Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 27 - Evidence - Morning meeting
NICOLET, QUEBEC, Friday, May 18, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:38 a.m. to examine and report upon rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome everyone. The members of the committee are happy to be here in Nicolet, in the heart of the beautiful region of central Quebec, which also happens to be the hometown of Senator Biron.
[English]
In May last year, our committee was authorized to examine the issue of rural poverty in Canada. Last fall, we listened to a number of experts from across the country. We put together a report, and I believe we have copies of here. We sent the report out and were startled at the response that we received from all across the country. We were encouraged to go ahead and move farther into the area, to get on the road and visit Canadians where they live and raise their families in the rural part of our country.
We are now in the second phase of our research. Thus far, we have travelled throughout all of the provinces in Eastern Canada. We have been in each province of Western Canada. We are at the moment completing meetings here in Quebec and Ontario. In the fall, we will go up to the North, into the three territories. Then, we will come together to do a final report.
It was our view that in order to do this, we had to meet with rural people in rural Canada. We know there is still much work for us to do. In short, we want to visit and hear as many people as we can who understand this issue much better than we do.
Today, it gives me great pleasure to welcome our two witnesses, Alain Duhaime, President of Sogetel, and Jean- François Ménard, President of Horizon Vert.
Jean-François Ménard, President, Horizon Vert: I have a small PowerPoint presentation to give to you this morning, but first I would like to welcome you to Nicolet. It is very nice to have you here. Thank you for travelling here.
For this presentation, I could throw many numbers at you, but I would rather throw a few images at you that speak for themselves.
There is a new opportunity presented to Canadian farmers nowadays. I hope everybody has heard about climate change, how it affects our daily lives or is subject to affect our daily lives in the forthcoming years. This is having a great impact on the Canadian environment and the Canadian economy. I will try to present to you the new carbon economy as an opportunity for Canadian agriculture, as a new source of revenue for Canadians. Certainly, Canada can respond favourably to this new economy.
Climate change provokes all kinds of natural disorders, such as Katrina in 2005, which caused U.S. $260 billion in damages. Just because it is happening south of the border does not mean that we will be spared of the effects of such events, for example, the prices of fuel have risen at a time where we plough our fields here. Another image that speaks for itself is a 1935 picture of the Columbia Icefield in the Rockies. In 2007, it looks substantially different. I will spare you the numbers, but you can see for yourself that climate change does have a major impact on our climate and certainly on our environment.
What are greenhouse effects? We need greenhouse effects to live on this planet. The problem is that we lost the control of it. The temperature is rising sharply now, and we cannot cope with the rapid changes at this point.
These are not figures from a theoretical model out of a lab somewhere; these are direct measurements of CO2. We can probe the CO2 levels of 1,000 years back by drilling the ice and extracting direct measurements of those CO2 concentrations. We had a relatively stable temperature environment until we reached the age of industrialization in approximately 1850, and then it rose sharply. In less than 150 years, the industrialized world produced this remarkable rise in temperature.
Many years back, in the ice age, the difference in temperature between then and now was only 4 degrees. Right here, there used to be three kilometres of ice on top of this room. We are now 2 degrees up, and the prediction from today to 50 years from now is another 2.5 degrees at a minimum. In reality, it is between 2.5 and 5 degrees that are predicted. This will produce major effects on our planet and certainly on our economy.
The problem is that 20 per cent of the world is industrialized and 80 per cent is not. When it comes to consuming resources, the 20 per cent of the industrialized world consumes 80 per cent of the resources of the planet. If we keep that pace, most likely, we will wind up with even more damages. In view of the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies, on a per capita basis, if these economies consume as much as we have in the past 150 years, I do not have any answers; however, I will let you decide where we will be 100 years from now if we do not move fast.
How do we tackle the carbon economy? Very simply put, nature has transformed trees into liquid trees, which is fuel under the ground. Our economy has been based on the use of that fuel to make products. The missing part is between nine o'clock and midnight on the diagram. What will happen next?
The carbon economy will happen next. We will continue to do what we have done thus far. We have made money for our economy using fuels, and the next step to use the economy to produce the trees. There is just as much money in doing so. Offset credits can be produced by agriculture. Agriculture accounts for only 7.2 per cent of our emissions presently. The situation in Canada is that we have increased our emissions by 27 per cent as opposed to a projected decrease of 6 per cent. That is a big challenge that we have to face in the forthcoming years. Canada really needs offset credits to offset the effects of our CO2 emissions.
Within these forthcoming carbon markets are regulated markets, voluntary markets, such as the United States, who did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, and carboneutral markets, which is a peer-to-peer exchange of carbon credits — a kind of eBay of carbon, if you will.
How does Kyoto work? Basically, we have a 1990 level of emissions for which we all want to aim. Industrialized countries are the emitters and are, therefore, facing the challenges. The emerging countries are being sought as the solutions. I am giving you many details, but that is more or less how Kyoto works. Tomorrow, the regulated markets will expand, the voluntary markets will shrink and the carboneutral market will rise to become a net-based platform on which much carbon will be traded.
In Nicolet and with other partners in Canada, we are checking what is being done on the land. Namely, in the Prairie region, we have many methane reduction projects forthcoming to reduce methane emissions.
South of the border right now, we have the Chicago Carbon Exchange, CCX, that trades carbon. Some of the states are producing those offsets to the Chicago Carbon Exchange at this point in time.
The price of carbon of at the Chicago Carbon Exchange is U.S. $3.75. The price of the carbon last year in the United States was U.S. $1.10. The rise in price is three-fold, a 300 per cent increase. During which time, of course, the Bush administration has been consistently speaking against carbon, et cetera, but it did not prevent the price of carbon tripling in the United States in the last year. The price of carbon in Europe is 20 euros, which is roughly CAN $30. There is a market; it is doubling every year. Much of that carbon can be generated from the land, from the farmers. Market-wise, about 18 per cent of the carbon being traded on the market is by the farms. There is a large amount of money in that market right now.
If your subject is poverty in agriculture, I am proposing this morning that maybe there is a new avenue for farmers to make money out of operations that they are already doing, with not much more investment. It is a market-driven economy; the money is just there.
On this slide, you can see where the projects are located in the United States. The map in the middle of this slide is the Chicago Carbon Exchange. The next slide shows they added a new location to their expanding market. They are considering Saskatchewan, maybe, as a new American state. I do not know.
I am not taking this lightly. This is serious business. Saskatchewan has 50 per cent of acreage being ploughed in this country. We have ties with Saskatchewan. We have met with networks there. These are well-intentioned people, but cash-strapped farmers essentially. To crank this up to the level where we can trade carbon from coast to coast in this country, we cannot let the American markets trickle up the border and suck up all of our carbon in their economy. If the U.S. retires its carbon credits, Canada, while facing all these challenges, will have no more carbon left.
Democrats are coming into power south of the border. They have four bills in the U.S. Congress right now, all of them more or less pointing at a 50 per cent reduction in emissions in the next 50 years. That is an immense challenge proposed for the U.S. economy, and it will create an immense carbon market south of the border. As Democrats are grabbing a little more power, things are likely to go in that direction. By then, I hope there will be enough carbon in Canada for us to be a player, because right now, all this carbon is going permanently to the United States. The contract structures that our Saskatchewan farmers are signing right now are ten-year contracts. They will be legally bound to the U.S. if we do not move rapidly.
I am urging your committee to look into the matter and propose solutions. I have a few ideas; you can call me, and I can certainly help you if need be. We are talking to partners in the West, in Alberta, in Saskatchewan. Our aim is to create a coast-to-coast carbon pool.
I would like to conclude by saying that the environmental and financial gains should not be overlooked. There is a solution for farmers, which does not require any money from the government. There will be no taxpayers' money needed. All we need to do is draw a line in the sand and say that the Canadian carbon is Canadian and will remain Canadian.
The Chairman: You have certainly hit a nerve. Coming from Alberta right next to Saskatchewan, I know we have had such a tough time out there in recent years with climate, with all sorts of other things. The carbon issue is very much, as you say, alive. It is really a question of getting it going and how to do that. I believe that is probably what you are doing out West.
[Translation]
Mr. Alain Duhaime, President, Sogetel: Madam Chairman, I would like to welcome you to Nicolet. The Mayor, Mr. Drouin, who I saw at the door earlier, welcomes you as well. I am the President of Sogetel, a small company headquartered here in Nicolet. The purpose of my presentation is to inform you of the challenges facing telecommunications providers in providing a complete range of services at an affordable price in a rural community.
I believe that few of you are familiar with our company, so I will describe it briefly. Sogetel, which stands for the Société générale de telecommunications, is a private company that was founded in 1892. In fact, this company set up its operations with the advent of telephone technology. Our company provides telecommunications services. In the very beginning, it served the small town of Nicolet exclusively. By taking advantage of market consolidation, Sogetel then acquired several small telephone companies in the La Beauce region and Lac-Etchemin. We serve approximately 20 small rural municipalities in this region. We then acquired land in the Maskinongé region, close to Louiseville, and finally rural land in the region of Saint-Liboire-de-Bagot.
Please refer to Appendix 1, on the last page of this submission. To your left, you will find Nicolet, which is close to Lac Saint-Pierre and the St. Lawrence River. We cover the entire area of Maskinongé, which is located some 65 kilometres northwest of Nicolet. We also provide service 80 kilometres south of the Saint-Liboire region. We cover some 240 kilometres, the La Beauce region, south of Quebec City and along the American border.
Sogetel therefore provides services to rural areas that are non-adjacent. Nicolet is the largest village, with a population of 8,000 people. The area we serve has a population of approximately 45,000 people scattered over 4,300 square kilometres, which is approximately 10.5 people per square kilometre. Despite the large number of villages we serve, there are only 22,000 customers who subscribe to telephone service. We have approximately 16,000 Internet customers. In the last 10 years, Internet service has grown considerably. We also provide cellular phone service to 4,800 customers.
To understand the current situation, we must step back and take a look at how telecommunication systems used to operate. Until the early 1990s, telecommunications services included only basic telephone lines, and long-distance, which were entirely regulated. At the time, there were regulatory organizations at both the federal and provincial levels. In Quebec, we were regulated by a provincial organization. These regulatory organizations made sure that all Canadians had access to these affordable services, regardless of the actual costs.
Large corporations such as Bell or Telus served large cities where population density and incomes are very high. These companies, which also serve rural regions, had to use the high revenues derived from urban regions to subsidize services in rural areas that are normally not profitable. This is why telecommunication services in rural areas were, and still remain, affordable. These services were in part paid for by city dwellers. Services in a rural setting are still sold at below cost.
For small companies such as Sogetel, it was impossible to transfer revenues generated in lucrative urban markets. Nonetheless, there has always been a subsidy system to make sure that rural areas could receive telephone services at affordable rates. The large corporations, such as Bell and Telus, understood that it was beneficial for their own clients to make service available throughout the area because customers living in the city also make calls to rural areas. Customers needed to reach their parents, friends and business associates living in the country. Therefore, there was a subsidy system under which companies were compensated for the use of their long-distance network. For example, a rural company would charge a dollar to a customer for a long-distance call, and keep the dollar; companies such as Bell or Telus paid a subsidy of up to 50 per cent more than the cost of the call. Therefore, when a dollar was charged to a customer, the rural telephone company got $1.50. This is how rural telephone companies were able to keep local rates affordable.
Once telecommunications were deregulated, subsidy or equalization systems were no longer possible. The original ``telecommunicators'' such as Bell and Telus or even Sogetel, argue that if they have to subsidize non-profitable services, they will no longer be competitive in regions where competition exists.
To maintain universality service, the subsidy system must remain in place. To resolve this issue, the CRTC established a national fund to subsidize service in rural areas. This fund still exists. All telecommunications providers contribute to the fund, but only those providing services in rural communities benefit from it. This way, universal telephone service in rural areas can be maintained. Even today, although there is competition, rural services are subsidized by customers who live in cities, where the market is larger and more lucrative.
To give you a better idea, Sogetel is not a very large company, but by providing local rural service, we receive a subsidy of approximately $2.2 million per year. This is a significant amount of money. The subsidy depends on the size and importance of the municipality. In the case of the smallest municipalities, we receive as much as $17 per month per client, which is quite significant. Large companies such as Bell and Telus also receive this type of subsidy for services provided to rural municipalities.
With respect to high speed Internet and cellular phone service, very few measures have been implemented to ensure accessibility. These two services are essential for maintaining sustainable development, improving quality of life, perhaps even helping end poverty. We all know that Internet service is an indispensable tool in looking for employment. Many job offers are posted exclusively on the web. It is also an important educational tool. It is an endless source of information for students and parents. High speed Internet may also save lives by making possible remote consultation of medical files. Businesses need the Internet just as much. Is there a less costly, quicker way to place orders with suppliers or provide information to clients?
In rural communities, there is less traffic, and the roads are not cleared of snow as frequently as they are in urban centres. Cellular phone service has proven to be a valuable tool in improving the safety and security of motorists and truckers. It allows people to avoid pointless trips and so is even helping save our planet.
The two usual high speed Internet service providers are telephone companies and cable companies. They are not the only providers, but you all know they have the major share of the market. With the technology they use — DSL — telephone companies cannot provide the service more than seven kilometres away from their telephone exchange, which is usually located in the middle of the village. In fact, DSL equipment makes it possible to amplify transmission speed over copper pairs, but that amplification cannot be delivered over distances greater than seven kilometres. Thus, any potential client who is over seven kilometres away cannot receive service. However, cable companies usually only provide service where that service is profitable for them, that is in the centre of town. In many cases, they do not provide any service in smaller towns.
The government of Canada, through Industry Canada, has put in place the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development Program. The program is intended to ensure that all communities have access to broadband Internet. Sogetel has benefited under the program. I would like to take this opportunity to make a few comments.
As you know, the program subsidizes only equipment purchase. Wireless technology, which is less costly to install than a wired network, is what most communities receiving assistance under the program select. However, it is impossible to reach all potential clients with wireless technology. You are of course aware that mountains and forests are often insurmountable obstacles to a wireless network. The distance between the emitting station and the client is also a limiting factor. Thus, there are still many families and companies who are not receiving broadband Internet. Even in regions where the program has been subsidized and applied, there are still people who cannot receive high speed Internet.
With regard to operating costs, the program subsidized equipment purchase, but recurring expenses, such as electricity, labour and municipal taxes, are not subsidized. The only subsidy, which is for equipment purchase, will not be sufficient in the long-term to ensure the service survives. Those who have received subsidies are serving regions which were not profitable for the cable companies, telephone companies, or those providing service under the program.
Cellular telephone service is a competitive market. Cellular service providers are under no obligation to, and gain no advantage from, providing service to rural communities with low-density populations. Just as with high speed Internet, non-profitable rural areas are ignored. Recently — just two week ago — I made a presentation at the Montmagny regional municipality, where there are a number of towns along the U.S. border. Two municipalities are located on Sogetel territory, near the U.S. border: Lac-Frontière and Sainte-Lucie-de-Beauregard. I think it might be good to look at Appendix 1, to see where those municipalities are located. They are on the far-right of the map. In Sogetel's territory, along the U.S. border at the top, you find Sainte-Lucie and Lac-Frontière. Through the Montmagny RCM, those two municipalities recently submitted an application to receive cellular telephone service. They are in a fairly mountainous region, along the Maine border. The total population of those towns is 474 people — not 474 clients, but 474 people. A cellular transmission site costs between $500,000 and $600,000. To those investments, we must also add annual operating costs. It is completely impossible to make the service profitable under those conditions, even if Sogetel were the sole provider. Even if there was no competition, a single cellular service provider could not make a profit under those conditions. If governments wish to ensure that all kinds of telecommunications are available in rural areas, thus fostering economic development and reducing poverty, they will have to establish a permanent equalization system among providers, or else a subsidy system. They will absolutely have to take action, because these problems will come up every time new services become available. The more services become specialized and focus on a particular type of client, the les it is likely that they will be available in rural areas, because there will simply not be the volume needed to cover the company's investment.
I would be pleased to answer your questions.
[English]
The Chairman: These are big issues that you are talking about today, and they certainly reach into every part of Canada, especially rural Canada. Everywhere we have gone across the nation, we have heard the concern about lack of broadband connections and so on. I believe the government is starting to listen to that.
[Translation]
Senator Biron: My first question is on the federal government's deregulation of the industry, which will come into effect on June 1. That deregulation in rural areas will make it possible for companies like Bell and Telus to raise their rates, but could those rates go up indefinitely? Is there a cap?
Mr. Duhaime: First of all, that deregulation does not affect Sogetel. It is not a full deregulation. Companies have the right to increase their rates, but rates in rural areas will continue to be regulated. They will be a maximum rate. This is because, as I was saying earlier, the cost of providing service in rural areas is much higher than the invoice rate. In rural areas, Sogetel receives subsidies as high as $17 per client per month. Bell's costs in rural areas, which I do not know, must be similar. Bell would never be authorized to raise its rates by $17 a month in rural areas. The CRTC will most likely realize that costs are much higher than revenues, and allow a small increase, but I do not think the CRTC's goal is to fully deregulate basic service in rural areas.
Perhaps the CRTC will allow a small decrease in the gap between costs and invoice rates, but going from that to say that companies will be authorized to invoice cost price, and even with a profit margin, is something I do not think we will see, because I do not think it is the purpose of the changes announced by the CRTC.
Senator Biron: All Sogetel territories are linked by fibre optics networks, with redundancy.
Mr. Duhaime: That is correct. In order to provide good and secure service, Sogetel has to install fibre optics between Nicolet and the Maskinongé territory, up to La Beauce, by way of Quebec City. We also had to install fibre optics all the way to Montreal to purchase the Internet signal and to deliver long-distance calls. Those investments were made not only in Sogetel territory. We also had to invest outside our territory in order to purchase service and provide it to our clients.
Senator Biron: With the subsidy it has received, what regions does Sogetel serve with it WiFi network?
Mr. Duhaime: That territory extends some 60 kilometres east and west of Nicolet, and covers a rural area starting at Pierreville and running almost to Sainte-Marie-de-Blanford, up to highway 20. As I was saying, in spite of the subsidies received, studies carried out and equipment installed, Sogetel cannot yet provide service to every single part of the region because of a number of obstacles, including forests, the distance between emitting stations and homes, and other obstacles that block or otherwise hinder signals.
[English]
Senator Mercer: This is a beautiful part of the country, a beautiful part of Quebec.
There are many questions, Mr. Ménard and I need you to simplify this for me — I like what you are saying, but I do not know if I understand it. Carbon exchange is a new source of income for farmers. How would that work for a dairy farmer from Nicolet? How would that farm family make money from the carbon exchange?
Mr. Ménard: I will make it very simple. Basically, in Eastern Canada, the carbon is in the manure storage tanks. In Western Canada, the carbon is in the ground, in the soil. That is pretty simple.
At a higher level of complication, I would say, for the storage tanks, we need the technology to reduce the potential carbon emissions. If we reduce those emissions successfully, we are being paid for that.
In the West, the process is reversed. A farmer grows a crop; it has roots in the ground. If the farmer prevents those roots from going back up in the air, the farmer has sequestered carbon and thus reduced potential carbon, but the farmer has actually acquired carbon from the air into the ground.
There are two different types of carbon and that is keeping it very simple.
Senator Mercer: Based on that, who pays?
Mr. Ménard: If the farmer has a sufficiently rigorous data management system — and this is our business to manage data from the farm — and the farmer proves to the market that there has been a reduction or sequestration as in the West, he or she can be paid for that.
Senator Mercer: Who pays for that?
Mr. Ménard: Whoever needs it, whoever pollutes beyond the limit of the regulation. Knowing what the limits are, they know how many credits they need. They are looking at the market to propose those credits.
In Canada, there is a great need. We now know that we will not be able to meet our goals in terms of carbon. It will be imperative for the committee to propose coast-to-coast solutions between farmers in the West and farmers in the East. We can pool our efforts, create a balanced portfolio of two types of carbons, propose that to the market and create an entirely new source of revenue for farmers, involving no taxpayers' money as it is a private venture. That is our aim.
Senator Mercer: Nova Scotia Light and Power Company, which is the power-generating company in my province, has too many coal-, oil- and fire-generating stations. They need to reduce their carbon. Therefore, they could buy carbon credits.
Mr. Ménard: Yes.
Senator Mercer: This makes a little more sense now.
Mr. Ménard: There are solutions for those companies. Power utilities in the East or in the West, that use gas to produce electricity, could also plant trees in the Sahara if they wished to and then retire the credits over there.
However, I am saying why not pay Canadian farmers for what they can achieve, for what they already do?
Senator Mercer: How quickly could this happen?
Mr. Ménard: It could happen tomorrow.
Senator Mahovlich: Are you saying to us that we could form a kind of a wheat board in Canada to regulate?
Mr. Ménard: We do not need more regulation. It is market-driven. The urgency is to state that Canadian carbon stays in Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: Some farmers are independent, though. It is hard to regulate them unless we have some kind of board across Canada.
Mr. Ménard: We have Kyoto-regulated national markets. The European economy is self-contained. There are other countries, such as Japan, that are self-contained in terms of carbon. They have possibilities of linking with other countries, but they do not do it. Because they need the carbon so much, they keep it in the country.
In terms of carbon, free trade is not really the issue. It is really within countries at this point. We are shooting for a global economy that will be fluid, and we will be able to trade the carbon units between Europe and Canada eventually. The directive is written, but it is not endorsed by Canada yet, because the internal market in Canada is so much in need of carbon. There is no point in us shipping our carbon elsewhere. We really need it badly here.
Unregulated markets, such as the U.S., which has not signed Kyoto, are coming up the border. Saskatchewan is running up this carbon heavily, and they are retiring those credits in the voluntary markets in the U.S. We need to not let this happen. Let us go regulated. We are on board a regulated market. Let us stick to it.
Senator Mercer: To follow up on what Senator Mahovlich said, instead of having a something similar to the Canadian Wheat Board, we are talking about a marketing opportunity. You are saying that the market needs to be regulated to keep it Canadian.
Mr. Ménard: It is regulated. It is unregulated markets, such as the United States, that are coming in and running up the farmers' credits and shipping them out of Canada. We cannot double count the credits. If we do no till on a particular acre in Canada and it was sold to the U.S., we cannot sell it back to Canada the day after. It is retired; it is gone.
Senator Mercer: Somebody will find a way to do it twice some place.
Mr. Ménard: I am saying we have created a company here in worldwide carbon. We have spoken to many people out West. I have been to Western Canada seven times in the last four months. I have been to Saskatchewan. We do not realize that provinces are like different countries. Travelling out West, we realize that Saskatchewan and Alberta are two different places.
It is a bit of a slow motion thing in Saskatchewan. We are talking to cash-strapped farmers. They are conservative. Given the margin that they have in agriculture nowadays, they have to be conservative. We need an incentive — call it what you want — to propose to these farmers to convince them to jump into this data management system so that we can sell those credits as regulated credits. Canada is not a country. It is a continent. It is a big patch of land. Probably one of those propositions can be made by your committee whenever you so decide. I am proposing to your committee to urge whoever is in charge — and we know who that is — to propose that Canadian credits are regulated and that we have decided to keep those credits as regulated credits.
We are not against free trade. If the U.S. wants to be regulated, then let us exchange those carbons, but they are not regulated. It is like chipping away at the carbon of our economy, which we need badly. I am saying that there should be free trade and fair trade, not only free trade. Once again, there is no taxpayers' money involved; it is market-driven. It is a matter of making the right recommendations to the right people, and the money is there.
Senator Mercer: Mr. Duhaime, as you know, the main focus of our study is on rural poverty. You serve 22,000 clients in the Nicolet area. How high is your delinquency rate on payments? How many defaults do you have on a regular basis?
Mr. Duhaime: It is very low. I would say less than 1 per cent. When a customer does not pay, we can cut the service, thus we have a good way of getting paid. It is easy for us to get paid.
Senator Mercer: Yes, phone service is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
Mr. Duhaime: Yes.
Senator Mercer: You talked about the availability of cellular service. All of us here are addicted to our cell phones and some of us to the BlackBerry. Of the 22,000 people, how many would have access to cellular service if they subscribed?
Mr. Duhaime: Maybe 17,000.
Senator Mercer: That is a large percentage.
Mr. Duhaime: Yes.
Senator Mercer: You talked about the subsidies for equipment. Would that include cellular towers?
Mr. Duhaime: If we want to expand the service everywhere, yes.
Senator Mercer: There was a program many years ago on rural electrification when we wanted to make sure that all parts of the country had electricity. That was before my time and certainly before yours.
Are you proposing that we look at cellular phone service in the same way? It is much easier to put a tower up than to string wires to everybody's house.
Mr. Duhaime: Definitely, that is a solution. The tower could be paid by all service providers.
Senator Mercer: Not just the service providers who happen to live in that area.
Mr. Duhaime: Eventually, our cellular customers will use the tower. Let me give you an example: A Bell Mobility customer could use the service when he or she visits those areas. For them, it could be interesting for Sogetel to serve even those rural areas.
Senator Mahovlich: I know the border of the United States is close. Do the Americans have service in isolated areas? You mentioned la Beauce and the Northeast.
Mr. Duhaime: On the U.S. border side, it is only forests. There is no service close to those areas in the United States. It is the main border, and there are only forests.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection are one of our customers, because there is no telephone service over there.
Senator Mahovlich: You service right into the U.S.?
Mr. Duhaime: Yes. We are not supposed to, but we do it.
Senator Mahovlich: You are saying it is very difficult in the mountains. Do other provinces in Canada have problems? British Columbia, for example, is all mountains.
Mr. Duhaime: I am sure they have the same problems.
Senator Mahovlich: I know I never had any problems in Whistler, B.C. There is service there.
Mr. Duhaime: I guess there is a market.
Senator Mahovlich: That is what we need, a market.
Mr. Duhaime: Exactly.
The Chairman: It is a kind of karma that our first two witnesses should come up with the subjects that they have. Everywhere we have gone in rural Canada — we do not go to the big places, but the small places — we have encountered this issue with broadband. People in the cities believe this is available all across Canada. It is quite shocking the degree to which it is not.
I am glad you are out West. Our farmers have been having one heck of a time in recent years through no fault of their own. This is a huge issue for them, how to develop. They are trying hard to interest governments to take a stand on this because of the speed with which this has been created, is working and is trying to come above that border from the United States. It is a big issue.
Thank you both for coming.
We have with us an old friend, who has been before our committee many times, Mr. Laurent Pellerin with the Union des producteurs agricoles — he does a very good job — and with him is Mr. David Tougas.
We also have Ms. Maria Labrecque Duchesneau from Au coeur des familles agricoles. We are very glad to have you here.
Then we have Ms. Marthe Tremblay who is here as an individual, an important individual. She will also have a chance to speak with us today.
[Translation]
Laurent Pellerin, Executive Director, Union des producteurs agricoles: Madam Chairman, I will not spend too long on the UPA's presentation. You know our organization well. Nonetheless, there are some considerations I would like to highlight. I would also like to add that we are very happy to be here this morning to discuss the concerns of farmers, and of rural areas in general, regarding income and poverty in rural areas. Even in the agricultural industry, income and poverty are issues that are hotly debated these days.
You have been given a detailed document regarding my presentation. I will not be reading the document. The UPA has 25 specialized and affiliated federations, including 16 regional federations covering all of Quebec. We are also associated with a variety of different activities: labour development, international cooperation, research funds in partnership with the government of Quebec.
I am particularly pleased to be here this morning in Nicolet, because usually we meet you in Ottawa or elsewhere in Canada. My farm is located in Saint-Grégoire, it is rare for me to give a presentation so close to the farm.
I saw from your title that you are concerned about the forestry sector. One feature of our organization is that we represent the 130,000 private woodlot owners in Quebec. The Fédération des producteurs de bois is affiliated with the UPA. This is an extremely important activity in the regions, throughout Quebec, and for a good number of farmers, forestry is carried out in conjunction with agriculture. Private woodlots provide nearly 20 per cent of the wood supply to Quebec's wood processing plants. You can understand that the difficulties experienced in the forestry sector have added to the financial woes felt by the rural and agricultural communities in Quebec. When you combine the problems of farm income with those of the forestry sector, you have, right off the bat, a situation that is quite catastrophic.
I would draw your attention to page 8 of the document which describes the situation using two graphs. We could discuss the situation at great length, but illustrating it using a graph gives you a clear picture of what is happening in the agricultural world. In the middle graph, you can see the total net farm income for Quebec over the last 15, 16, 17 years. If you look at the past three years — a good income in Quebec — the net income fluctuates somewhere between $600 million and $800 million per year — the forecast for 2007 is $171 million. This will be the lowest annual income ever seen in all of the Quebec's modern agricultural history. This is not occurring just in Quebec. The bottom graph shows the same trend across Canada. Sometimes, to console ourselves, we look at the situation in Ontario; in 2007, Ontario will have a negative income of $300 million, meaning that producers will have to borrow to complete the year. There is no doubt that some producers are doing well currently. Some operations are doing much better than others. Some operations are better organized as well, and this is a contributing factor to their success. For example, supply- managed operations in milk and poultry are doing better year after year, than other operations in general. Although some of these farm operations are doing quite well, in several Canadian provinces, we see an income average that is hovering around the zero mark. This situation is intolerable and explains why Canadian producers have sounded the alarm to the federal government during the Canadian Agricultural Policy Framework review.
On the next page, you will notice that when the markets are not there to support farm income, historically in North America, and throughout developed countries, governments step in to make up the shortfall. The graph at the top of the page illustrates the evolution of program payments in Canada and the United States; the United States has had huge increases over the past few years. Despite all of the international trade agreements and the 1993 GATT agreement, the United States continues to provide substantial subsidies to its farmers; in Canada, the increases in farm investments over the past few years were designed primarily to deal with the BSE problem that occurred in the beef sector in the Canadian West. That has had repercussions throughout Canada.
It is important that we, in Canada, look at what is occurring in the United States. In addition to being our neighbour, all of our farm products cross the border on a daily basis. The price of most of our agricultural commodities is set by the American market, the Chicago Stock Exchange for grain, pork and beef. That is where the prices are set. Everything that exists on the other side of the border — as an agricultural policy, political decisions or pressure on the American market — has an impact on the prices and the situation of Canada's farmers. This is why we always have to look at what is happening on the other side of the border.
The graph found in the middle of page 9 is very worrisome. It depicts the evolution of total net farm income in both the United States and Canada. In recent years, the trend in the United States has been a substantial increase in net farm income. Things are going well. During the same period, the trend in Canada showed that there has been a drop in net income.
I was asked about this issue this week, when I was in Ottawa. I responded by saying that we have produced grain for 30 years and that we lose money just about every year. The more attractive price of grain in the past few months does not make up for what has gone on over the past 30 years. The person on the panel asked me, ``Why do you continue growing grain if you lose money?'' Good question. The same thing is occurring in the Canadian West. When farmers have land as their assets and they are grain farmers, they grow grain. There is no other choice, or else you get out of farming. According to the most recent data published this week, taken from the 2006 farm census, there are 20,000 fewer farms in Canada now than there were five years ago. That therefore means that many farmers are deciding to get out of agriculture — some choose to and others are forced to. People are saying, ``If you are not making any money, where are you getting it?'' It is not complicated. Farmers make their money somewhere and when the prices are not there, they borrow.
Take a look at the bottom graph. American farmers have good net incomes and they are paying down their debt whereas here, in Canada, we have shrinking net incomes and our farm debt is increasing. We are being pushed up against the wall.
There is a graph on page 10 illustrating working capital ratio (liquid assets). Canadian farms do not have any liquid assets. So we are unable to modernize as quickly as we should, unlike our neighbours to the South.
We have had various governments at the federal level, and the current government is doing more or less the same thing. Many federal officials, many business people have extoled the virtues of exporting. We believe this is true, but we have some reservations. The graph at the bottom of page 10 illustrates what has occurred in Canada over the past 20 years. I will focus primarily on the period from 1990 to 2005, where here in Canada we had export development objectives, taking it for granted that if we developed exports, it would be good both for producers and farmers. But look at the blue line, the increase in agricultural and agri-food exports for Canada. This trend line increased at an incredible pace. However, look at farm income for that period — at the best and at the worse, it stagnated. If we were to interpret the trend, we would see that it is declining. So there is no link between increasing exports and better income for producers.
The graph on the following page illustrates the situation in the wood sector. I said that we also represented the forestry sector. There is no place to hide. The crisis experienced over the past two years by the forestry sector, and I believe that this applies to all of Canada, can be attributed to the unit prices, which have declined, and substantial difficulties facing producers.
The following pages deal with the renewal of the Canadian Agricultural Policy Framework. We cover each of the aspects such as food safety, renewal, risk management, et cetera. I would like to make two comments on our main demands regarding this new Agricultural Policy Framework for Canada.
It would be good to have a Canadian Farm Bill. We have never had a Farm Bill here. The expression ``Farm Bill'' in the United States and throughout the world makes politicians and agricultural sectors tremble. When we talk about the U.S. Farm Bill, we know that it is cumbersome and effective. In Canada, we have always had what we call ``catastrophe program'' policies. Whereas other countries have strategies, we react with catastrophe programs. It must be said that our strategy has not been very effective.
It would therefore be a good idea to have a Farm Bill in Canada which is consistent, coherent and able to match what is done on the U.S. side of the border. Otherwise, our producers just will not be able to make it. When I say ``match,'' that does not necessarily mean match dollar for dollar. Yes, part of this program could be financial in nature, there is no doubt about that, but perhaps we could be a little more strategic in our investments, in our regulations, in our marketing and development strategies. So it would be a combination of these two things. If we want the next Canadian Farm Bill to be successful, we have to develop it in partnership with producers and the processors. So this would not be something that would be imposed by the government. In the United States, the senators, the agricultural lobbys, along with the government, develop various aspects of the Farm Bill. In Canada, historically, government officials have developed the programs. So we need to ensure that the Farm Bill is drafted in partnership with the people and the clients.
The other feature, to ensure that the Canadian Farm Bill is successful, would be flexibility. A previous witness said that Canada is not a country, it is a continent. Indeed, it is a continent for agriculture in particular. Situations vary tremendously from one end of the country to the other. What is happening in British Columbia in agriculture has nothing to do with what is occurring in Saskatchewan. Our Prince Edward Island producers, who this week saved their potato crop with five centimetres of snow on the ground, have a completely different scenario from that experienced in other Canadian provinces. We each have our own climate. We each have our own type of soil. We each have our own farming history, our own area of expertise. In order for a Canadian Farm Bill to be successful, it must be tailored to each region of Canada and have enough flexibility so that the farmers can adapt the Canadian strategy to their own reality.
In the previous Farm Bill, someone had said that ``One size fits all.'' The Canadian program should be uniform throughout Canada, whether it be for farmers in Quebec or in British Columbia. We must ensure that the current government does not repeat the same mistake; we need to ensure that there is flexibility.
That is the gist of what I had to say this morning. I would be pleased to take your questions in the second part of the meeting.
Maria Labrecque Duchesneau, Executive Director, Au coeur des familles agricoles: Madam Chairman, there are different ways of defining and measuring impoverishment, or poverty. We are poor when our income is not sufficient to cover the cost of living. Thus, economic poverty is defined by the relationship between income and the price of goods and services. That is why we say that poverty has a number of faces. In spite of the attraction of rural areas, and in spite of the enviable prosperity most farms seem to be experiencing, they also have to fight poverty.
In the bill, poverty is defined as:
— the condition of a human being who is deprived of the resources, means, choices and power necessary to acquire and maintain economic self-sufficiency and favour active inclusion in society.
Quebec's Policy on Health and Welfare adds:
Financial deprivation has a direct and indirect impact on health and welfare.
I entirely agree, having observed the disastrous effect that financial difficulties can have on mental health in the medium and long term.
In the course of my work at the organization Au coeur des familles agricoles, I see need in all its forms, and have observed that the results are the same everywhere: when people lack essentials, when they cannot make ends meet, when life is impossible to enjoy because of the problems and worries that never cease, human dignity is hit hard. We cannot live that way, we can only survive. That is one visible aspect of poverty, which is in fact far more insidious. Poverty can be measured in the rate of hospital use, in the crime rate, in the increased violence against women and children. Poverty creeps in wherever the fabric of society cracks. Poverty is an obstacle to education, to quality of life, to personal development, and to dreams for the future. These are all driving forces that allow us to grow and meet challenges, and these are all drivers that poor people must often give up on. In addition to being harmful to childhood development and compromising a child's chances of success in life, poverty creates social barriers. The stress rates in rural areas are extremely high, and farm families are no exception to the rule.
Let us take a look at producers who need to invest thousands of dollars in livestock, infrastructure, machinery, and all kinds of equipment. Their work is very poorly paid if we take into account the many hours of work they put into their business. Producers put that much effort into their business because they care deeply about succeeding and staying in the race, given that the economy marches to the tune of productivity and profitability. Many of them are carrying significant debt loads. On the farm, there is rarely too little food on the table, and yet — An industry so vital to our economy, an industry that produces our food, is becoming increasingly fragile, and increasingly poor. We have to admit it.
We have to become aware of the huge accomplishments required of some farmers every day if those farmers are to keep their assets, in spite of declining or stagnating income, lower prices for their products, rising input prices, and reduced or no liquidity for smooth operation. It is never easy to manage decline, particularly when it becomes prolonged. Farmers are already running open-air operations, and in addition have to deal with the ups and downs of their own sector, trying to use their experience to find the most profitable avenues. Many farmers who are passionate and devoted to the farm operate at a loss for years, while keeping their hopes alive. But when those hopes die, some must resign themselves to letting go, after having exhausted all their means. The farm family that ran things at break- neck speeds for years is suddenly up against the wall, and its members have to find new directions. They know their areas and their business, so they know that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. In some remote villages, the infrastructure is so neglected that it sometimes seems as if life as come to a halt. Public services have been reduced to the bare essentials. Since there is no public transit, even the poorest families need to own a car to travel to shopping centres and hospitals, which are often a good 30-minute drive from their homes.
Villages with a convenience store, diner, credit union, CLSC, post office and school can count themselves lucky. The rest seem to have lost their souls. There was a time when the parish priest acted as a pastor to parishioners. Today, however, he has to divide his time among a number of parishes. Other times, other customs.
In rural areas, the population is aging. A relatively new phenomenon is that the green spaces of rural areas are becoming havens of peace for retirees fleeing the city. Rather than mingling with the existing community, these city folk newly converted into rural dwellers choose to keep themselves to themselves, and stay apart from their neighbours.
When it comes to consumption, the lack of competition is a factor in retailers' favour. Consumers must often be content with a limited selection of articles, for which they nonetheless pay a high price. Households with little money and straitened resources are harder hit when the cost of living goes up or when disaster strikes. The gap between the rich and poor is growing.
From an industrial standpoint, primary sectors like agriculture, forestry and mining, which have been the economic engine in many regions, are undergoing a profound transformation that is causing great concern even to the most optimistic among us. The further we go from the hubs, the more see economic activity struggling to survive.
Just a few hours from the big city, poverty is dogging the heels of a number of communities. How many jobs in the regions have disappeared during the wave of acquisitions, when major corporations rationalized their activities and consolidate their facilities around major cities? How many companies employing 200, 300 or 400 people had to shut down because they could not stay profitable, putting large numbers of people in the regions out of work?
The disruptions caused when some plants shut down are still fresh in our minds. For the communities involved, the job losses are akin to grieving, grieving that affects almost the entire community. People in the cities find it relatively easy to look for other jobs. But people in rural areas have very few options available. The employment situation in rural areas is precarious, and engenders a great deal of uncertainty. Young people looking for a future are leaving for the cities, one by one. They see the city as full of promise, from all points of view. Very few of them return to the community to settle there, unless they have a job or a trade that fits that choice. There will of course always be some young adults who return to the region and find a way to make ends meet. We have to see those young people as part of the solution.
Poverty shows us its many faces, including idleness, distance, isolation and exclusion. Fortunately, mutual assistance is a value that is still alive and well in small communities. People still come together to help, for example when a family finds itself on the street after their house burns down. But there is another side to that coin. That kind of environment is also conducive to the establishment of clans, classes and hierarchies. Poor people in rural areas are often excluded, just like people living in ghettos, in major cities. In such cases, we might see a phenomenon of socialization within the marginalized group. Our ancestors in rural areas did state with pride that they knew their poor. They were also proud of having an ``beggars' bench'' in the house, and inviting beggars to take a seat at the table from time to time. Are things still like that today? In small communities, clan formation fosters the isolation of some social classes. Rarely do we see the poor involved in community activities. In major cities, however, everyone is welcome. But in the countryside there is very little tolerance or openness to people who are different. In rural areas, people with a different ethnic profile and who speak foreign language are often left out.
But homogeneity is not necessarily a panacea: the smaller the community, the more gossip and rumour fly. People's behaviour is enormously influenced by their concern about what people will say. So people with a tendency to be more original tend not to stray off the beaten track. Your reputation, and even your family history, follow you wherever you go. So in an environment where everyone knows everything, and where people often know little about the assistance services available, there is a tendency for them to withdraw into themselves. When people do draw closer to one another, that closeness is generally based on affinity. Farmers, known as people of action, become fairly easily involved in community life, and willingly occupy positions in the public services, such as fire fighters and first aid providers. They are often on the front line.
With regard to the recommendations: Communities that slowly lose essential services and economic activity have to reorganize their lives each time a loss occurs. When the economic climate is at a slowdown, it is very difficult to envisage how development might be fostered. As stated in the opinion published by the Conseil de la famille et de l'enfance on its website, under the theme of Creating propitious environments with families and meeting the challenge of municipal policy, ``the development capacity of rural communities where poverty is high is considerably lower.'' For now, poverty and impoverishment are leading to a process of reflection, but are not among the priorities of municipal elected officials. Many managers base their approach on the principle that wealth must be generated so that it can be shared. Thus, they foster economic activity without directly tackling poverty, knowing full well that unemployment and idleness exact a heavy price from our society.
Eliminating poverty to achieve sustainable development is of course the ideal solution. But we are very far from that at present. Without claiming that it is a panacea, I favour a more humane approach, which makes it possible for the disadvantaged among us to stay out of poverty and not to sink into distress. Thus, when the most vulnerable among us face difficulties or an unexpected situation, they can find comfort in knowing that their environment, their community is not indifferent to what is happening to them. For example, specialized medical care provided remotely over a long period can cause huge problems for many households. Mutual assistance is very valuable for those who are fighting to survive financially, or just to stay alive.
In rural areas, particularly in remote regions, impoverishment and poverty end up affecting all strata of the population if we do not stop it. They affect children who need to dream and to believe in their dreams; they affect families who need stability to create a stable and welcoming home, and to give their children love and an education; they affect the elderly, who are entitled to rest and calm in the last stage of their lives.
We know how strong local initiatives can be. Every community has its leaders, spokespersons and natural advocates. Our institutions just need to give them a bit of a hand to awaken this sense of initiative, be it through mutual assistance networks or other means. With mutual assistance, we can bring excluded, isolated community members back into the social network. By encouraging communities to feel and act like a large family, where all members respect one another and understand their similarities and differences, we lighten the misery people suffer. At a time when citizens are being asked to bear heavier and heavier burdens of responsibility, this is the best model to prevent irrevocable deterioration. And to ensure that local initiatives were as dynamic as possible, they would be coordinated by local worker responsible for mobilizing and channelling the communities' energy. The role of the local worker would be crucial to the success of this endeavour. The worker would be someone known for his or her interpersonal skills and ability to listen and solve problems. The worker would be responsible for establishing and maintaining good relationships and fostering closer ties and interaction by surrounding him or herself with resources to provide support in the endeavour. The ``local worker'' model would also help forge strong links with local organizations in establishing solutions adapted to the community. Instead of letting the regions become bogged down in their problems, let us give mutual assistance a chance to bring the disadvantaged back into our communities. All communities will benefit from this approach. Let us remember that all stakeholders, and that includes ourselves, have power over poverty. That is how solutions will be found.
Marthe Tremblay, as an Individual: Madam Chairman, thank you for allowing me to appear before the committee. I am a farmer, the fourth generation on a farm that today amounts to 458 acres of land. I am living proof of what we have been hearing for the past half hour here. Very simply, within 10 minutes, I will take up the challenge of summarizing 30 years of my life in farming.
On reading your interim report, I found the guts meet with you, because I realized that someone really understood what was going on. Studies have been done by experts to gain insight into the rural exodus and the battle against poverty. That gave me the courage to come before you and say that these things are indeed true, that they are really happening.
I studied social work, but in 1977, when I was 22, I became my father's partner because I loved farming. I operated a dairy farm between 1977 and 1992. In 1979, one of my brothers joined me. There were ten children in the family. In 1992, we had to get out of dairy farming for health reasons. I then found a job off the farm, while my brother kept the farm and went into beef production, with feedlots, between 1992 and 1993.
I looked towards a new career, still in agriculture, however, because I was unable to go elsewhere. I followed upon sales and sales consultants for a company that made animal feed. In 1998, following the beef crisis across Canada in the 1990s and because of the frightening drop in prices, my brother could no longer hold out. He gave it all up. I was still crazy about farming, so I bought the land, becoming the sole owner, and said: ``No, we will continue in farming. I love it too much to give up.'' So I kept my job, which at the time brought in $30,000 a year in outside income. With that income, I was able to go to the Financière agricole du Québec and buy the land. There were ten children in the family, and my parents were unable to provide everything. There were debts. By the way, I myself am a single mother with one child, who is now 19.
In 1998, we did have 680 acres in production as well as farm buildings, because we had had 85 dairy cows. There again, because of my passion for farming, I said that those buildings should not remain empty. So I slowly established a sheep breeding operation. I bought 18 ewes that were no longer good for producers' purposes. With those 18 ewes, I built up a flock. By 2002, I had 140 ewes. My advisors at MAPAQ said, ``This is not going too fast, Marthe.'' But I had my outside income, so I was doing all right. I was able to make my fixed payments on the investment in the land.
In 2002-2003, with good advice and my love of farming, I took the plunge and went further in debt to bring the flock up to 270 head. But according to the Quebec sheep production model, for the operation to be self-sufficient — I do not know whether it is the same in the rest of Canada — you need 476 ewes and a debt level of under $1,000 per ewe. By buying the land and reinvesting, my debt per head stood at $1,050, but I did have my outside income. That outside work took 50 to 55 hours a week in addition the work I did on the farm. But I got it done. It might look like I am wearing a halo, but you really need to love farming to do this.
So in 2002-2003, when I finally started producing lamb, we got BSE, which affected all ruminants. Prices plummeted and the borders were closed to the major part of the market. So I was selling lamb at a loss of $20 per head. So we had to bear those losses while our fixed costs stayed the same. My situation remained the same, I had production costs and my earnings from the outside. But there is a point where you just burn out. There are 60 hours of work a week to put in on the farm, and there comes a point where you have to stop.
In 2004, I was a coach at the animal feed meal company. I had a good salary, but meal companies were in a difficult position and it is often those who cost most who are fired first. Since I had done a good job coaching, I presumed, I was told that because of the restructuring and because I had a lot of work on the farm, I would be given a break for six months. So they laid me off, and told me that they would hire me again in the fall because the young people were doing well. I said no, I had too many financial commitments, I could not lose my job. I was burnt out, so I did go on unemployment. But as soon as I started receiving my unemployment benefits, all the agricultural income I got was taken into account — that is how it is done in Canada — and 15 per cent of my gross farm income was deducted from my unemployment benefits. So instead of getting the $475 in unemployment benefits per week that I was expecting, the income I received during the summer from selling lamb was taken into account, that was deducted, and I also had a lot of expenses at the time, including sowing, harvesting and all that. I had already hit a major obstacle, and my unemployment benefits were lower. So my budget projections no longer applied. I went back to work in the fall because I had no choice. I had to fight to get back in because they were not planning to take me back, but at the end of the day I did go back to work for a year, and then became ill. Then I had to stop.
I really had to find a solution. With a production of 500 lambs a year and the farm, you have to find a solution if you want to live off it. You cannot be at the mercy of supply and demand. So I decided to do my own marketing to cut out all the middle men and to get to a point where I could live off my lamb production. That is what I have been doing since 2005 but throughout that period, fixed costs have remained the same. Production costs have gone up, while fixed costs, which never went away, also increased, including electricity, gas and property tax. Everything went up. So that liquidity Mr. Pellerin and Marie were talking about earlier is very difficult to achieve when you have to drag all that around.
I realized that this was no longer working, and tried to decide what to do. In doing the marketing, there is one thing I realized. I became involved in my rural area, in my little municipality of 7,000 people, and in the RCM. In Quebec, an RCM is six municipalities together. Our RCM is seven municipalities. I rented an old house. We brought 10 producers together — we called that a small market — where we sell our products locally all year, not just five months a year like public markets often do. We decided to sell throughout the year to have a common goal, to feed our population and to have a small guaranteed income every week. Since December 9, I have a small guaranteed income from my lamb production, among other things, with my own marketing, amounting to $70 to $150 a week. Ten producers have become my partners. They are medium-sized producers, not on the scale of major farmers. These are young people aged between 20 and 30, who are much younger than I am. I am 52. We are re-educating people to come back to buying locally. We see a light at the end of this particular tunnel. Yes, we are dealing primarily with major agricultural operations, and Quebec, Canada and all other places are involved in extremely large-scale farming. Mr. Pellerin was saying earlier that we focused on exports. What did that lead to? Greater poverty.
Yes, we have the right to ask questions, but would we also have the right to ask a different question, knowing that it might lead to two levels of farming — mass farming and medium-level farming? How could we make a living off farming by stopping our exports and first feeding our rural communities and regional communities?
Would you be interested in focusing on ways to support and review agricultural policies? Yes, we have some good agricultural policies, but they are good for mass agriculture, not for smaller-scale farming.
What I have discovered in my own small community is the response of consumers, who said: ``It is very reassuring — we can come and buy food here every week.'' At the same time, we earn a small income. Consumer security is reflected in my own security as a farmer, because I can live off farming. So could we achieve food security in Canada instead of exporting all our unprocessed products? We could develop new regulations, or new policies, to foster that end, with the goal of feeding Canadians. If there is some left over, we can export that.
In my view, focusing our vision within Canada would lead to greater food security, because if we always export all our unprocessed products and there is no gas in the truck to bring a carcass back, I do not see how we can be sure of eating every week. We may be poor, but we will be even poorer when we are no longer able to eat. It is as simple as that.
In your report, I read that we have been becoming poorer for 30 years now. That is very alarming indeed. I am here to tell you that I am not poor because I do not know how to count, or because I do not know how to work, or because I stuck my head in the sand. I was made poorer by the existing infrastructure. We need support from national, provincial, regional and local policies if we are to continue feeding people, and feeding them well. It is one long economic chain. We will be in good health if we are well fed, and the rest will follow.
That is why I still love farming, for my 19-year-old who has been working since he was 15 and who wants to take back the land. I am not sure that I will leave it to him. As Maria was saying earlier, farming is physically demanding and psychologically difficult, but we believe in it. There are people who support us, like you, and who take the time at least to hear us.
I hope that there will be another report and real, tangible action as well.
[English]
The Chairman: You were wondering what you could do. I am very glad you decided to come here today because we need to hear this. We need to communicate this. This is an extraordinary panel. Each of you is saying something a bit different, but it all hooks in together.
As for Mr. Pellerin, as I have said, he has been before this committee many times. Everything that you said to us today is not just a voice from here in rural Quebec, but your words are the same as those in Saskatchewan or Manitoba when you are talking about how to make an income, et cetera. The farmers in the West are frightened, and they would be mad at me for saying that, but we felt that during our travels. The issues that connect all of what you have said here today are huge issues. They are issues that urban Canada does not understand and, indeed, has not been hearing about or listening to.
That puts itself into parliaments where sometimes the issues we have talked about today are not the issues that are attracting the minds and hearts of government. I was very pleased to hear this morning that Minister Strahl has been through this area and is offering some level of assistance and a new person to work more closely with him on these issues. That is a good thing.
Your story, Ms. Tremblay, and all the things you were saying, Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau, these are issues that live everywhere in Canada. To hear somebody who has the fortitude to come and tell their story before us, that is why we are here. It is rural Canada that we are interested in, and it is a story that is not being told.
You talk about farm bills. This committee has been pushing for a farm bill. There has to be one. Competing with the United States, we cannot touch subsidies that almost pay their farmers not to farm through the amounts of money that are put before them by their government. That is not what we want in Canada. I have said this many times, and everybody on the committee agrees, our farmers are the best farmers in the world. This remains a foundation issue in our country. Without it, if we have to live off the world rather than live off our land and with our farmers, then we are in a whole lot of trouble.
It is in every corner of Canada. Your contributions to this study today certainly will be in our final report and very much in speeches and so forth that we give across the country on our own.
I really want to thank you. This is a difficult thing to do — I know — but thank you for doing it.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Tremblay, you are the type of person we want to talk to across the country, and I am so glad that you came. I am so glad that our report prompted you to do that. What you and Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau said is really going to help us write a good report.
Mr. Pellerin, it is good to see you again. Thank you for being here.
You talked about 130,000 members, if I heard you correctly, being forest owners. How many of those are also farmers?
Mr. Pellerin: I would say more than half our farmers also own a piece of land with wood on their farms. I would say 25,000 farmers of the 45,000 farmers in Quebec own and market some wood once in their life, because they are not marketing wood each year. One year, they harvest and for the next 10 years, they are not in the market. It depends on the size of woodland they have.
The 130,000 wood owners in Quebec, about half of them are not marketing wood at all. They own wood, look at its beauty and grow it. Sometimes they invest in that part of their wood, but they do not own that woodland to have an income. It is more like a hobby, such as a hunter or someone similar. They are not really a marketer of wood. The potential is there. There is a very interesting potential for marketing, but they are not all marketers of wood.
Senator Mercer: In my part of the country, Nova Scotia, most farmers do have wood lots and do cut wood every year for various things, whether for pulp or other income.
You talked about grains and new markets. It is interesting as we talked to people, in Saskatchewan, in particular, the move away from the production of grains and toward pulse products, peas, lentils, et cetera. One of the issues that comes up in another committee that I happen to be on — the Transport and Communications Committee — is the difficulty in the transportation of agriculture products to the market place, particularly to Asia, India and Pakistan.
Have the farmers in Quebec experienced difficulty in export markets getting their product to market at the quality level that you would want?
Mr. Pellerin: For the grain production in Quebec, you have to keep in mind that we are close to being self-sufficient. The grain we produce is normally for animal use and only a little for human use. You have to also keep in mind and be aware that in Quebec, if we are in some animal production, we have to own some land to spread our manure. That is very much regulated in Quebec, more than in any other province in Canada. We have to own those pieces of land, and because we own them, we have to do something on them. Therefore, we grow grain in the hope that we will have a cycle on the farm, recycling the manure and produce grain and feeding our animals.
The transportation problem to move grains outside of the country is not a big problem. We export a small amount of corn and soy, but overall, we are self-sufficient.
Senator Mercer: Earlier this morning, we heard a presentation on trading carbon credits and using farmers to do that. Has your membership talked about this? Is anyone actively involved in this, because it looks like another source of income that could help farmers?
Mr. Pellerin: I am very prudent. Our organization looked at that, but we are very prudent with that type of activity.
First, we need a trading house of carbon credits if we want to have a transparent movement between farmers and the ones who need those credits. We do not have that independent, transparent trading house in place. We probably need something there first.
Second, we make our farmers aware that before trading their carbon credits outside of the farm — and, as somebody said before, outside of the country — to make sure that they will not need those credits sometime down the road. For example, if they want to go from 100 sheep to 200 sheep, they will increase their production of carbon and perhaps they will need some carbon credits. The same thing applies to beef farmers or any animal production. If they consume more energy, they will probably need credits.
Nothing is clear on that. We ask farmers to be very prudent and if they commit themselves, to commit on a very short-term period, not for years, because perhaps their children will need those credits in the future.
On the other hand, you also have to keep in mind that we are in Quebec, not in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan has 40 billion hectares of land, and they can sell some credits. However, in Quebec, we have 2 million hectares. We have to be prudent in not selling everything before knowing exactly what will happen.
Senator Mercer: However, you would agree that there is probably a need for some sort of, if not regulation, overseer to help understand.
Mr. Pellerin: Yes, the rules need to be more clear than they are now.
Senator Mercer: It is a complicated business. Whether you are a big farmer or a small farmer, it is still a complicated business, and perhaps we should make sure we mention it in our report.
Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau, you talked about the need for a field worker. We have heard this before. In two provinces, we have actually met people who do it — Nova Scotia and Ontario, through the Foundation for Rural Living. That foundation is active in Ontario, Nova Scotia and now in Manitoba. It may be worth examining the opportunity that it presents, because the foundation supports that. They have had rural development officers who have gone out in the field and have worked with people, not solving their problems, but helping people working through the maze of government.
Would that be something that would help? Someone who knows how to fill out those forms that everybody has to fill out — that, in itself, is a tedious task.
Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau: Yes.
Senator Mercer: I have a question to Ms. Tremblay on the issue of the EI that you got because of your work at the company.
When you get your EI, do they take into account your gross farm income and calculate 15 per cent of that, which reduces your EI? This is another issue of which we will have to take note, because it is an issue that affects everybody.
Ms. Tremblay: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you everyone.
Mr. Pellerin, I should say thank you for bringing in the forestry issue, because we are a committee of agriculture and forestry — indeed, another group of Canadians that have been hit so hard.
When we went to British Columbia, the first place we went was Prince George, where the pine beetle has been devastating the area. It is now moving over into my province both in the North and I am told down in our Southwest corner, Crowsnest Pass. The industry dealing with lumber has been — again, like the farmers — getting it in every direction. We are cognizant of that, and that will probably be part of some of our recommendations.
Senator Mahovlich: I was in Rome last summer, and at two o'clock in the morning, there was a lot of racket outside my hotel window. I did not know what was happening. Many people were out there setting up their tents. It was Wednesday morning, which is market time. They were setting up their markets. Rome must be 4,000 years old. Ms. Tremblay, does Trois-Rivières have a market or did they have a market?
[Translation]
Ms. Tremblay: Yes, seasonal work — five months a year, from spring to fall. Trois-Rivières has a public market, yes.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Just during the summer season.
[Translation]
Ms. Tremblay: Quebec markets are expanding very quickly. More and more regions have their own markets, but they open only five months a year, from spring to autumn, because we are a northern country and do not produce 12 months a year. We can add meat and a wide variety of products to that as well. Larger markets like Montreal and Quebec City are open all year. When I look at the major markets, I ask myself why we stop eating after six months. Can we continue to supply and sell products after the fall? Why not? That is why I believe that on a small scale we can remain open year-round. We open for four hours, one day a week.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: We have to encourage Canadians to eat more Canadian products. We are in a system where most of our food is imported. For example, I was down in Nova Scotia, and the Annapolis Valley is noted for its apples. In Loblaws, they were selling American apples from Washington. You cannot get an apple from the local suppliers.
I guess the large corporations that produce large markets for us buy their apples in such a quantity that Canada cannot compete with some of these. We end up having apples from around the world in our stores.
It is quite a problem. I do not know how we would solve this.
[Translation]
Ms. Tremblay: In my opinion, we could solve the problem simply by buying Canadian here and in each province before exporting our goods. I love Ontario apples. Sometimes, we cannot get them, but we love Quebec apples as well. If our focus is strictly on exports we cannot even eat Canadian beef. What kind of beef is it when all we get back is the carcass? What is it that is coming back exactly? Where is it from? Everything has to be relearned. The superstores have created this problem, Loblaws, Maxi, et cetera. Because of growing consumer awareness, we see people asking questions, ``What are we eating? We would like to go to a small-sized market to know what we are eating.'' We could make a living more directly without the middle man. It would cost the government less at the end of the day. But we need assistance to get there, otherwise we will not make it. The big companies are too big. Globalization is too big.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Globalization, I believe you might have something there. I asked a question at one of our meetings and was told that Canada cannot feed itself. It was hard for me to believe. We are such a large country. At one time, we were known for our agriculture. Our farmers were famous around the world. We sent Eugene Whelan over to Russia to give them a little experience and get them started on the right track. We were known as an agricultural country. Yet, today, we cannot feed ourselves. We have lost many farmers. In Quebec, are there fewer farmers today than there were 100 years ago?
[Translation]
Ms. Tremblay: Yes.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: These are questions we have to ask ourselves. Where are we headed with this?
[Translation]
Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau: I would like to respond by saying that when I go grocery shopping, I look for Quebec products. Yesterday, in fact, I was looking for Quebec tomatoes and I saw none. In the grocery stores, when I am looking for pork the pork that I see on the shelves is from the U.S. I am at a loss. Mr. Pellerin is more involved in this but I speak to you as a consumer. I have a hard time understanding why, during strawberry season in Quebec, we face competition from Mexican strawberries. Buying local could be a very good solution. Unfortunately, as a busy consumer, when I go grocery shopping, I do not have enough time to go to three stores in order to find the products I need.
It is important for Quebec products to be well labelled and identified as such in the grocery stores. I challenge you to try this.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: That is a good idea, buy Canadian.
The Chairman: I would like to say to Ms. Tremblay and Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau — not that it will make you feel any better — that the area where I come from was at the heart of the BSE, mad cow disease, crisis with our cattle. It was devastating, utterly devastating. Oddly enough, Canadians all across the country picked themselves up and ate more beef while that whole issue was happening. This did not happen in any other country that had BSE; in fact, their sales dropped off considerably. However, for some reason, Canadians came together and ate more beef, and now we have to get them to eat more of everything.
You are so right. This is so simple that it amazes me constantly that it is not the number one issue on the list.
Senator Mahovlich: Has the softwood lumber agreement helped Canada, the solution they came up with? Do you find that it has helped lumber companies?
Mr. Pellerin: I do not have an exact opinion on the impact on everybody, but for the owners of private lands, I would say, no. Now the prices are at a low that has not been experienced for years.
The government came back with some help for big companies, for workers in the forest industry. They came back with some help for villages that have lumber-based activities. However, those landowners received nothing for that sector of the industry.
I do not believe that the agreement really improved the situation. In fact, they were hit by accident by the wood subsidies in Canada, because the private owners receive nothing in subsidies. The problem came about from wood cuts that the companies were doing on public lands, and the U.S. decided that it was a type of subsidy. The private owners received nothing on their rights to cut their wood. Therefore, they were hit by accident; they received no compensation of any kind.
I do not believe it solved anything. Canada paid close to $4 billion in taxes during that period to solve the problem, and it left $1 billion on the table in the hands of our neighbours, free-trader neighbours.
BSE was a big problem; wood is a big problem, and these people claim to be free traders. They are surely not fair free traders.
Senator Mahovlich: Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau, you mentioned that there are no priests around, that to see a priest, you have to go to another town. Are many churches closing in Quebec? At one time, Quebec had a church in every town. Are there as many churches today?
[Translation]
Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau: I would say so. They are dealing with a renovation problem. Churches are aging, the population is falling. So, there is a cost to renovations. To my knowledge the Government of Quebec has provided grants for church renovations, but not in all municipalities. They have to be of some historical value, but in small municipalities, either you share your church with the Methodists, the Baptists, et cetera, or you tear it down, shut it down and sell it off. In the past, we could chat on the church square and support one another, having heart-to-heart discussions. Today, that is no longer the case.
Farmers tell me ``I own the lot next to my land and on the other side the buyer is from the city, so I have no one to chat with anymore.'' That is also happening in villages. There is no longer a post office, a priest or a church, if there is no financial centre, a bank or caisse populaire, et cetera, where do people get together. Mayors in small municipalities say ``Given my budget, once I focused on the safety of city buildings, the infrastructure, and roads, I have no money left. The budget is not there.''
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: I believe you are right on the problem. I am from a small town in Northern Ontario. In 1968, the government looked at the budget and closed my high school. This is a big problem. The government should step in and keep those places open because people may want to go back. If the infrastructure is gone, there will not be any incentive for them to go back to that town.
Governments have to take a look at this, keep the schools, hospitals open; keep the community centres active and keep them in place.
[Translation]
Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau: I would like to add that very often, in villages, the school is the main public building, and if the janitor does not want to do overtime, the school remains closed to other activities.
Senator Biron: Ms. Tremblay, your testimony has been very interesting, touching even. I commend you on what you have done. I hope others will follow your example and that what you have shared with us will be taken into consideration.
Ms. Labrecque-Duchesneau, to follow up on Senator Mahovlich's question I think that although the number of priests has decreased it would seem to me the number of psychiatrists and social workers has increased, to serve as a replacement, perhaps not as good a replacement, but still!
Mr. Pellerin, following Statistics Canada's May 16, 2006 census, 229,000 farms were surveyed which is a 7.1 per cent drop compared to 2001. This would indicate that there are 17,550 fewer farms. At the same time, we counted 327,000 farmers, a 5.5 per cent drop, accounting for 19,140 fewer farmers. During this period, the prices farmers have had to pay for inputs increased more rapidly than the prices they received for the sale of their products. This was offset by efficiency gains. In Quebec, to start with, was there a consolidation of farms?
Mr. Pellerin: On the drop in the number of farms, it would be interesting to see a regional breakdown. This week, there were meetings to announce or to make public some of the main data from the 2006 census. In the next few weeks, we should have regional data and we will be able to confirm what is happening in Quebec.
Knowledge of what happened on the farms and our own yearly census based on members' dues seems to suggest that the trend also applies in Quebec; a drop in the number of farms and the number of farmers; approximately 1.5 per cent farmers per farm; in Quebec, 30,000 farms, 45,000 producers less than in 2001; a levelling and even a slight increase in agricultural production volumes. There are fewer farms but production levels are the same or slightly higher. The development of new production techniques is also a trend which will certainly be observed throughout Canada. The increase in the cost of production, inputs, everything is increasing far more quickly than the sale price of farm products. For instance, oil products have increased by 35 per cent over the last few years; machines, equipment, fertilizers, by 15 per cent. If you look at the average increase in agricultural production prices, it is in the order of 2 to 3 per cent. Obviously that does not cover all of the costs.
The charts I showed you this morning are easy to explain. Producers' net income is vanishing not because producers are working less, but because production costs more and goods are being sold at a lower price.
This spring, we had to compete with producers. For instance, our carrot producers, who refrigerate carrots over the winter so as to market them in the spring at better prices than they would get during the fall harvest, had to deal with massive imports of fresh carrots from China. So, we are being forced to compete with people who earn $1 per day or $1 an hour. It makes no sense. It is the same for strawberries. Before our strawberry season hits, grocery stores know that Quebec strawberries will go to market around June 20. Well, during the two or three weeks prior to that date, there is a massive influx of strawberries from California and Mexico. After consumers have eaten strawberries for two or three weeks, ours get to market, prices are depreciated, people have been eating them regularly and they have less of an appetite for this season's new crop. The major chains kill these markets and price peaks during the year.
There is a reason why farm income is plummeting. It is plummeting because we find ourselves in a market where the big supermarket chains have a disproportionate amount of power in comparison with farmers. I would also say that it is disproportionate for Canadian food processors, who are small or medium-sized players. We have few large food- processing companies in Quebec. We have three major distributors in Canada who run the show as they wish. This is why farm income is so low.
Senator Biron: The strength of the Canadian dollar must also affect you.
Mr. Pellerin: Clearly it does. Even if we did not export anything, it always has an impact on us, because the Canadian dollar has become stronger because of the oil and our prices are set in the United States. The farmers are doing as good a job as ever, but their income is falling because of the strong dollar. Our consumers have not done anything wrong, but their sales opportunities are falling because of this as well. Foreign products are far more competitive on the Canadian market because of the exchange rate for the Canadian dollar, both American products and products from China or anywhere else in the world. More and more fresh produce is being imported from all parts of the world.
I think that the committee will have to focus on this sector in its report. Canada is having some trouble getting similar standards for domestic products and products from abroad. For example, certain pest control products, certain pesticides, are prohibited here. When fruit and vegetables are imported from overseas, we check to see whether there are residues on the produce. Here we do not look to see whether there are residues on carrots or lettuce. We are not allowed to use certain pesticides. So there is a double standard here, in terms of the standards we have to meet and the standards for imported produce. At some point Canada will have to take a somewhat tougher stand.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: You are right. Last year, we had a problem with spinach from California. In some countries, farmers are subsidized; therefore, to compete with that when we are not subsidized is quite difficult.
The Chairman: I want to tell you a good story because our hearings are not all bad.
I want to take you to a little town called Warner just outside my city of Lethbridge, a little Prairie town. When the grain elevators where the grain was processed were being pulled down, it looked as though the town of Warner was disappearing. They saw that a bank and the businesses were closing. About 200 people, if that, got together and decided that they would not let their town close.
One of the churches that was also leaving town, donated its church to the town to do with it whatever it wished. The town decided to have a girls' hockey school, and it would be the only one of its kind in Canada. They were hoping it would bring young people to this school and regenerate their community.
Warner is just going like the wind right now. These girls are coming from all over Canada. We have coaches — I believe one is from Quebec — who are terrific. Not only are they becoming hot topics in Canada, but also in the United States, there are people now offering them university scholarships to come and be part of their hockey program.
We went to visit this little town. We went to their school. They asked us questions all about the Senate, of course. We all had to answer. Then, they took us to this little arena, very good little arena. On the way, we saw the church, which is now a dormitory that everybody pulled together in town and helped renovate. We went into the arena. There were young men practising at one end and really tough women practising at the other. We walked in, one by one, and all of a sudden, as they looked at me — which was not particularly enthusiastically received — they saw somebody else, and the place went crazy because they saw that one of our senators was Frank Mahovlich. The kids wanted him on the ice. They told me, ``We have big skates that we can put on him.'' I told them, ``No, you can't, his wife will not let him skate,'' and rightly so. However, the people who were the most impressed and just beside themselves were the mothers. They were looking at Senator Mahovlich, and the whole history of their lives was passing before their eyes.
We go through all of these things across the country, and it is tough. It is as tough as it can get, and what we have heard today is part of that. I toss this in because there is hope. If people can do it in Warner, people can do it someplace else as well.
Thank you very much.
To our next panel, thank you very much joining us today for these hearings. This third panel, colleagues, is one that will give us some views on the situation of health, as I understand. We are delighted that you have come. This is an important part of the big issue that we are trying to get through.
Robert Pampalon is a researcher and geographer from the Institut national de santé publique.
[Translation]
Robert Pampalon, Researcher and Geographer, Institut national de santé publique: Madam Chairman, I was told that I have 10 minutes. I am going to summarize the results of the work we have done in Quebec, which is also based on the international literature. When we did this research on health, the question we asked ourselves was whether it is better to live in the city or a rural setting if you want to be in good health. Is the health of people living in rural areas better, worse or the same as the health of city dwellers? To answer that question, we adopted a comprehensive approach, unlike what we found in the literature. What I mean by this is that we looked at a set of databases, about 70 diverse measurements of health status, and we focused our remarks on the state of the population's health. In the final analysis, the goal of society is to keep its members healthy, and ideally, to improve their health. So, we focused on health status by adopting a multidimensional concept of health status. Our approach includes the health status itself, but also the main determinants of health status, such as socio-demographic characteristics, poverty, which inevitably comes into play, lifestyle, behaviour and health care services as well. In fact, in the literature, health services are the part of rural living that has received the most attention. One wonders to what extent health services are related to health status.
In the final analysis, the goal was to take a more nuanced look at this negative, even alarmist, rhetoric about the health of rural populations, because to give you the short version, people believe that rural populations are not as healthy as people living elsewhere. Our research led us to observe that the health of rural people was neither better nor worse than that of city dwellers. It is just different, but these differences are disturbing all the same, and they need to be looked at further.
So what are these differences? When you look at very broad indicators such as life expectancy at birth and health expectancy, there is very little difference in the health status itself of rural people and those who live in urban settings. In fact, rural health and rural health problems are characterized by premature death, that is to say, death before the age of 65, for instance, and the causes are quite well known. In rural settings, infant mortality is high, traffic accidents are high, suicide rates are high, particularly amongst men, and rates of lung cancer, pulmonary disease and stomach cancer are high too. But fortunately, there is some good news as well. Rates of breast cancer are lower in rural areas. Rates for myocardial infarctions, allergies and asthma are also lower. So the problem appears to be premature deaths and health problems striking people at a younger age.
Socio-economic conditions vary enormously, and that is the reason for this meeting today. Generally speaking, socio-economic conditions are clearly lower in rural settings. Employment rates, education and income are lower. Population growth rates tend to be negative. On the other hand, there are some very positive social aspects to rural settings: family and social networks are definitely stronger; far fewer people live alone; there are far fewer single-parent families; and the feeling of belonging and satisfaction with the social network are much stronger.
So, once again, we see differences, both good things and bad things. What are the differences in lifestyle, in behaviour? People living in rural areas of Quebec, and this information is again valid for all of Quebec, these residents of rural areas are heavy smokers. They smoke much more than people who live in urban settings. Their recreational activities include less physical activity. Consequently, there are more overweight and obese people in rural areas than in the cities. As for health status determinants, I will conclude with a few remarks about health care services, particularly primary care. What are the major differences? In fact, the essential difference is how primary care is organized. In rural areas, care is provided primarily in hospitals, because there are fewer specialists; there are fewer medical clinics; there are fewer ambulatory care units in the hospitals; less day surgery is done, so people are hospitalized more often. In contrast, in urban settings, where far more medical procedures are done, primary care is provided in medical clinics or in ambulatory care units and so on and so forth. So the fundamental difference is how the services are organized. We asked ourselves whether this difference in the way health care services are organized in rural settings, compared to the situation in urban settings, has an impact on population health status. To answer this question, we looked at a number of indicators, such as avoidable deaths, that is to say, deaths due to tuberculosis, myocardial infarctions, cervical cancer, conditions that can be treated, and normally, the death rates should not be higher in certain areas rather than others. What we observed is that there is no difference in the rates of avoidable deaths between rural settings and urban settings.
Another measurement of the impact that the health-care system has on health is surgery performed in hospital that clearly improves quality of life. Examples would include cataract surgery and coronary bypasses. What we have observed is that such surgery is performed just as much in rural areas as in urban areas.
So in the final analysis, there is a difference in the way that health-care services are organized. There are medical shortages, that is for sure, but on the basis of a number of rather general indicators, we did not see any difference in health status that might be related to differences in the way the services are organized. One of the fundamental differences relating to health and health status determinants in rural settings is that there is no one, single rural reality. There are multiple rural realities. What we have seen in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, and elsewhere in the world, is that the farther you go from urban centres, the more health and determinants of health deteriorate. Even people who live in rural areas close to large cities often enjoy markedly better health than city dwellers. Residents of municipalities on the edges of urban centres enjoy better health.
All these problems, all these rural differences are relevant to us, because in actual fact, most of the major problems are problems that for the most part are preventable. We mentioned infant mortality, traffic accidents, suicide and pulmonary disease. In the final analysis, these problems lead us to look at the general living conditions of the population, at health behaviours and health services, because they all have a component related to health services. Infant mortality would be an example of this.
In conclusion, I would like to point out that all of these health-related problems are covered by public health policy. Quebec's national public-health program, of which I have a copy here, examines all of these problems. However, nowhere in the program is there any mention of the specific characteristics of rural settings. And this is the case in other policies too.
I will end my remarks by stating that Quebec's rural life policy recommended specifically that the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services recognize the needs and specific characteristics of rural populations within its policies and programs so that government interventions are better suited to rural realities.
Réal Boivert, Research Advisor, Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de la Mauricie et du Centre-du-Québec: Madam Chairman, I am a research advisor within a regional organization that organizes health and well-being services. My job is to make use of the data found in the large population data files, but unlike Robert, I do this at much more of a microscopic level than at the macro level.
That being said, I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee to discuss poverty. First of all, I must say that I accepted your invitation very quickly, and I really should be modest. I can hardly claim to be extremely familiar with the extent of rural poverty in Canada, and I could not assess Canadian poverty in comparison to conditions in other OECD countries. Nonetheless, I can say a few words about the use of population data to better understand poverty. In particular, I would like to address the matter of community development, and it goes without saying that this includes the various links between urban communities and rural ones.
If you do not mind, I will begin my remarks by reminding you of something that is quite obvious: like individuals themselves, communities, parishes, neighbourhoods and rural municipalities do not enjoy the same socio-economic conditions, nor do they enjoy the same level of health, but there is more to it than that. Even though a number of communities may be equally disadvantaged from a socio-economic point of view, some communities do better than others. Furthermore, some relatively well-off communities are struggling with serious social problems.
In light of these observations, we have developed a system for classifying communities within the Mauricie and Central Quebec health and social service region. This system has a number of categories. Actually, there are seven categories. They include problem communities, communities that are severely disadvantaged from a socio-economic point of view, communities with serious problems of mortality and high rates of social problems. Then there are emerging communities that are doing quite doing quite well from a socio-economic point of view, with normal mortality levels and rather high levels of social difficulties. The last category that I would like to draw your attention to is the resilient communities. They are the communities where socio-economic situations have gone downhill, they are relatively disadvantaged communities, but mortality levels are normal, or in some cases mortality and life expectancy are above the levels one would expect. Above all, these resilient communities have few social problems.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that about 10 per cent of the communities in the Mauricie and Central Quebec region are in the problem category, and slightly less than 5 per cent of these communities are in the resilient category. All the problem communities are in urban settings, mainly in the oldest neighbourhoods in the downtown areas and all the resilient communities are in rural settings.
I am sure you realize that I am not saying that there are no disadvantages, health problems or psychological difficulties in rural settings. What I am saying is that when we look at an area at the community level, we can see that the rural communities are the most resilient, that they stand up best to the difficult effects of certain living conditions. This distinction confirms that people can be disadvantaged in a city or in the countryside, but the disadvantages do not take the same forms — Robert Pampalon's work has largely demonstrated this — and consequently, the effects are not as bad in rural settings as they are in urban settings.
All the specialized literature points to certain causes to explain this phenomenon. Once the issues of migration and residential mobility are taken into account, the concept of social capital and its related notions such as the feeling of belonging to one's community, pride in being part of a community, the feeling of collective empowerment, citizen participation, the mobilization of people in terms of their taking part in the life of the community, dialogue, the quality of community resources, working across silos, and so on are the reasons why one community will do better than another even though they are both equally poor.
Communities do not necessarily develop in the same way, or at the same speed, but in addition to the major structural factors that have an influence on their development, they have mechanisms or potential that take into account several differences. The idea is to identify these mechanisms so that the people who do community development, all these people who are working to reduce poverty, who are trying to reduce inequity both in the city and in the countryside, will have better tools at their disposal.
I would like to show you a diagram of the mechanism for assessing a community's potential for development. This is the mechanism that we are developing for the Health and Social Services Ministry. Once I have done that, I will conclude by explaining the objectives of this mechanism.
It contains three elements. The first one is the social stakeholders, which includes politicians, decision makers, managers, professionals, volunteers, hockey players or ordinary citizens. Now that these stakeholders are being shown data about geographic units that are on a human scale, data about their neighbourhood, their parish, their village, they are taking more interest in the life of their community than they ever have before. The data from the census, from the major population registries or the major administrative data files, should and can be disseminated at this level.
Second, if population data for the communities of a particular area are to be useful tools for those involved in local development, this data must be comprehensive and distinctive, thus descriptive and interpretative at the same time. This data is more useful if it is placed within a logical framework made up of three major components; namely, the socio-economic foundation of the communities, the repercussions of this foundation on the health and well being of communities; and finally, the set of social interactions that form the warp and weave of change within the communities.
With all of this data taken together, we can form a picture of the decline within the kinds of communities we mentioned earlier.
Once the social stakeholders have this general picture of the communities within a given region, they can use the third component of the mechanism to take stock of the potential for development in each community. Each one has a potential for development, because it is made up of human beings. The same thing holds true for people who live within problem communities, for those who live in well-off communities, and for people who live in average communities. Better knowledge of their strengths, their members' access to public or private resources, the quality of social ties, is a prerequisite and allows stakeholders to make the best possible use of the development potential of all communities.
In our opinion, this is how we can reduce inequality and ensure that each community, using the means at its own disposal can contribute to the general development of society.
That being said, although each community has a specific potential for development, of course, one must identify the elements of this potential. There are three kinds of potential that one must have information about. There is the potential of the individuals themselves, the potential of the community, the potential of the community's environment and the collective potential. I will spare you the details about each one of these categories, but I would say that they do give us a vocabulary to describe the cycle and the phase of development of communities, and further more, they make it possible to identify specific measures to be taken.
Why have such a mechanism? How is it different from others? At the human level within the areas, this mechanism can claim to allow the circulation of general and specific knowledge. This knowledge enables people to become more aware of possibilities, in a collective way, thus defeating fatalistic attitudes and the notion that community development is dictated by outside powers.
A community that has knowledge, that learns, that evolves, is a community that takes charge of its own development. Conversely, a community that is not in touch with its very essence, a community that does not have information that allows it to compare itself to surrounding communities, cannot become aware of its destiny. It will be forever in reactive mode, helpless in the face of events. Such a community is unlikely to develop the feeling that it has control over its own environment.
In closing, knowledge is an essential tool if one seeks to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality and stimulate the development of rural or urban communities. Moreover, this knowledge must be produced in light of the needs of social stakeholders, no matter what level they work at, be it national, regional or local. This is the objective of this participatory mechanism which we have outlined for you. This mechanism has been partly established in the Mauricie region and in Central Quebec, and it is in the process of being implemented in a few other regions of Quebec. Work is underway to expand its implementation to all regions that wish to make use of it.
Members on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry who wish to obtain all the information about this mechanism will be able to read the detailed report on this subject, which will be published by the Ministry of Health and Social Services next September.
Alain Coutu, Community Organizer, Centre de Santé et des services sociaux du nord de Lanaudière: Madam Chairman, first of all, I would like to explain that I am more of a field worker, that is to say, I work at the grassroots level. I have been working in rural areas for some 30 years now, involved in all kinds of development activities in communities, mainly in the northern part of the Lanaudière region, but also in semi-urban areas, such as Joliette and other similar communities. I am pleased that you are looking at rural life from a perspective of poverty reduction. I think that this approach will allow you to combine other aspects of the rural experience.
I have provided you with a written statement, but I will not be using it. Rather, I will be talking to you about actual practical experiences, and I would like to look at how the government could facilitate this kind of approach.
In the Lanaudière region, we are developing a new model for interventions at the community level. I am making a link here to some extent with what my colleagues have said. We did not speak to each other before the hearing, but I think that the information that we are providing is all complementary. Basically, what we have done is we have offered communities an opportunity to reflect and to mobilize. Reflection and mobilization do not necessarily have to happen during a crisis, but rather, at any point in a community's evolution. First of all, we create a partnership with the municipal council and all the local stakeholders, and with them we look at what can be developed or what seems to be a problem or what opportunities might exist for development. We take a sustainable development approach as we do this. We look at all aspects of a community's development, be it economic aspects, social aspects or environmental aspects. In our opinion, sustainable development means working on many fronts, and above all, it depends on citizen participation. Those who say that the development of a country or a community can be done only with experts and specialists are wrong. Development begins with the people who live in the community.
To attain this goal, a process must be developed. One must find the necessary tools. Even training has to be provided along the way. I will give you the example of the Upper Mattawanie area. There are two small communities there, Saint-Michel-des-Saints and Saint-Xénon, which have been particularly hard hit by the forestry crisis. The people living there decided to assume responsibility for their problem and analyze their environment, to look at what point they had reached and try to find possible solutions. The important thing here is that the diagnosis was made by the citizens. Statistics are one consideration, and my colleagues here are the experts, but there are also more empirical considerations, and people who are familiar with their own environment can have an opinion about them. By the way, I would like to point out that their opinion is rarely contradicted by the statistics. The model that we are trying to develop is also useful because it encourages people to look well into the future. We try to encourage people to dream about what their community might become in 10, 15 or 20 years. Often people forget to do that kind of thing. If we do not have a vision for development, it is difficult to meet goals. These exercises allow people to reflect, to imagine what their community might look like in 15, 20 or 30 years, and to look at how, with all citizens, we can mobilize to solve problems or initiate projects. It is a very creative process. It is also very innovative. We are not the only ones to use this technique. It is used in Europe, mainly in France. It is used in the Caribbean, it is used elsewhere in Quebec, surely in Canada, but I do not know for sure. But what I do know is that these communities are establishing a network. They are called ``Les universités de pays.'' We had them here in the Lanaudière region nearly six months ago. Ninety communities gathered to look at these models for intervention.
I think that the federal government should consider this kind of approach and support communities. The approach should focus on activities, research and training people to lead various processes so that they are able to study and analyze outlooks and opportunities. It is also important for the different levels of government to help people when they are thinking of a possible project or activity to solve a particular problem. I would like to point out that this kind of approach leads to social economy projects. I do not know very much about the social economy in the rest of the country, but in Quebec, the social economy is becoming increasingly important.
My own personal view is that the federal government is doing very, very little in this field. The social economy represents the future of many rural communities in Quebec. It represents the link between society and economics, and also includes the environment. I think the social economy receives very little support, be it from the province or from the federal government.
There is something else I would like to touch upon before I conclude, namely, the rather serious effects of the federal government's withdrawal of support for social housing, mainly in rural communities. Having a roof over your head is one of the first things that a person needs if he is to play a useful role within society. At present, rural communities are no longer able to provide social housing because the initial amounts required of the local community are too large, and so hardly any social housing is being built anymore. Existing programs are mainly for urban settings.
I would like to ask the committee if they could make our decision makers aware of the fact that a horizontal program is needed. At the present time, all the programs operate in silos. There is nothing to help or support approaches that cut across sectors. It is important to consider such a program, bearing in mind the rural pact that has already emerged in Quebec, and in cooperation with the rural Secretariat which you also have at the federal level in the Province of Quebec.
I am really speaking to you directly from the heart. Communities are expressing this need more and more. This also relates to the field workers that Ms. Labrecque Duscheneau was speaking of earlier. This is the kind of support that we are asking you for. We would like support for special activities, research and training. But this support would have to be targeted, adapted, flexible and cross-cutting.
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Coutu, you ask where we are going, where are hoping to go. It is exactly where you are saying. The whole purpose, the whole reason that our committee decided to do this all across the country was because again and again, when we had people come to Ottawa on a variety of other agricultural issues, these issues kept coming through about the people on the ground, the difficulties they were having and how to deal with them.
We finally decided that this was as big an issue as any other issue in agriculture and communities, and that we would try to do what we could all across the country. It has been coming up, too, from other witnesses whom we have had on urban issues. We constantly hear about city poverty and this kind of issue. We kept hearing something else, too, that part of the reason some of the issue was becoming larger was because people in the rural parts of Canada were moving away from where they belonged and where they wanted to be for a variety of reasons, many of which we have heard here today, and coming into the cities hoping for something better and not being able to find it.
The kinds of things that all of you are doing are incredibly important. We shall try to be your voice in the area in which we work. Hopefully, something good will come from it.
Senator Mercer: Thank you to all three of you for being here and giving us three very interesting presentations, because they give us information that was contradictory to what I was thinking.
Mr. Coutu, in your discussion, you mentioned social housing, which is an issue that we have heard about in other parts of the country, and it is a real problem. It gets magnified. It is bad in urban Canada, but it is magnified in rural Canada.
Of the four areas that we continue to hear about, social housing is at the top of the four. The others, which you did not mention, are child care, transportation and access to high-speed Internet.
You work in the field, somewhere out there every day, as a field worker. I know Quebec has a very unique and admirable child care system, but is it working in rural parts of Quebec?
[Translation]
Mr. Coutu: I would say that there has been a focus on daycare and family services over the past years, and they have been supported by provincial policy. Generally speaking, I would say that things are going relatively well in that area. The current difficulty is that rural communities are being hollowed out. The schools are about to be shut down, and I do not think that we can invent or organize useful alternatives everywhere as you have done in your area. The only hope that communities still have is that they can mobilize and get going, themselves identifying the necessary services and measures, the projects that can bring the entire community together, recreate solidarity, and allow low-income people and people who have been excluded to take part in this process. This truly is the direction we must move in if we want to make a difference. It is also a matter of providing alternatives to the nearby services as you were saying. Sometimes such alternatives are not as extensive, but in the social economy, one can find useful solutions that are truly adapted to the local setting. But tools must be provided to do so, and that is what is lacking.
[English]
Senator Mercer: Earlier today, we heard from Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau, who is still with us, about the need for field workers, and you are a field worker. I made a suggestion to her, so I want to try to understand. Who do you work for and how is that funded? Are there people such as you in all the regions of Quebec?
[Translation]
Mr. Coutu: Yes, we have a provincial network in the area of social development. And within our region, 14 or 15 of us have come together to form a regional network. Myself, I am a community worker within the health care system. I work with seniors, disabled people and other corporate groups.
The dimension that I have been telling you about this morning is rather sketchy in Quebec. It is an initiative on the part of several stakeholders from local development centres and community development organizations, funded by the federal government or other sources. At first, we started by looking at forming a coalition and working on inter- sectoral initiatives and helping these communities along their paths. As I was saying, each one of us has a very specific mandate, and at the present time no one has the capacity to offer these activities and provide a framework for these groups within a process. The costs I have mentioned are not huge, but it would be an incentive to work together more, to stop working in silos, a problem that you have surely come across your consultations. The organizations, the departments, everyone works in this manner. What we are telling you today is that we should work in more of a horizontal manner, cutting across the various sectors, and we are asking you for a tiny amount of assistance with the processes.
[English]
Senator Mercer: It is very interesting. I do not know if you were here earlier when I mentioned to Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau another organization that is worth exploring. I have no idea whether it would work here or not. There is an organization called the Foundation for Rural Living which, in Ontario, is headquartered in Guelph, but they also operate in Nova Scotia and are starting to operate in Manitoba.
I believe it does what you are talking about, tries to bring the whole community together, instead of being in silos. It may be worth pursing. We will certainly pay attention to it in our report — at least, I will.
Mr. Boisvert, you mentioned 10 per cent of the communities in the Mauricie region are problematic. Of that 10 per cent, I assume that would exclude the larger communities such as Trois-Rivières and Nicolet, would it? The larger communities would not make the problematic list.
[Translation]
Mr. Boisvert: These are communities within the downtown areas of Trois-Rivières, Shawinigan and LaTuque, communities in more of an urban setting. What sets these communities apart from others? When you look at these communities and apply statistical tests, for instance, if you look at probability or standard deviation from the average, these communities are way out at either end of the spectrum, in the last 2 per cent of the spectrum. This is where we find high rates of premature deaths, very high death rates in general, high rates of calls to youth protection services. I do not know whether in Canada you have something equivalent to the Youth Protection Act, but it is a piece of legislation, a legal act, and proper records are kept of cases of neglect, violence, incest and so on. The rates for children experiencing learning difficulties or who have behavioural problems are also high in these communities.
These observations are relative. We are not saying that these problems do not exist elsewhere in rural communities, but they are mainly to be found in the downtown areas, the capitals and the main towns and cities of the region. Exactly the same phenomenon is seen in other regions of Quebec as well, particularly in Montreal. Is it because the most vulnerable people tend to move from rural areas to downtown? Of course, the poorest people in rural settings can go to downtown areas to get services. We do not always monitor these variables, but at first glance, what we see in many communities within a particular territory or region is that poverty and the effects of poverty take different forms, depending if one is in a rural setting or in an urban setting.
[English]
Senator Mercer: Mr. Pampalon, you talked about the primary health services in rural areas being mostly confined to hospitals, and hospitals stays are usually longer for rural people. Did I understand it correctly?
Mr. Pampalon: You are talking about length of stay.
[Translation]
Hospitalization time is shorter, but more people are hospitalized. Why is this? Basically, if there is no medical clinic to follow up a case of diabetes or hypertension, the patient goes to the hospital. If the hospital is 100 kilometres away, the patient has to be hospitalized. This explains why hospitalization is more frequent in rural areas than in urban areas; it is due to a relative shortage of medical services. However, there are hospitals that take the place of non-existent clinics.
[English]
Senator Mercer: You did not talk about doctor shortages. However, we have heard about doctor shortages in rural areas, and we have heard about the importance of using nurse practitioners to substitute for doctors, obviously working in a network without doctors. You are perfectly right. Endocrinologists and nephrologists want to work in the cities and hospitals. Therefore, they are not available in rural areas, but general practitioners are supposed to be.
Is rural Quebec consistent with the rest of the country in having shortages of doctors? Is rural Quebec using the nurse practitioner methods to substitute for that?
[Translation]
Mr. Pampalon: It is true that there is a shortage of physicians in rural areas. The shortage of general practitioners is not as severe as the shortage of specialists, especially dentists. In rural areas that are farther away from urban centres, people seldom go to dentists because basically, there are none. The same applies to many medical specializations. However, there are some interesting points. More people in rural areas have family doctors than do people in urban areas. There are fewer family doctors, but basically, they are more attached to their clients. This does mean that rural people have more consultations. In fact, they have fewer consultations than urban people, perhaps it is because they have family doctors. Thus, they are less inclined to shop around and more ready to take their problems to family doctors.
Nurse clinicians or practitioners are very new to Quebec. The province is beginning to provide them. I think it is a little too early to say how things will work out for them in the future.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: For the health care and the wellness of rural Canada and Quebec, would a guaranteed income help? You talk about social housing and social health. If everybody had a guaranteed income, they could orchestrate their own housing. They would not need that social housing. There would be enough for everyone to bring in their own doctors. What do you think about that?
[Translation]
Mr. Pampalon: I have no personal opinion about this. With regard to social housing, let me say that despite the low income in rural areas, rural residents own their housing more often than urban residents do. Housing is not as expensive. I do not know how to answer your question when you asked whether a minimum income would improve the quality of their housing or even enable more people to become homeowners. I will leave the answer to others who may have an opinion about this.
Mr. Coutu: Your intervention is very interesting. I think that basically insufficient basic income causes various problems. Canada should have taken measures regarding this a long time ago. We have heard about it for a long time, but perhaps we have not given enough attention to it.
Let me add that such interventions must take the community as a whole into account. An increase in income does not necessarily add anything to the dynamics of the community's social life.
I also think that social housing should be viewed differently in rural settings than in urban settings. I am currently working with a group that is attempting to organize social housing in the north of Lanaudière. It will consist of small single family units within a cooperative network. Everyone will have their own home, but the community will own a common estate. This kind of formula is best suited to our needs. It is very important for municipalities to give land to save their communities. We have to set up mechanisms. We no longer have to create social ghettos as it was done in the past. That was not effective because people were marginalized. That should never happen.
Income is an important issue, but social integration is more important, because one's social role in the community is important for fulfilling one's entire human potential. Of course, income matters. However, people must be given the opportunity of playing a role in society so that they can get involved in things and be socially recognized. This is essential.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Our minimum wage sometimes is so low that a person, after paying rent, does not have any money; they almost have to go to a food bank to get food. We have to look at a guaranteed income where people can keep their respect and have enough money. Sure, money is not the answer, but we should have enough of it to keep our respect.
[Translation]
Mr. Coutu: Let me add that charitable organizations are adopting new ways of doing things. They are calling upon people to take their own destiny in hand and to organize their own community stores. Handing out cheques or food does not improve anyone's social standing. The primary interveners in food distribution are beginning to understand this and they are discovering ways of getting people involved in social activities so that they can make valuable contributions to the community. I think that we must find ways to make citizens accountable for their own interests. This is very important.
Mr. Boisvert: I want to put an emphasis on housing. As Robert said, and as I have often observed, housing is a very critical factor that affects health, longevity as well as social problems. What counts is the percentage of homeowners living in a community of 2,000 or 3,000 people, or of rented housing where the owner lives in the building. Why is this a critical factor? I think that we can explain the causes and effects in the following way. When landlords live in the community, houses are more carefully maintained. This is clear. People who live in well-maintained houses have some pride and sense of belonging to the community if the environment is clean and well organized. This is an impact on people's self-esteem, which is one of the essential conditions for personal growth, involvement and participation in developing one's environment. With regard to housing, with the resources that we have in Quebec and in Canada to help communities, if we spent our money differently, by giving each person a universal allocation simply due to the fact that they are living on our territory instead of giving them welfare cheques, we could also help to raise the self-esteem and self-reliance of individuals. People would be more enterprising, they would contribute more to developing their community than if they were confined, as Alain just said, to social ghettos in a position of dependence on aid that stifles personal initiative.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: What effect does a community centre, such as a hockey arena, have on a community? Is this very important?
[Translation]
Mr. Coutu: I want to give you an answer to that. Many communities in my region are trying to organize venues for meetings. In the current climate, social relations are on the decrease. People are spending more and more time in front of television sets or computers. This has a great impact on community life. We must organize places where people can meet, hold forums, debates, and exchange in various ways.
I know a group of disabled persons in our region who are communicating through Internet. They are all isolated and far away from each other, and they have organized a forum of 150 persons. They have turned a weakness into strength.
We must organize all kinds of places where people can get together, and we can provide group leadership as I said earlier. By taking a Saturday or an entire day to see where a community is going, people are brought together. People who were not talking to each other can discuss their common concerns about the environment in which they are living. We must organize more such meetings. People could meet in stadiums or in churches. This is the kind of things that we must organize.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: An attraction.
[Translation]
Mr. Pampalon: A stadium has the advantage of providing for physical activities. This is good for health, especially among young people. There are many advantages. Sports infrastructures, schoolyards, playgrounds all provide meeting places for young people. Moreover, they can actively maintain their physical fitness while their parents can also meet and discuss. There are many advantages in maintaining multiple infrastructures in small communities.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: It is mostly volunteers. You have to get out there and volunteer to get a coach and so on. Where I grew up as a boy, the morale of our town was based on what the volunteers and the coaches did.
The Chairman: I would like to ask you a question that has not come up, and it often does. It has certainly been a part of what I have been engaged in ever since I have been in public life, and that is the sort of overwhelming issue of literacy.
One can hardly pick up a paper in a day without seeing a headline that we are missing out on something or have lost something because we do not have a skilled workforce. Part of that is we have an enormous number of people in this country who, for whatever reason, are not able to read and write, and communicate in the way that the people in this room do. It is a huge issue. It is a huge percentage of our adult population.
With all the telecommunications, the BlackBerry, et cetera, that we use to communicate with each other much more easily than ever before, if one does not have the capacity to read, write and communicate, then one is really on the sidelines in a country such as Canada or, indeed, most countries of the Western world.
Is this an issue that pops up in your area? To what degree do you have activist groups in your communities that are trying to lift people up, no matter what their age level is, and help them get back into society?
[Translation]
Mr. Coutu: There are many community groups. School boards and other institutions are also taking a visible part in the effort. There are many special community groups for literacy in Quebec. They are recognized and partly funded by the government.
When organizing citizens' projects among these people, everything happens through personal contact. We understand that we cannot rally the people by carrying out extensive polls or writing things in newspapers. It takes personal contact. We must spend an hour or two with each person and ask them how they envisage their role within the citizens' project.
For people who have no role to play, we are making a serious effort to give some responsibility or commitment as an opportunity to contribute. This also improves their image in the eyes of others. We are making great efforts to provide roles for disabled persons; sometimes they can be receptionists at local events.
We must work steadily toward our goals. We are currently searching for new ways to get the participation of people who are usually unnoticed, people who are usually excluded from community activities. We also need to look for ways to go further in adapting to reality because the usual ways of contacting such people are not necessarily effective. We have to do concrete things on the ground. That is the only way to proceed.
[English]
The Chairman: For those of us who work on this issue, all across the country, it has been a terrible blow this year with the withdrawal and then partial return of funding. People are feeling very insecure knowing that some of the finest organizations and programs in the country are on an edge. It is a foundation issue.
In Quebec, you have marvellous organizations. They, too, are struggling as are their partners across the country because of a pull-back on funding. It is not difficult to help, but very often, the way that does help is the way you have been talking about. It is individual to individual. It is not like a school class.
It is hugely important. I hope that people around this area will have their opportunity.
I am seeing you nodding back there, Ms. Labrecque Duchesneau. Good for you.
[Translation]
Mr. Boisvert: With your permission, I would like to add a comment to your statements.
Basic literacy training is important, but literacy education must go even further. We cannot do without literacy in a world of global exchange. Obviously, the countries that do most for educating their citizens are currently the leading countries on this planet; this also applies to communities that are committed to literacy training. The secret of community development lies in the overall integration of the various components or elements that contribute to community development.
Practising sports can help students to stay in school. Students involved in sports develop old boy networks and feel that they belong to their community. In some communities, different generations help each other. In Quebec, there are programs that encourage senior citizens to help children with their homework after school. All the components must be integrated in a dynamic, living environment. This works better than suggesting one-size-fits-all solution to entire regions. Public institutions must provide citizens with the means to find their own ways to develop their environment with all its elements.
Mr. Pampalon: Let me add a point. Literacy or illiteracy begins even before school. As young people begin to go to school, especially needy young people, they encounter difficulties with language and with behaviour. Children from poor families begin failing their courses as early as in Grade 1 or 2. An investment must be made for pre-school children by supporting families that are in financial trouble or other kinds of trouble so that their children can come to school with a fair degree of language skills.
[English]
The Chairman: Absolutely, and I am glad you made that point. I should have made it myself. Medical science tells us now that by the time a child is 18 months old, all of its connections are put together, and that is where it begins.
As one gentleman, who was very supportive of this cause, said to me many years ago, that is where it begins, if a child cannot learn because the parent cannot learn, has not learned, then it becomes a continuing cycle and the train goes off the track.
I could not leave the room without mentioning this because it does not matter whether it is a small town or a big city. The issue is the same, and it is a very fundamental one.
I thank all of you for being here today, and we wish you all the very best. What you are doing is incredibly important. We are very glad we came here to Nicolet. We thank our colleague, Senator Biron, for encouraging us to come.
The committee adjourned.