logan: It is not quite the same as the regular 4-H across Canada. The Quebec Young Farmers have their own organization, but they do take part. They sit on the national organization.
Senator Dawson: The title of this committee is to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada. If you were to have a role in defining what we should prioritize or define as one of the first steps of the federal government in trying to alleviate rural poverty, what would be your recommendation? I am not asking you to do our job but to help us do our job.
Ms. Logan: There needs to be something besides a short-term bandaging approach. We need strategy and to look at how to link all the services, so that children do not have barriers because of distance and sparsity. There must be some strategic planning, which also probably involves money issues.
Senator Dawson: Do you mean the support of the governments toward your group? You said financing. What kind of financing are you talking about?
Ms. Logan: I mentioned the CAP program, and once something good is started it should be continued; such initiatives that give broad services to level the playing field in rural areas, so we do not have so many have and have- nots. Technology is one of those areas, with the ability to access high-speed Internet. If rural citizens can address or use these things, it gets to the point with some jobs that it does not matter where you live.
In my area, I am surrounded by lakes, the last big lakes within driving distance of Calgary. There are some beautiful areas where people could live if we had technology and some services. You cannot expect people to live in rural Alberta if there are no services, or rural Canada anywhere.
Senator Dawson: Thank you.
Senator Callbeck: My question is on the statistics that have been provided here. According to this, there are over 50 per cent more girls than boys in 4-H. Has that changed through the years, or has it always been about that percentage?
Ms. Logan: When I was a child in 4-H, it was about equal. One of the big changes we have seen in my area is the boys' sports teams and the distance they have to travel. Often that limits the amount of 4-H they can do, and in my club I find it much easier to find women leaders than men. At the moment, I am desperately in need of a woodworking teacher, and I cannot find one. However, I can find people for cooking, drama, sewing and scrapbooking, which are very much for girls. That is probably the main issue. Horse projects are huge, and that is also something that often interests young girls.
Senator Callbeck: Are graduates of 4-H more liable to stay in rural areas? Are they more liable to take over the family farm? Do you see any difference there?
Ms. Logan: They have a real love for rural Alberta, and if they have a chance to come back, they do — or rural Canada or rural anywhere. However, there must be a reason and something for them to come back to, if they can do their job from there, for example. I cannot tell you if it makes a difference or not. I know right now I have a young boy that was in last year, and he has every intention of coming back to the farm. Most of the young people farming in our area now did go through the 4-H club, but there are many who are not there now, who have jobs some other place because the farm is no longer there or the farm cannot support a second family.
Senator Callbeck: Did you say that most of them that are farming came through 4-H?
Ms. Logan: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you very much.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Logan, I will go back to the infrastructure and the capacity of the community to support themselves. In urban Canada, we are accustomed to seeing organizations, such as United Way, encompassing all the charities' social services under one umbrella and raising the money to do that under the heading of United Way.
I would ask you to comment on this theory. The further you get away from the epicentre of the urban community, whether it is Lethbridge or Red Deer or Truro, Nova Scotia, the less effect it has on servicing people in rural communities.
Have you noticed that in Alberta but also generally across the board, because all of your 4-H clubs are in those rural communities?
Ms. Logan: Do you mean we have less ability to access services than in a larger centre?
Senator Mercer: I will mention a group in a moment that I believe is doing a reasonable job on this, but I observe that there does not seem to be a group across the nine provinces we have visited so far in rural Canada that is the umbrella group helping to coordinate the activities of all the social service agencies, such as the 4-H club and any outreach groups from churches or community centres helping people who need help in the community.
I am asking you, is my observation correct or not?
Ms. Logan: I agree with you that every organization tends to try to do what needs to be done, and usually it is the same people serving on all these different organizations. I commented on a better attempt to link all the services. No, in my community there is not one umbrella group that sees about raising funds for anything; and I did mention that we do a lot of casinos. Our little community just had a fundraising supper. We want to build a new gym. The community has decided to do it on their own. We raised $59,000 at that supper, but it was all just local people working together. It tends to be that everybody helps the other group; that is how we do it, just one big group.
Senator Mercer: It is always amazing to us what can be done in rural communities. I live in a small rural community outside Halifax, and I am amazed what my friends and neighbours do to keep our little community going.
There is a group active in only three provinces: Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. That is the Foundation for Rural Living. I do not know if you are familiar with them.
Ms. Logan: No.
Senator Mercer: Through some limited funding that they have received, they have been able to provide what they call rural development officers, who work in specific rural communities to help with the work. They do not do the work for everybody else, but to help coordinate everybody else. I would like your comment on this. One issue we have heard is that there are programs available but the complication of dealing with the programs, of getting through the bureaucracy — and in some cases simply filling out the forms — is too daunting for people. Not just because they are in rural Canada; they are daunting for everybody. However, because your volunteer base is much smaller in rural Canada there is the need for someone to help coordinate things such as that, the social agencies, making sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. The rural development officers I have seen have done a great job in that sense. Do you think that would help?
Ms. Logan: In Alberta, they have community development officers who do something similar to that. There are also family services that try to coordinate some issues. They are often situated in one of the bigger centres and often are not out to the little centres too often.
Senator Mercer: When we were in Athens, Ontario, people from the United Way of Leeds-Grenville came and told us what a wonderful job they did. As we dug a little deeper, we found out they were doing a great job in Gananoque and Brockville, but as we moved out beyond Athens and other places, they were not doing so well. I get the feeling that, as a committee, we will have to address how to find some way to empower organizations already in place, such as 4-H or other organizations in rural Canada. Because of the lack of coordination and the lack of that umbrella group that the United Way, for example, provides in urban areas, these organizations need help to capitalize on the good work that is being done there now.
Do you feel that that would be of some help? Are the community development officers in Alberta paid by the province?
Ms. Logan: Yes. It is under community development. The one comment I would have is that often in rural areas, being able to connect with the right person is important. It would be really wonderful if we had, whether we call it a one-stop information or someplace we could go. Most communities still have a library. If we could go there, we could be pointed in the right direction for the phone number or whatever. It used to be the county seat that would have had the health authority, the district agriculturalist, the home economist, everybody. Now from my area, it is a long- distance phone call somewhere if we can figure out where to call. Many people just never access information because of the difficulty to figure it out. That would also allow government to connect better with small communities. If we had this site, we could find out the answers we needed.
Senator Mercer: I believe, Ms. Logan, you and I are on the same wave-length here. That is one of the major problems. We need to have that one-stop shopping spot in rural Canada, which we might not have in urban Canada, but at least the services are next door to each other so urban Canadians do not have to go that far.
Ms. Logan: I would like to add one comment. It could also be a store front, where we go inside and meet someone, similar to the Wal-Mart greeter.
Senator Mercer: Exactly.
The Chairman: Ms. Logan, thank you so much for spending this time with us. As you know I am from Lethbridge, so I am very familiar with our part of the country. People like you coordinating activities in the smaller communities are absolutely imperative for keeping our people on the ground and in our smaller areas, which to me are really the foundation of rural Canada. I am delighted you have been able to be here and tell us about 4-H, because it has had a long life and has produced many fine people as they have moved on.
I wish all the very best to you and the folks in the area. I am sure we will see you again.
Ms. Logan: Thank you. The 4-H will be 100 years old in 2013. We plan on being here.
The Chairman: All right. Let me know the dates, and I will be there too.
Honourable senators, in our second hour this evening we will be hearing from David Chernushenko, Senior Deputy to the Leader of the Green Party of Canada; Jim McKenzie, Agricultural Policy Analyst; and Kylah Dobson, a member of the Green Party of Canada. We are very glad to have you here.
David Chernushenko, Senior Deputy to the Leader, Green Party of Canada: It is a great pleasure to be here. I am the token city slicker in the delegation. I certainly want to express, however, very briefly, the great interest that the Green Party of Canada has in rural issues of all sorts, and particularly the issue of rural poverty.
We have many members who come from rural ridings. We put a great deal of attention into the issues of declining industries, what it takes to make these industries more sustainable and how they can be operated more sustainably so that employment can continue to exist in rural communities. We will continue to follow your deliberations with great interest, but I will not take up any more time. I will pass it over to Mr. McKenzie and Ms. Dobson.
Jim McKenzie, Agricultural Policy Analyst and Member, Green Party of Canada: It is pleasure to be here this evening.
I am personally interested in this topic, because I came here approximately 25 year ago with my minister at that time, Minister Whelan, on a similar topic. If we had known then what we know today, I believe we would have had very different things to say.
I am an economist by training; I was working in the policy group in the Ministry of Agriculture at that time. We felt that if we put our faith in technology and markets, with some adjustments — and in fact we used to have adjustment programs in those days — then things would work out. That, however, has not proved to be the case.
I did send a copy of my brief to the clerk, so I assume the committee members have it. I will not read from it, but will go through it as quickly as I can so you can ask us questions.
I would like to bring together three things that the Green Party of Canada feels strongly about. One is family farms; one is our environment, especially greenhouse gases; and the third is improving our health. We feel, if we can link these together, we can make improvements on all three simultaneously. If Senator Mahovlich was here, in hockey language, it is a hat trick. In baseball, I guess you would call it a triple play. That is what we are trying to do.
We made comments earlier about how technology in markets has changed and the fact that the whole nature of Canadian agriculture has changed. I do not want to go into the details of that because you have it in the documentation.
The Green Party of Canada seems to be widely recognized as an environmental party, but the reality of it is that we are a party that is concerned for the well-being of people. That means we have to take into account bringing economic, social and ecological systems together so that we can improve the well-being of Canadians.
That has not always worked the way we would like it to work. That is especially true in rural areas. The food we grow today is not the same food that we used to grow 50 years ago. The food we eat today is certainly not the same as we used to eat 50 years ago. Much of it has travelled long distances before we consume it. It comes from many places where health and environmental standards are not necessarily the same as they are here in Canada.
North American society can be said to stand on two legs: cheap energy and cheap food. The cheap energy leg is in deep trouble because of the damage that it is doing to our planet. The cheap food leg depends on the cheap energy leg, with chemicals, fertilizers and fossil fuels. These two legs are linked together because we can convert cheap food into cheap energy. We think that will work, but it will not.
The cheap food leg is in trouble in its own right because it is affecting so many people in society in a negative way and driving up our health care costs. We want to try to relate these two things and see what sort of contribution improving the family farm can make to our two national priorities.
I was thinking about this a few months ago when I was watching your sessions on television. I was thinking, how will I explain that? The Minister of Agriculture then gave me a gift. It is paper from a series of consultation documents called The Next Generation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Policy. He has been consulting across the country on this.
This looks to me very much like the last generation and the generation before that and the generation before that, because I used to help write these, so I remember it very well.
The Chairman: I was around at that time too, Mr. McKenzie.
Mr. McKenzie: I can pick out the words. I will read the main emphasis here, which states that he is proposing a set of policies which ". . . will support an agriculture and agri-food sector that is profitable, market-driven, innovative and efficient, and enable the sector to seize opportunities across the value chain . . . .''
That is one little phrase that crept in over the last decade; we did not use that 25 years ago. It goes on to say, ". . . and strengthen Canada's position in the global marketplace . . . .''
About 15 years ago, I was in Africa, and we were trying to convert a very socialist agricultural policy to a capitalist one. That is the sort of thing that I was writing for cabinet members at that time. However, that is not the problem that we have today. This single-minded focus on economic performance has led us to some of the problems that we have with our agriculture and food system and society today.
For example, the agri-food sector contributes about 20 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions, if we take it through the whole system. Food-related illnesses account for an unknown amount, but nevertheless a significant portion, of the $140 billion that we spend on health care annually.
The Greens, because we are a people-focused party, feel that we should focus on the groups that we deem to be important in the system. Those are producers, farmers in rural areas, consumers of food and taxpayers — because they pay so much for health care. As your committee has already discovered, I believe it is approximately $30 billion that we paid in direct payments to farmers over the last 15 years.
We went through this paper and looked at what the minister was saying. We wanted to focus on people and not on increasing the GDP, not on more economic activity, but quality for people.
There were three themes coming up: increasing consumption of locally grown food, natural food in rural areas; developing a healthy-eating lifestyle for all Canadians; and establishing a renewable energy society in rural Canada.
We also noticed that in this documentation there was no suggestion that we should be rethinking some of the things we have done in the past. We have identified seven things here. These include factory farming, genetically engineered foods, and empowering farmers in the marketplace. We have looked at M.P. Wayne Easter's report and most of it we agree with, but we do not feel it goes nearly far enough in giving farmers more power in the marketplace.
There is a supermarket not far from where I live called Farm Boy, but that Farm Boy does not have a farm. It sells products from Cavendish Farms, but they do not have a farm either. The farmer's name has been taken over by the food system. We need to find ways to get around that and give the farmer much more power in the marketplace, so he can get his returns from the marketplace.
We also need to look at using the precautionary principle in agri-food legislation. It is now in eight different pieces of federal legislation; only one of those is in the agri-food sector. We do not have a national food policy. We should have one, especially since we are finding out that so many of the things we need to pay for in our health care system are food related.
We do not have a national strategy for organic agriculture. We say organic agriculture is fine; farmers can go ahead with that. However, we do not have a national strategy to help farmers get off this addiction to agricultural chemicals and fossil fuels so more of them can farm organically. We also need to rethink our whole area of food advertising and promotion.
We already know that we are overeating. I am a prime example. I go up to the supermarket and the sign says, "What could be better than one pizza? Two pizzas.'' That is the message that is coming to consumers. Where is the message from the farmers that we have good, healthy food?
I have gone through the six programs that the minister put in this paper: the business risk management; innovation and science; environment; food safety and quality; market development and trade; and renewal. In regard to renewal, we used to call that adjustment; it is now very confused. We suggest that if we change our thinking about the sector, that is, if we looked at it from a different perspective, we will use those same six programs but will make significant changes to them. We will also add on another one that is not mentioned here at all, and that is adapting to global warming. That will affect every farmer in Canada. It will affect what they can produce, how they can produce it and the markets for their products. There needs to be a major thrust in federal policy on helping the industry adapt to global warming.
We said that is all very nice, you can make these changes, but then what will happen out in some rural neighbourhood? We happened to pick on an example that is close to me — in an area where Ms. Dobson's father farms, as well as her uncle and my son — namely, Renfrew County. There are only 150 full-time farmers left in Renfrew County. About 100 of them are dairy farms. We all know, if changes to supply management take place, what will happen to those dairy farmers. However, the technology that has been changing Renfrew County in the last two decades is still moving forward. For example, we hardly find a 500-horsepower tractor in Renfrew County. In another five years or 10 years, they will be there because they are available. The dairy farms will change, unless we change the way we think about agricultural policy.
We went to Renfrew County and collected quite a bit of information. It is in the annex to our report here. We talked to local people and asked what would be the impact if we changed our policy directions. They said that that is what they have been trying to tell people for a long time. That is what they want to do. They want to get their local products on the local supermarket shelves.
For example, because a large amount of beef is produced in Renfrew County, they made an effort to collaborate with one of the supermarkets a year or two ago. It almost came off. It would not be any more expensive, but it needs a little more input and organization. Then we can gradually move through some of the other commodities.
It is a shame that our whole food system now that supplies rural areas is exactly the same one that supplies our cities. Although there are 100,000 people in Renfrew County, very few of them are eating local food. The only ones I am aware of is a handful of Mennonite farmers, who raise their own food and survive all year on it. They do not farm organically, although they would like to, because they do not have the technology to do that.
If you follow through a number of the things we are saying, those are the things that Renfrew County farmers want to do. The Environmental Farm Plan program came in a few years ago. Quite a number of farmers in Renfrew County completed the plan but do not have the money to implement it.
You have probably heard of the agricultural land use program — Alternative Land Use Services, ALUS — developed by the Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba. I believe that would fit very well into a place such as Renfrew County. Ms. Dobson's father is involved with that. He is not here tonight, because he is involved with the stewardship council. He has been very active in the environmental movement for some time, and that is his view as well.
We can start by getting more and more local food into the supermarkets in Renfrew County. This will not happen overnight, but we did not get into the situation we are in now overnight. It took over 50 years, so we will not change it in a short period of time.
On the energy front, we see many opportunities, and so do the people of Renfrew County. We see opportunities to both produce more energy to substitute what is being used on the farms and perhaps export energy to the cities through alternates such as wind and solar power. One farmer just down the road from my son has a methane digester in his dairy operation. Most of the time the metres run one way and send power into the grid but sometimes he will have to draw on it.
That is brief overview of what is in the documentation.
Kylah Dobson: I am pleased to be here, especially in the company of Mr. McKenzie and Mr. Chernushenko.
To clarify, I am here with the Green Party of Canada, but I am not personally affiliated with them. I am here to support many of their initiatives, but I am here just as a representative of rural Canada. I have grown up on a small rural farm in Renfrew County. I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have.
Senator Mercer: Welcome. We are pleased to have you here. I have all kinds of questions, some of which relate to your presentation and some to other matters of the Green Party of Canada. I also have general farm and environmental questions.
I understand the Green Party of Canada supports the rapid development of biofuels, particularly ethanol, by promoting commercial-scale switchgrass operations in the Prairies. I am with you on that. Some people have raised concerns, however, that Canada is falling behind the United States and Brazil in the development of biofuel industries, and I would agree with that. How do we ensure that opportunities for the growth of biofuels will directly help our farmers and our rural communities and not just help the oil companies who may own the biofuel production plants?
Mr. Chernushenko: That is certainly a valid question. No sooner did the general public, media and politicians discover biofuels, than they became the flavour of the month, and everyone wanted to jump on. While we recognize much of the benefit in biofuels, we are equally cautious about some of the downsides: We need to ensure that there is a net energy gain, and that we are not putting as much or almost as much energy input into growing, processing and bringing to market those fuels through fossil fuels as we get out of them in the end. We also need to look at what has happened to the land. Are we taking lands that might not otherwise have been subjected to stress and harming the soils through adding chemicals simply in this rush to get more biofuels to market? Then there is the very important point that you raise, namely, whether the local farmers will benefit from it, or whether we will find another case where the moment that investors — people with no shortage of money already — smell an opportunity, they are in there quickly. We have already seen it happen in many American examples. There are some exceptions where farmers have come together to cooperatively build plants and to keep the money in the community, but there have been a great deal of Wall Street investors that jump straight in and take much of the profits.
At the moment, I cannot say we have a magic prescription to that, but it is certainly a problem of which we need to be very aware. We need to learn lessons from what has happened previously in our food system to see if we can help farmers find the financing necessary to build some of the infrastructure and some of the capital costs necessary for marketing where they retain more of the power and, therefore, more of the profit in the end. We need to be cautious that this is not a boom-and-bust rush to biofuels where, when we discover that it is not the silver bullet to solve all our greenhouse gas problems, it crashes just as rapidly as it started, leaving some people very vulnerable. Those are all issues we will want to look at.
Senator Mercer: Some people have also suggested that the greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol are not that far off what is happening with the fuels we are using already. I imagine the advantage is that this is renewable. This committee has seen farmers' eyes light up when they talk about it, because it seemed to be a way of infusing a huge amount of cash into an industry that is cash-strapped. People are in big trouble out there.
Biofuels from switchgrass operations have an advantage of requiring lower levels of fertilizer, pesticides and energy, which is something we all would like to see. Switchgrass can also be produced on agriculturally marginal lands. Switchgrass is the subject we have been using, but do you also support other forms of biodiesel production such as from corn, wheat or soybeans?
Mr. Chernushenko: Yes, but with caution. There are several problems we are seeing now with several of those crops just named. There are issues around the introduction of and increasing use of genetically modified stock. There is particularly the question of the very high resource intensity, for example, of water and other chemicals that are used in the growing of the corn.
There are also other sources that go outside of these grains or crops that you have mentioned, for example, from the meat rendering. I recently visited a plant outside of Montreal on the South Shore where one company is ensuring that much of the otherwise economically useless by-products of meat plants are being turned into biofuels as well. While we may have some vegetarian members in the party, the way I view it is that if we are still to be eating meat as a society, let us use all of it and create as little waste that needs to be dumped or otherwise disposed of in some other way. There are opportunities in biofuels from many sources.
Senator Mercer: This committee has heard many times through the BSE crisis — mad cow disease — that there are things that used to go into the system that can no longer go into the system. We can use the biofuel system and may be on the verge of solving some of those problems.
Does the Green Party of Canada endorse increasing the level of support to farmers to protect and sustain rural Canada? In particular, I am referring to the large subsidies that the European Union and the United States give to their farmers. Does the Green Party support us matching that or being in that business?
Mr. Chernushenko: Our preference, as in many issues, if there is a problem, is to identify what the cause of the problem is as opposed to continually administering band-aids. While there are occasions where we need to pay out to administer band-aids, our overall approach is to find, whether it is trade agreements or otherwise, flaws in the system that have forced us, bit by bit, over the years, to a point where it is virtually unprofitable to be in agriculture. Simply to keep people on the land, keep them producing, we now need to regularly hand out large subsidies. We would rather see, as a global approach, an international approach, the ratcheting down of subsidies in other countries in a system we can all buy into. However, there is no question that if that is not happening, we need to be able to continue to help Canadian farmers, including subsidies where necessary.
Senator Mercer: The one place where the Green Party of Canada has had electoral success has been in various countries within the EU. I would hope that you could use your network with your colleagues in the Green Party in the EU to start to wean their farmers off the subsidies.
In my estimation, we will be in this band-aid business for a long time because the EU will not go that way, and certainly our American friends will not go that way. They will call it anything but a subsidy, but it is a subsidy. You might be able to help by talking to our colleagues in the EU.
Mr. Chernushenko: We will do our best.
Senator Oliver: Your presentation has been very wide ranging, and there are many different aspects to it. However, a couple of the aspects are reminiscent of an earlier report that this Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry has put out in relation to what we call value-added products. This committee looked at the concept of what can be done to have more value for farmers at the farm gate, before the product leaves the farm gate and then goes to a Loblaw's or something where the profits are made. Many of the initiatives that you have talked about today, such as a six program point of marketing development and trade and so on, really tracked much of what we said in that report. It was refreshing to hear you remind us of some of those things that we said earlier.
You also said that we need a national strategy for organic food in our agriculture policy. That is another thing that this committee has written about under the guidance of Senator Fairbairn on several major reports. We welcome you reinforcing some of the conclusions that we have previously reached.
In the beginning of your report, you say that you have read the report, know what our definition of rural poverty is and know the problems facing some of the people in those rural areas. Since the Green Party is aware of the urgent problems of poverty in rural Canada, what are some of the public policy ways in which you think issues of rural poverty can and should be overcome?
Mr. McKenzie: Are you asking about our policies on poverty in general?
Senator Oliver: At the beginning of your paper you say that rural poverty can be viewed in two ways, as a condition facing some of the people in rural areas and as a state of disparity between rural and urban Canada. You say that the Senate's interim report states that both are our concern, and that the Green Party shares these concerns.
Mr. Chernushenko: It is very important to recognize that many of the services available to urban residents are less available in rural situations. Even if such programs and services exist, distance will make them much less accessible. There is the aspect of travel time, and, if people are in a situation of poverty, they will likely not have cars to travel to avail themselves of those services.
Senator Oliver: Unless there was infrastructure such as a good transportation system — a minibus system, for example.
Mr. Chernushenko: That has become a tragically defining feature of much of rural Canada. First we lost the trains, and then we began to lose bus services. All levels of government, other than local governments in those communities, have a mindset that people will have a car and the money to keep that car on the road. That is simply not the case for everyone. The assumption that a private vehicle is available to everyone puts people living in rural poverty at a great disadvantage.
Mr. McKenzie: I made the point at the beginning of our report that if we can raise the level of well-being of rural people overall, we will find within rural society a great willingness to address some of their own problems. However, the problem is that they do not have the capacity. I regret that we did not spend more time looking into the issue you are concerned about. I was more interested in speaking to it from my own background of the mistakes that we have been making and where we have been going with agriculture.
If we can help our farmers to address our two national priorities of environment and health, we will have an injection of funds into the rural areas, whether it is for wind, solar or methane energy. We will make farmers more self- sufficient so that they will not have to rely on subsidies. We are addicted to subsidies in agriculture now.
Senator Oliver: In fairness, they are as well in the United States and the European Union. Agricultural subsidies are part of the reason the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, negotiations have failed.
Mr. McKenzie: Yes.
Mr. Chernushenko: That is a recurring theme to us on so many issues. It becomes so difficult now for any one country to act on its own, because our own citizens, our own companies — to the extent we still have Canadian-owned ones — will, not surprisingly, cry out, "You are trying to change things in our country, but we are competing now in a global market, and you are putting us at a competitive disadvantage.''
Our international agreements need to be revisited. The only chance for significant success lies there, because the only way we will get America, Japan, Korea or any number of countries to agree to these things is if everyone recognizes that we are all in it together.
Mr. McKenzie: As an example, in the newspaper on Saturday there was an article about the vanishing honey bee due to colony collapse disorder in the United States. If that continues, it will affect the price of food throughout our Canadian supermarket system. We are tied together in so many ways internationally that we must recognize that we are all in it together, in the same way we recognized, when Kyoto was put in place, that we are all in the greenhouse gas problem together. We are also in many other problems together.
Senator Oliver: You talked about the influence of technology on farming. It has taken away the small family farm that we all loved in the olden days. Those family farms have been bought up, and now we have huge corporate farms. I did not quite get your conclusion. You said that we no longer have farms of 150 or 200 acres. Rather, many are 1,000 to 15,000 acres.
What has happened to farming in rural Canada with that transformation?
Mr. McKenzie: Your committee has already well-documented what has happened to rural Canada. We have considerably fewer full-time farmers. We have many part-time farmers. The question relates to where we will go from here and how we can change directions. Technology has been sweeping through the system and more is coming. You will not find a 500-horsepower tractor in Renfrew County today, but in another 10 years they will be there, and rather than 400-acre farms, they will be much larger.
If we want to stop that, we must have a reason. We want to make our agriculture and food system sustainable. We want to increase the power of farmers in the marketplace with respect to inputs and products, and give them options on input so that they are not locked into fossil fuels and chemicals, et cetera.
The best way to increase the power of people is to give them an option. Give them more options on the marketing site. We must no longer look at agricultural policy the way we have been for the last 30 or 40 years. We must look at it in terms of what we want to do for people. We must go through the science and innovation programs and redirect them. We must go through the business risk management programs and change them.
It may take decades to change directions, but it will all be worthwhile at the end, because we will get a sustainable system.
Senator Callbeck: Mr. McKenzie, you listed seven items that need to be reconsidered. One was empowering farmers. You said that you agreed with most of Easter's report but that it did not go far enough. I would like you to elaborate on that.
Mr. McKenzie: By way of example, a number of years ago we brought in grading of farm products. We grade eggs, cattle, hogs and so on. We do not grade hamburgers. Hamburgers are much closer to the consumer than the beef that the farmer sells. I am saying back up and take a different look at the system.
The food processors and the fast-food chains have all sorts of market power. The farmer has very little. One example with some success is Omega-3 eggs. We go to the supermarket and find egg producers are selling Omega-3 eggs. However, in the beef industry right now, they are selling different brands of beef. Northridge Farms is one. Northridge Farms is not a farm. It is a brand name owned by a big company that owns many things.
If we want to increase farmers' marketing power, we must give back some of the power that they had years ago, which probably means we have to take it away from some of the other guys.
Senator Callbeck: How do you propose you do that? You say Easter's report has not gone far enough with giving more power to the farmers so they can get a better dollar for their product and cover their input costs plus make a profit.
Mr. McKenzie: It is always difficult to answer a question like that. That is the sort of question my son asks me, "How are you going to do that, Dad?'' I have taken it part way there. There must be a cooperative effort.
We have the Agricultural Policy Framework, which is federal-provincial; we have farm organization inputs. I went to one of the meetings where farmers were commenting on this. They had some of the same concerns I am stating here. We cannot give someone market power in an agricultural and food system without taking it away from someone else. Some of the recommendations in Easter's report covered some of that.
When we look at what our food system is doing to us, then we will say perhaps it may be a good idea to take some of that market power away from some of those people and give it back to farmers.
Mr. Chernushenko: I would pick an example, which is honesty in labelling, advertising and describing what the product is. In this country, we are much weaker than Germany, for example, in the sense of a consumer's right to know what is in any product, whether it be food or the mattress we are sleeping on. In a company's ability to not tell us certain things, we are far behind. The end result is not all consumers will make the effort to seek out the more sustainably sourced product — the organic beef, whatever it might be that they are looking for. Others will; and the movement to ask those questions and to look for those things will only come when they have the tools to do that.
As an example — I am trying to remember which product this specifically arose on — we cannot label saying this product does not contain genetically modified organisms because that would imply that all the others do. How can we possibly have gone that far where we allow all those who produce, by our definition, in a less-sustainable way to have greater power than those who are producing more sustainably?
Examples might be in advertising with Northridge Farms. Creation might be out there. One might argue, is that honest advertising when you are claiming to be a farm? Clearly, our marketing gurus understand that giving the impression — complete with the image — to the consumer that this is coming straight from "Farmer Brown's'' farm is a positive thing in the mind of the consumer. Yet, when it is false, it puts a large company that has the power to do that at a great advantage over a smaller operator that does not. That might be one starting point.
Senator Callbeck: On transportation, Mr. Chernushenko, you talked about how people living in rural Canada are at a disadvantage because they have to use their car. Most places do not have enough people for public transport, so they have to use their car for medical services, groceries or whatever.
It is my understanding that the Green Party supports a shift in the tax burden and putting a hefty tax on fossil fuels and lowering income tax. Would that not disproportionately hurt rural areas?
Mr. Chernushenko: It would if that were all we were doing. While you are correct that that is a fundamental part of our platform, the often-forgotten part is that a significant amount of revenue raised from that additional taxation would be injected into providing the services for what is lacking at that moment. How might we raise revenue if we increase taxes on fossil fuel use? We can then target that additional revenue to specific gaps at the moment in the system. One of those gaps we all talk about here in Ottawa is light rapid transit, but where there is a greater need is in the rural community. More money needs to be invested in better transit systems in rural communities. Just to extend that analogy, in as many cases as possible where lower-income Canadians will be at a disadvantage by paying a resource consumption tax, we need to be sure that there is a compensating mechanism in the areas where that will hit the hardest.
Rather than saying we have taxed you on your heating fuel, now we will give you a rebate back if you are below a certain income level, we might invest that money in making your home more energy efficient, in subsidizing the purchase of a better furnace, better windows or doors. In fact, if people's homes are porous in the first place or their farm operations are such that they are not as energy efficient as they might be, instead of taxing them and then giving it right back to continue wasting it, we should be saying that we will help them to become a more efficient user of fossil fuels with the money we raised. The end result should be no particular disadvantage and in fact more advantageous to lower-income Canadians.
Senator Callbeck: Have you laid out how you would spend those extra dollars, or is it just a general statement?
Mr. Chernushenko: As a party, we are halfway between it being nice ideas that many economists agree with and actually providing numbers. We are going through quite a detailed costing exercise right now of our next election platform, our current as-yet unveiled platform. We know, as a party, we are at a point where people are expecting more from us than nice ideas. That was good to a point, but now people are expecting numbers, and we plan to give them.
Senator Dawson: Speaking of election, we have an image of the Green Party being urban rather than rural driven. Everybody in Nova Scotia knows your leader is running in a rural Nova Scotia riding. The Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson wrote that the 2006 census demonstrates that rural Canada "has become so irrelevant demographically that it increasingly exists only in myth.''
The political clout of rural Canada is being weakened by the fact that the numbers are not there. How do you reverse that trend if the politics exist mostly in urban cities?
You talked about net energy gains in fossil fuels. If we do encourage farmers to go from food to fuel, and if in a few years it is successful, then the price of fuel goes down and they do not need to produce fuel anymore then they will no longer have markets for their food if they start producing food again. How do you get out of that dilemma of encouraging them to leave the food sector?
Ms. Dobson, you described yourself as being from a small rural farm. Could you provide a definition of how a small rural farm close to a big market such as Ottawa compares to a small rural farm in rural Saskatchewan that is far from any regional market?
Without getting too indiscreet, what is a small rural farm? What would be the acreage and what would be the annual budget — without too many details — comparison between you and a rural farm in Saskatchewan or Alberta?
Ms. Dobson: I grew up on a farm that is approximately 250 acres. For Renfrew County, that is still considered small to medium, but compared to a farm in Saskatchewan that would be considered very small, I believe; many farms there have acreage in the thousands, growing wheat, et cetera.
I honestly have no idea what our annual budget is. I am not extremely involved in the finances. It is kept as small as possible. As you might be aware, the annual average income for farmers is in the negative numbers. It is sub-depression level income, which is quite alarming — and I am alarmed that it is not making head lines.
Senator Dawson: What is the advantage of being close to a major market such as Ottawa?
Ms. Dobson: For us, that is quite advantageous, as we have, in recent years, gone from a 200-head herd of cattle to about 50. We are directly marketing our product; we are not reliant on external markets. We sell to farmers' markets, to restaurants and direct to the farm. We are at an advantage; we have the market. We have Ottawa, and people are concerned where their food comes from.
I can imagine if people are in a very isolated area in Saskatchewan, they are at a disadvantage. They are only producing for an external market and a volatile one, unreliable, one from which grain producers are not making money.
I can only say that agricultural policy needs to support farmer-run cooperatives so farmers can come together and sell to markets that are looking for different production methods. They need government support. I do not personally feel subsidies are the answer. Subsidies often end up in the hands of the people who do not actually need them. They go to larger farms, feed lots, people that already have money.
Mr. McKenzie: The food to fuel question for me is fascinating because for decades the U.S. has served as a world food reserve. I was in Zambia in 1989, and we fed the entire country for a whole year on U.S. corn because the local corn crop failed.
Now with the withdrawal of that reserve essentially from world markets, it is perhaps one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes that the U.S. has ever made, and we are following right along with them.
We are going into a century where agriculture will be in very serious difficulty in many parts of the world because of global warming. Now we have taken that food off the world market, and, yes, it has benefited farmers because we have seen the price of corn go from $2 to $4 a bushel. However, how will we look in 50 years' time when it is very clear to the rest of the world that we are burning up a big chunk of the world's food supply — not so much in terms of the total volume, but that little piece that is a world food reserve.
The biofuels industry in Europe is also causing very serious problems in the areas from where they are bringing their oil — Indonesia and those areas — because they are using up rain forests and other resources to produce fuel that is going into vehicles in Europe.
As we use more corn and soy beans in the biofuel industry in North America, we are generating a lot of soy bean oil meal and distillers grains that do not fit well with the type of livestock feed industry we have had in the past. Therefore, we will be affecting the whole livestock market. I would not be surprised to see many new products come on the market by the food processing industry, making use of those soy bean oil meal and distillers' grains.
We are moving into entirely uncharted territory here. It will affect every consumer in North America in terms of what they will eat. It will have severe ramifications in the decades ahead in terms of world stability.
Mr. Chernushenko: On the food to fuel question, in the first question from Senator Mercer, I emphasized that we are proceeding with caution when looking at that. There are many distortions that can find their way in here. While it is great to see farmers getting more money for their crop, I would rather see them getting more money for their food crop than turning food into fuel. If we can find a way to do that, we would be happier.
There is a simple reality. We will find out that agriculture, as a source for fuels, is a minuscule portion of what the world is currently consuming. It will be a drop in the bucket in terms of meeting energy demand, and it may be that that becomes a reality rather quickly.
The other factor will be if we suddenly find ourselves with food shortages. It will not be the market that corrects that, it will be public policy decisions that put humans and access to food as a higher priority, particularly those with lower incomes and countries such as Mexico, where we are hearing about the riots over the corn prices. I can see that only getting worse.
You mentioned the quote about rural populations and rural voters becoming increasingly irrelevant. Certainly, they have been treated as such in terms of policy and attention. We, as a party, although it was founded by people in the city and perhaps initially it was being run and driven by urban members, there was always a strong concern about our natural resource base, both the integrity of our ecosystem and the availability and sustainability of the way in which we are harvesting natural resources, be that agriculture, fisheries or forestry.
Recently, people in the resource industries who initially saw Greens, be that the Green Party or environmental groups, as a threat — I felt it was only natural that it would happen — in that they would tell them what they can and cannot do, are coming round to the point now where they see us as natural allies.
We all want people to have jobs, to be able to stay in their community and have stable employment in their communities — not to have to move to the city. That will only come when we can define and then enforce, in some way, sustainable harvesting, forestry and fisheries. That is the point that we are at in history right now in this country and around the world, namely, figuring out how sustainable fishing and agriculture look. How do we keep as many people employed as possible with as much income finding its way back to rural communities? That is where being a Green becomes very much in sync with rural residents today.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming here this evening. It was a pleasure to meet you all. We wish you well.
The committee adjourned.