Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 31 - Evidence - Afternoon meeting
MANIWAKI, QUEBEC, Friday, June 8, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 1:31 p.m. to examine and report upon rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: We are now at the part of our study that we look very much forward to; a time when local citizens can come and talk about the issues that are closest to them.
Darlene Lannigan, Assistant — Maniwaki, Office of Lawrence Cannon, M.P., as an individual: Good afternoon, senators. I did not plan to speak today as I was here as an observer only. However, listening to the presentations this morning, I would like to clarify a few issues.
As you understand, I have not prepared anything as such, so my presentation will be mixed. I am going to go into it very quickly.
The poverty in this area is a major problem. Before working for Mr. Cannon, I taught at a high school here in Maniwaki and I taught at a high school in Gracefield, which is one of our smaller municipalities.
Obviously, when there are no jobs, and there is not any money coming in, parents have to look to other alternatives to support their families. It is unfortunate that some people have to turn to crime. The most popular and profitable crime is drugs. We have many families who do not work, yet we see that they live very well. We wonder how they can live without a regular income. Obviously, we know where that money is coming from. The worse part is we also know that money comes from teenagers. I would like to say it is limited at the very worse at the high school level, but no, it is also in the elementary system.
Mr. Cannon did a roundtable on crime in Gracefield. We chose that area because it is one of the worse areas in the Upper Gatineau Valley. The police force informed us that the drugs that they call Maniwaki Gold and Gatineau Gold are exported out of our area into other provinces in Canada. At the school in Gracefield, high school students were pushing drugs for their parents. We also asked for the intervention of the RCMP, other police forces and social workers and so on and so forth. We also met with the students.
We advised the representative from the RCMP that when he comes into this area, it is not a normal area. He walked into the first classroom and said, ``Children steal from their parents to buy drugs.'' I said, ``No, it does not work like that here. The children are part of their parents' enterprise. They get up in the morning and say, `It is okay because I do not have to pay for my drugs. I choose what I want on the table that my parents have not consumed the night before.' Also, they tell me to bring some to my friends.''
Principals or vice-principals met with students in who told them how much they had sold. It was a very good enterprise. They were talking like real business people and saying, ``I sold so much of this and so much of that and my business is very good, but now I have to recruit people to sell more.'' So now, we are going into the elementary system.
It is sad. On my lunch hour, I went out to have a cigarette, my bad habit, and I met up with a criminologist who gave me the good news that she was just accepted in her doctorate. She works for the Kitigan Zibi Police Force. She informed me that they had just picked up some more meth on the reserve, which is also a major problem in town.
We had a street rumble on our main street in Maniwaki. It was mostly teenagers, some a little older. It all goes back, I presume, to drugs because I recognized the people who were named. We have an excellent collaboration with the police amérindienne and with the Sûreté du Québec. They called in all their forces. There were about 50 people involved, some of them parents. The following night, there was supposed to be another rumble. The Kitigan Zibi Police closed the reserve, closed the entrance to town. La Sûreté du Québec closed down the town.
The town of Maniwaki applied for a crime prevention program. It was not accepted. That was with Stockwell Day's office, at the federal level. Sadly, we were not accepted. I spoke to Stockwell Day's office and said that they do not have the full picture of the economic situation and our major drug problem.
We also have three cultures; we have the English, the French and the Aboriginal peoples. If you look at the Aboriginal peoples, we have the Kitigan Zibi Reserve that borders the town. I presume you came in from the Gatineau side. We also have the Rapid Lake or Barrière Lake Reserve. It is very, very difficult because they are completely different culturally. They also come into town and we end up with four cultures.
Unfortunately, many children do not graduate from high school. As for hospital service, we do not have a maternity ward anymore. I think we are losing more and more services. We do not have the services of specialists. People have to go out of town to see a specialist. It is expensive. The people do not have the money. If you want to send your kids to post-secondary education, it is hard. I have a daughter and a son and it is costing me $2,500 per month for the bare necessities to have them live in the city. My people in this area cannot afford that type of expense.
We do not get help from anyone. How do you expect these people to get out of poor situations when there is no help and they do not have the money to do anything? They do not have the money to educate their children. They do not have money for dental care or private hospital care.
I could go on and on, but I think I have given you the worst of our situation.
[Translation]
Georges Lafontaine, political attaché to the MNA for Gatineau, Ms. Stéphanie Vallée, as an individual: Madam Chairman, I had not anticipated addressing you today, so I have nothing prepared. I was born in the region. I am political attaché to Ms. Stéphanie Vallée, the MNA for Gatineau, and previously, I was political attaché to Ms. Vallée's predecessor, Mr. Réjean Lafrenière. I have worked as a journalist, mostly in the region, and I am an author. I have been an observer, and what I have observed in the region is difficult to explain.
I can tell you that my great-grandfather had 10 children. Nine of those children lived their lives here. A generation later, only three or four children, out of another ten or so, stayed in the region. The others went off to the city because better opportunities were available and because a lot of land was needed to provide for a family. In my generation, I am the only one to stay in the region, and I do not live from the land.
You mention agriculture. This is an interesting topic because we had what some call subsistence agriculture here: small plots of land, but plots with which a family could once survive.
The scale of agricultural development became larger and larger, with the result that small farms with only one lot were no longer viable. A number of these small properties have been abandoned. My father's has not been abandoned, but it has been allowed to revert to forest. That is where I live today. Many of the farms have disappeared. The only ones to have succeeded are those with a decent milk quota; this does not necessarily require a lot of land, and it allows you to make a living.
As we talk about forestry, I am going to go back into the past. My father used to tell me that, back then, a few hundred feet from our house, was a dairy that made cheese and butter, and that almost every village had one. People in the surrounding area could live on these local products and services. It is the same in forestry. Rationalization, the need to have plants that are ever more efficient, means that little village sawmills no longer exist today. Those little mills that provided employment for ten or so people are gone. Now giant mills processing huge quantities of wood provide work for fewer people; in any given region, there is far more lumber, but far less employment than in the past.
Darlene brought up the question of health services. The same process is at work. We are told that health services are going to be concentrated in one place, and now health care is a problem. The same philosophy is being used in agriculture and forestry: we are told that we need to consolidate in order to be profitable, so that one plant can do better than the others. Meanwhile, our agricultural land is being abandoned. Our forests, the birthright of everyone in the region, have been left in the hands of big business. And it seems that no one can say a thing about it. That agricultural land with all its potential is still here in the region. It is often abandoned, but it is still here, and so is the potential.
You asked what we would do if we were president or prime minister. First of all, I would find a way of making that land valuable again. Of course we can forget subsistence agriculture, but perhaps there are other options. The world has changed; people no longer just eat their own beef and their own vegetables as they did in years past. Consumers' tastes have greatly evolved.
The same thing happens with the forestry. I tell myself that to sustain development in regions like ours, it is just like Ms. Denise Julien was saying, we need access to new technologies.
It is also important to consider education. Our young people have to go elsewhere to be educated, and then we lose them. When it is possible for one end of the world to communicate with the other via the Internet, with the cameras and all those things, how is it that we are not able to bring education to our remote regions, by providing technical resources, to offer CEGEP and university courses in our region rather than our sending our people out? I think that it would save in human resources, and waste less time and money.
[English]
Hon. Wayne Easter, P.C., M.P., as an individual: Like Darlene and Georges, Senator Fairbairn asked me to come here and listen. This does not seem like we are listening, does it? Thank you for the opportunity to get involved in the discussion.
As a bit of background, I am a former Canadian farm leader. I have been Solicitor General of Canada and I am well aware of the issues that you talk about Darlene, and they are increasingly serious, especially crystal meth.
In the Martin government, I was responsible for the Rural Secretariat. I do not know whether you people have met with the rural sector. You should get to know the people in that department as they have some good programs. Currently, I am Agriculture Critic with the Official Opposition. While rural is certainly much more than agriculture, I want to mention a couple of points.
Two years ago I did a fairly major study on low farm income. One thing is for certain, if there are consistent losses in the farm sector in rural Canada, it is going to have a spin-off effect right through the rural economy. If farmers have money, it does not exactly burn a hole in their pockets; it is spent, it flows into the economy and it assists in many ways.
Although I do not have that report with me, I do have some figures that will tell you the magnitude of the problem. These figures are only up to 2003.
I think you ought to keep in mind in terms of rural Canada versus rural American; the Americans are coming off with their three best farm income years in history. Canada is coming off with its three worse years in part because we were looking to the WTO as a solution while the U.S. went merrily went along its way with its U.S. Farm Bill policy.
Here are the figures: George Brinkman put together figures in constant dollars. The best year in Canadian farming was 1975. In constant dollars, net farm income in 1975 was $3.3 billion, with farmers carrying a debt load of $7.8 billion. Now, these figures are net farm income from the marketplace, no government subsidies or anything. These figures also include supply management which is doing well.
In 2003, net farm income was negative $2 billion; that is without government payments, negative $2 billion, with a debt load of $47.7 billion. By now, that debt load is I believe $52.6 billion or somewhere around there at the end of 2006.
Here is what happened between 1975 and 2003. Our net farm income went from $3.3 billion from the market to negative $2 billion. Our debt load went up from $7.8 billion to $47.7 billion.
The message in that is that there is a big problem in terms of Canadian agriculture policy. In the report entitled Empowering Canadian Farmers in the Marketplace, I wrote that when we look at Canadian farms we see that every economic indicator is positive, production, revenue, exports, output per acre, output per farmer, cost per unit, et cetera. Every indicator is positive except net farm income. As farmers produce more, export more and produce more efficiently, farmers are rewarded less.
I would ask the question, if that is the case, if those are the facts and I submit they are, does the farm income problem have its genesis on the farm? I would suggest it does not.
You will hear whether it was us when in government or whether it is the current government, you will hear them say it must be a farm management problem. It is not a farm management problem. It is a farm policy problem and our place in the world. I raise that from the agriculture side.
There are 40 recommendations in the report. The bottom line is the farm community needs to be empowered in a marketing sense in order to gain its fair share from the marketplace.
The last comment I want to make relates to rural as a whole. There is no question; there is a rural/urban divide. My own estimation of what is wrong with rural Canada, simply put, is that rural Canada is exploited by damn near everyone, from businesses in the resource industry, from the processing industry and the agricultural industry, from the fish packers and the fishing industry, from the multinationals in the forestry industry, you name it.
These figures that I will give you are not up to date. They are two years old, taken before the last Census. The calculations that I made at that time to put rural Canada into perspective are as follows. Rural Canadians make up approximately 31 per cent of our population and make up 24 per cent of the total employment in Canada. Rural Canada contributes 22 per cent to the GDP and, in fact, is responsible for 40 per cent of Canada's total exports in forestry, mining, fisheries, agriculture and energy. Unfortunately, rural Canadians are not accumulating the benefits of that massive resource development in those major commodities in rural Canada. Somebody else is accumulating that wealth rather than rural Canada. The other interesting thing is the productivity in the resource-based sector is 33 per cent higher than the Canadian average. On a productive basis, we are doing well, but we are not doing well on the wealth-accumulation basis.
The last point is this: In the new age that we find ourselves in, 95 per cent of Canada's natural and environmental resources are in rural Canada. I think as we move ahead, that is an extremely important issue that we must look at closely. Somehow, governments, both federal and provincial, have to seize the opportunity and ensure in the new green age, or whatever you want to call it, that we benefit from some of the policy development.
Senator Segal: Darlene, Senator Pierre Claude Nolin chaired a committee that called for the abolition of the legal interdiction for the use of marijuana on the assumption that if it were legal, it would not be a business. I have always worried that part of the reason why we do not enforce our drug laws as strictly as we might is we cannot afford to as we do not have the resources and it is a way to look the other way when people in poverty find the only way they possibly can to make a living.
I would like you to reflect on whether we have to come at that issue in some other way if you assume that there is no will to deal directly with the poverty issue. If you look at the history and what Wayne Easter has suggested, it certainly does not appear to have been much will to address the poverty issue.
A question for Wayne, and I thank you very much for being here, you are from Prince Edward Island, you could be other places today, and I really appreciate your coming and the work that you have done on this issue as a member of Parliament and as an agricultural representative.
In the work that you did on rural incomes, I would be interested in your perspective of the public servants who work in this area at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I have a high regard for their integrity, their commitment and their determination. I think as a group, they share the view that food is a commodity. If we act too quickly to help the farming community, it will actually cost us too much. Productivity is going up. The efficiency is superb. The longer we wait the fewer farmers we will have to deal with and therefore, we should just wait these politicians out. They come and they go. They get elected, they get defeated. In the meantime, we are losing our farming population. If we wait longer, frankly, the population will disappear.
That is part of why the facts which you have, which I assume they have in the Department of Finance and in the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, have not produced the kind of policy shifts that they would normally suggest.
I would appreciate your comments on those two perspectives.
Ms. Lannigan: I would go back to the roundtable that we had. There was a woman who was there who worked with social services. She thanked Mr. Cannon and the Conservative government for raising the age of consent for sexual activity. One of her observations was why do we not do the same thing with drugs, especially with the pushers to get them off the streets and the schoolyards.
I understand that it involves a lot of money and you need a lot of policemen to enforce laws, which we do not have. I think we have to come down harder on the pushers. We should have a law that if a pusher is found in the schoolyard; he or she is fined and depending on the number of offences the sentence would become stiffer.
To me, it seems unethical, immoral, I could think of many other words that I would not dare say here, for someone 22 or 23 years old, to sell drugs in a schoolyard to children who are nine, 10 or 12 years of age. The punishment should be extremely severe. We have to get them out of our schoolyards. I think that is the first thing.
When children go to school, the teachers are responsible. They are acting in the place of the parents. We also need to educate our school administrators. Teachers are not law enforcement officers and yet, when they report the drug activity they are not helped. We are going to have to go through the basics and educate our school administrators.
Mr. Easter: I might say for Darlene's question as well, I really think one has to look at the causes of crime beyond the poverty issue itself. Poverty is part of it, but in terms of the senior public service, there is no question we have a very professional public service. I really think there is a problem in terms of how senior managers, your deputy ministers, your assistant deputy ministers and, to a certain extent, your director generals, are brought into some departments. Having a deputy minister who has good managerial experience in an administrative sense is, in my view, an entirely different kettle of fish when it is Treasury Board, Finance Canada or Health Canada, than it is in terms of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, DFO and Natural Resources Canada.
Our problem is ever since Sid Williams in my view, and I will be blunt about it, was the last deputy minister we have not had a deputy minister who knows the people on the ground. Mr. Williams left public office in the early 1970s and I met with him a number of times. Sid Williams knew the primary producers; he knew the people that he administered. The ministers of today do not know who is on the ground; it is as though they do not consider the people they administer.
There is no question that your comments in terms of the numbers are correct. Even when we were the government, I remember Ralph Goodale saying we have to hit a target of exports at $24 billion and we went higher than that. When the export numbers went up to $24 billion, while we are exporting more, farm incomes are going in the other direction. There is something wrong with that policy. That to me means we are exporting our wealth out of Canada.
There is another point I would mention when it comes to Canada. I have spent a lot of time in the last three or four years in the United States, meeting with agricultural committees, senators, congressional representatives and others. I do not know why we have to be the Boy Scouts on the world stage. I really cannot understand why we are.
One of the other problems is you cannot make agriculture a national media issue. It is too complicated for them to understand. They know they can go to the grocery store and pick up whatever they want; it is a non-issue for them. No matter how tough it gets out there, it does not seem to be an issue.
Recently, the press reported that Canada is looking at lowering its regulatory requirements on pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables coming from the U.S. Tell me why we would lower our regulations. We should be asking them to raise their regulations to our standards. If they do not meet our standards, their products just do not come to Canada. We are so soft.
It is the same with the WTO. We just do not seem to have the backbone as a country to stand up and argue. We do have the safest food system in the world in my view, but we will stand by and lower our standards to allow somebody else's products to get in here. It is the wrong way to do it.
[Translation]
Senator Lavigne: Ms. Lannigan, when you were speaking, you seemed very negative about almost everything. I agree with you completely. I think that the administration of justice here in Canada is pretty soft compared with the United States and other countries in the world. I think you are completely right when you speak negatively of the present systems; at school, municipal, federal or provincial levels, heads go into the sand any time that spades have to be called spades. As Senator Segal said just now, politicians are elected for four years, they come with a lot of good will, but four years later, someone else comes onto the scene, and changes a policy, or changes this or that. It is always the same, we go around in circles.
You mentioned the Sûreté du Québec just now. The RCMP is everywhere in Canada except in Ontario and Quebec. Instead of calling the RCMP in Maniwaki, you have to call the Aboriginal police, the Sûreté du Québec, the regional municipality police. I have experienced the problem in Quebec. I have called the local police. But they said: ``No, you are a senator, you have to call the RCMP.'' So I called the RCMP and they said ``No, we cannot come into Quebec, we have to ask permission. We cannot set foot in Quebec. The Sûreté du Québec handles problems there.'' Why can we not consider one police force for the entire country? Then we would not have to know which police force to call, and find that, with the 42 policies, no one ever does anything anyway.
Imagine Senator Segal not stopping at a stop sign. The police pull him over. He is well dressed, clean cut, a senator; two traffic tickets. But if they see a shady-looking guy with earrings and tattoos, the police look the other way, they do not want to deal with him. I feel we have a societal problem. You are right, madam. If our justice system took things a little more seriously, perhaps more services would be available to the public. Do you not think so, madam?
Ms. Lannigan: Yes. It is the same thing here. We have the Aboriginal police, the Sûreté du Québec, and the MRC de la Vallée. We have two reserves in our area and another that is not recognized by the Department of Indian Affairs. When I was young, we had two police forces. The Sûreté de Quebec patrolled the highways, stayed on the highways and did not come into the towns or villages. Then there was the RCMP and the municipal police. Now, we no longer have the municipal police, but we have two others. When you phone the RCMP, the call is not answered in Ottawa, but in Saint-Jérôme. Because we are on that side of the line, most of our services come from Montreal or the Laurentian region. But we are not in the Laurentians, we are in the Outaouais and we want to stay in the Outaouais.
Mr. Grondin was mentioning Grand-Remous and Domtar. Grand-Remous has a population of 600 people. Grand- Remous is on Route 117, at the far end of the Outaouais. The municipality had an industry. They have a choice there. People from Grand-Remous often go to Mont-Laurier for their services instead of coming here. There is a medical clinic in Grand-Remous. There is no walk-in medical clinic in Maniwaki. Grand-Remous, a tiny municipality, has one. Why? Because it could go to the region next door to look for doctors. It is not right.
It is the same for the police. Why does my call go to Saint-Jérôme? My boss, the Honourable Lawrence Cannon, is protected by the RCMP. If I call them, do I call them in Ottawa because his office is there, or do I call them in Saint- Jérôme because he is here? I do not know any more. I cannot see any logic to it.
Senator Segal: Outside the present government!
Ms. Lannigan: I do not understand anything anymore. I wonder if there is anyone realistic out there, with two feet on the ground, who will be able to find a solution that is not so expensive. Sometimes people come up with solution after solution, each costing a fortune, when I could have told them what to do. You are wasting money with studies and such. What are our children doing while we are spending all this time talking about our policing problems? It is a nice day today. Go and take a walk around the village. Our kids are not in school. Spend an afternoon seeing how many Sûreté de Québec patrol cars go by. You will not see any. They are out on the highways. They cannot be everywhere. We have a major problem in the region.
We have to find solutions that do not cost a fortune and that are logical. I got a report last week that took perhaps six months to prepare. When I received the report, I said ``How come they did this?'' There were three representatives of the federal and provincial governments who sat around at the election and had no idea who had been elected. They paid a mediator to come and see. What do you think the mediator said? There were three federal and provincial representatives. It was done according to the law, they were all there, but they still paid for a mediator. It does not make any sense.
[English]
Gib Drury, President, Outaouais-Laurentides Beef Producers: I am a full-time beef farmer in Western Quebec, just south of here, in the Lakefield region. I am also President of the Quebec Farmers Association which represents the 2,100 English-speaking farmers in the province. I am the President of the Syndicat des producteurs de bovins de l'Outaouais et des Laurentides which represents the 2,000 beef farmers in the region going from Montreal up to the Abitibi.
I am here primarily at the invitation of Senator Fairbairn who asked me to speak on the issue of rural poverty which I think has a great basis in the farm income crisis we are presently experiencing in Canada.
Right now, we are in the throes of developing a new farm policy, the Agricultural Policy Framework. The thing that most struck me when I read that report was that the bureaucrats in Agriculture and Agri-Food say that agriculture is no longer a major driving force in rural development and in a sense, they are right. When you are in negative net farming, a situation that we are in and have been in for the last few years in Canada, agriculture will not drive the rural economy. However, that does not mean that we should not have a policy to address that situation. The future policy does not seem to have any changes from what we have had the last three years, which frankly, has been a disaster, especially when you compare the situation to the United States where it has been the reverse.
To sum it up, farmers in general are asset-rich, heavily debt-burdened, not cash-strapped, but cash-broke. They do not have the money in their pockets and they have probably achieved the limit of what they can borrow at the bank.
The current generation of farmers are in bad shape. What concerns me even more is the future generation, our children, including my own, who look at farming and the number of hours we have to put in every day to produce more and more and get less and less. Wayne Easter is one of my heroes and I agree with everything he said. He paints a beautiful portrait that I will not even try to do. My children look at me and they think I am crazy to spend the hours I do on the farm to receive so little money.
The only reason that I am able to continue farming is because I have a wife who works off the farm. That seems to me to be a poor situation.
I go to a lot of farm meetings. I am in these two farm organizations, including l'Union des producteurs agricoles, and I am by far not the exception. All the farmers seem to be in the same situation. We are going to have a very serious problem in the future in attracting people to take over our farming in this country. That is a very great concern of mine.
I could go on, but I have probably exhausted my three minutes. The only thing I would add is Quebec is almost an exception to the rule in the rest of Canada. The provincial government is extremely supportive in terms of its agricultural policy, in their whole approach to what farmers do. They have taken a page out of Wayne's book on empowering farmers. I will not say it is rosy, but it is an awful lot better for Quebec farming than in any other province in Canada.
Instead of having a steamrolling federal policy where every province has to come to the lowest common denominator, maybe we should take the best province and bring everybody else up to their standards.
[Translation]
Fabienne Lachapelle, Executive Director, L'Entraide de la Vallée: Madam Chairman, I am the Executive Director of L'Entraide de la Vallée, an organization that works in the area of food security in the Gatineau Valley region. I am also chair of the issues table on social development in the Outaouais. I have come to speak to you about issues of food security for people living below the poverty line.
At L'Entraide de la Vallée, we believe that the right to healthy and balanced nutrition is a fundamental right. Food security at a personal level is having access, at all times and in a climate of respect, to food in sufficient quantity and appropriate quality, respecting cultural values and thereby allowing the enjoyment of all fundamental rights. By way of illustration, in a city, it costs six or seven dollars per day for an adult to follow Canada's Food Guide. In the country, the same basket of groceries costs nine dollars per day. So it is almost impossible for a person living on minimum wage, and even more so for someone living below the poverty line, on welfare or unemployed, to eat according to Canada's Food Guide. Impossible or very difficult. The government should assume its role of protector of its citizens' right to adequate nutrition. This right implies looking after nutrition in all its aspects.
I would like to make a few observations: 80 per cent of the production from Quebec`s agricultural activity takes place in the St. Lawrence Valley. That leaves 20 per cent for the rest of Quebec. In this region, arable land is relatively uncommon in the Gatineau Valley and in the Outaouais. The traditional view that our region is all about forestry limits agricultural development initiatives. Agriculture is seen as an ancillary activity. There are few market gardeners in the region. Agricultural operations are not diversified to any extent. For the most part, subsidies are available to large concerns that grow only one crop on a large scale and the subsidies are tailored more to the needs of the market than to the needs of the people. Restaurant owners have difficulty buying fresh vegetables locally. Distances between the regions in Quebec unfairly affect the price that the consumer pays for the product because of the transportation. A tomato, for example, can leave Maniwaki and drive all around Quebec before coming back here. After all its travels, it is now an expensive tomato.
In addition, people can find it physically difficult to get to food markets or food banks. We have two food banks, in Maniwaki and in Gracefield. Someone living in Grand-Remous, Montcerf, Lytton or Aumond does not necessarily have a way to get to them.
Here are some solutions that could be used to address these problems: First, guarantee access for all to quality foodstuffs and a quality establishment where food can be obtained within a reasonable distance. To reach this goal in a rural setting, appropriate and economically feasible means of transportation will have to be provided, such as special- needs transportation and public transportation. We have public transportation in the region. But each year it has to fight for the money it needs because it is so hard to find grants and adequate funding. This is the reality of all community organizations that are trying to help the most disadvantaged in the population.
A system of tax incentives should also be established to encourage grocery stores in areas abandoned by the large supermarket chains.
Direct contact between producers and consumers should also be encouraged, by increasing the number of farmers' markets, for example. There should be a concerted political effort to encourage market gardeners to set up in the region and to help them sell their products. This would support diversified production through the development of a more producer-centred food distribution network.
The social dimension of personal food security is also real and must figure prominently in any government decision likely to affect the agricultural and agri-food sectors. Agriculture and those working in it must be valued more highly. Financing programs must be established that allow farms to be easily transferred to new owners, both inside and outside the family. Local purchasing must be encouraged and, if I may beat my own drum, there must be increased support for organizations providing front-line support and cooperative food programs to help people in need.
Dominique Bherer, Veterinarian: Welcome to Maniwaki. We may be poor but we are rich in natural beauty. I have been a veterinarian in the region for 35 years. I have met hundreds of farmers. In 1990, I wrote a piece that I am going to summarize for you about the concerns I had about the realities facing agriculture. To begin, I am going to talk about agriculture in general, not specific to the region, then I am going to talk about the forests.
With a friend, I am a member of a small organization called Forêt Vive. For seven years, we have patrolled the forest trying to stop companies destroying everything. Without success.
I am going to start with agriculture. In our view, if we want a rural development policy, only an increase in farm- gate prices can slow down urbanization by improving the incomes of country-dwellers who are underpaid everywhere. About half of humanity still lives on farms, putting them in the best position to achieve sustainable development. Agriculture takes up 40 per cent of the world's land and has had a major impact for centuries. An increase in prices is only possible by overturning government policies which keep farm prices artificially low because of the thousands of subsidies that are often hidden in transportation, exporting, the production of agricultural surpluses or in importing them from other countries. They are unfair and they are destabilizing because they favour large farms, the culture of export, the race for production. Surpluses that are often produced at a loss, while we could be producing wood, milk and free-range meat, are killing traditional agricultures by driving all prices down and by replacing human and animal foods.
So governments are not helping, they are not raising prices; they are waging a war of attrition against farms in their own country and in others, and commercial interests are reaping the benefits. The same policy in forestry and fishing means that subsidies go to the deep-sea fishing companies and the forestry companies that are paying for the resource.
A long-term rural policy is needed because the present urban and industrialized model, with less than 3 per cent of the population living on farms, cannot even sustain or feed those people or maintain the soil's fertility. We have a real food security problem. If transportation comes to a halt, everyone in our modern society starves, farmers first. The policy must bring producers and consumers together and must ensure that work in the country is remunerated just like work in the city. We must also increase the number of small farms specializing in agroforestry.
To reach these goals, we must first make sure that the policy deals directly with the price, the true cost of production. Presently, because of subsidies, are prices half of what they should be, or one third? We do not know. It is completely ridiculous. The price must be paid entirely by the marketplace by eliminating all tax and financial subsidies for transportation, export and production. Every subsidy lowers every price. Today, because of global trade, it lowers them everywhere in the world. When we subsidize the cod fishery, the price of wheat is indirectly driven down.
We must put animals back on the land and eliminate factory farming. By limiting the number of animals to those that the land can sustain, we would increase the number of farms threefold and we would eliminate excess manure and the costs of trucking it away. Corn is now being shipped from the United States to China to feed to pigs. If Dreyfus Commodities had to ship the manure back to Iowa, they would find the business much less profitable.
The main problem of factory farming is that the farms that produce the feed for the animals are worse off because they have no manure.
Ownership of land must be reserved for those who work it, because the best fertilizer is the shadow of the owner. It was Virgil who said that a couple of thousand years ago. Cleared land must be made available in tracts of limited size so that it can be bought by young farmers 30 and younger. At 30, you do not have a million dollars to put into a farm.
Arable land must be protected from erosion by paying attention to erosion indicators. In our latitudes, it takes 500 years to add an inch of soil, and 25 years of corn to destroy it. In some cases, it can be as little as five years. The politics of ethanol are not going to change that.
A good part of the $500 billion in subsidies worldwide is spent on practices that degrade the soil. Monoculture and factory farming surely take $400 billion of the $500 billion. Our genetic heritage must also be protected from GMOs. There once was a scientist who did not work for Monsanto; he travelled all around the world 60 or 70 years ago and found 90,000 different varieties of wheat in every little valley. This is what we are going to lose with GMOs. GMOs were shown to be toxic right off the bat by the first researcher to test them, a Scot. He fed them to rats, and to his great surprise, they got sick.
Soils that are most suited to agricultural and forest production must be preserved in perpetuity by zoning laws which even governments themselves cannot overturn. We cannot forgive those responsible for these losses that doom us all, and those who come after us, to work harder so that less fertile soil can be made to produce.
I would say that there is little hope of changing the situation, because it is in the interest of all the lobbyists, the real members of Parliament these days, to eliminate small producers here and elsewhere and to keep prices artificially low. Wholesalers, transportation companies, large producers, politicians themselves dream only of exports. The only hope that we see is that the environmental crisis will force governments to apply the user-pay principle.
As for the forest, the best thing that you can do is to protect it, because it is vital. In Quebec, there would be no agriculture without the forest. Farmers look to the forest for income. They get income from their woodlots. At present, the situation is exactly like in Indonesia, politicians hand over the forests and let them be razed and destroyed. We found a place that had been logged; 30 per cent of the soil and the new growth had been destroyed, just for one road. It is absolutely beyond the pale. I have been working with farmers since I started, and, for 35 years, they have been telling me: ``stop the destruction of the forests.'' We country folk try to tell politicians that, but our voice has never been heard.
I am going to let you hear from my friend from Kitigan Zibi, Fred McGregor.
[English]
Fred McGregor, as an individual: Good afternoon. I would like to welcome all the members to Kitigan Zibi territory. I am from the Kitigan Zibi community. How I got here is through Dominique. We have a friend in common, Mr. William Commanda and we discussed many things and one of them was forestry.
This is an interesting report, Understanding Freefall and the Challenge of the Rural Poor. When I look at my community, and the town of Maniwaki and the surrounding area and I look at what is happening around the world, it gets really interesting because I see that rural poverty is coming to many of the regions in Canada.
A lot of studies from the UN, UNESCO and the World Health Organization show that a good percentage of the population in the rural areas is moving into the urban areas. There is a net migration. I think within the next decade or so, that is going to be surpassed. The majority of the population will be in the urban areas and we are starting to see some of that.
One of the interesting things I am seeing in the rural area is that education is different from the urban, not up to par. Health care is a serious challenge. It is getting to be more and more of a serious challenge, in that it is very difficult to find a family doctor, let alone in Quebec. We have interprovincial jurisdictions which is a serious problem in the rural area.
Darlene Lannigan mentioned that when the economy slows down, we are seriously affected. For example in the forestry in Maniwaki, we see the welfare rise, but that is not discussed publicly. The other issue that is not discussed publicly is the increase in suicide, the increase in social violence within the families. It is not discussed, but it is one of the effects. Mental health issues are not discussed.
People say we could use the internet for education, but it is patchwork in rural areas. I live in a community where one third of the community has high speed, one third has telephones and the other third barely has telephone, let alone the internet. In this day and age, that is our reality in the rural area.
In the Canada Food Guide, you have low employment or no employment you cannot meet the Canada Food Guide like Fabienne Lachapelle said. You cannot meet it, you have a difficulty. With the low employment, the welfare that is there is still insufficient. That is a serious reality.
Earlier, a gentleman was talking about farmers in bad shape, cash-strapped, but they are still on the land. I am from an Aboriginal community and I see the same thing, we are still on the land but we do not have any money.
I quickly read the committee's report, which Dominique gave me. It says:
. . . rural municipalities are creatures of provincial governments and that provincial jurisdiction extends over health care, education, many forms of income assistance directly affecting rural communities and rural citizens.
That is nice to say, but when the federal government and the provincial government cannot agree on many things, guess who falls through the cracks. The answer is the rural areas, all the marginalized people.
It makes it very interesting now because we have a minority government. The minority government is moving very little right now and I do not expect to see anything being done.
One of the important things here in Maniwaki is forestry. The biggest market is the U.S. Right now, no one is discussing softwood lumber. The Americans do not want to sign for softwood lumber. They are just waiting. They can wait it out. What happens is we see the fallout in the forestry-related areas. We see what happens to the economy. We see what happens in all the situations. It is not getting any better; it seems to be getting worse.
Another thing is the politics. Maniwaki is a Liberal area. Any other region is either the PQ or the Bloc. Sometimes because of the politics, we get penalized or we get chided for that.
Gib mentioned that Quebec has a good social net. How long can Quebec hold that social net if it relies on this stuff like British Columbia relies on forestry? Quebec relies on forestry for hydroelectric power. What happens when the markets change?
[Translation]
Bernard Fortin, Representative, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, as an individual: Madam Chairman, I am a union representative. I have been president of my local at Bowater for 12 years. You have heard very high- quality presentations. So what I am going to do is a simple wrap-up, a summary of what was said today around the table.
You came to discuss rural poverty. I feel that you were given good input. I agree with this morning's witnesses, Ms. Julien and Mr. Dansereau and company. It is true that the forestry is in a major crisis. It is not going to improve anytime soon.
I am sorry but I have some bad news for you. I represent eight companies in my local. Of the eight companies, one, Atlas in Gracefield, closed a little more than a year ago. As of next week, its sister company, Atlas in Low, will belong to Commonwealth Plywood and will close for several months. Twenty-four jobs are affected. Uniboard, in Lac des Îles, over by Mont-Laurier, is going to close for six months minimum, 150 jobs. Max Meilleur is getting ready to close again. We do not yet know if it is a complete and final shutdown, but it is 140 jobs. They are part of my local here in Maniwaki. It is a real shame, but these workers are now in a crisis situation.
We have been discussing this with the FTQ for a long time, and are trying to look for solutions. We saw the crisis coming four or five years ago. We have held conferences. We warned members of the federal and provincial parliaments. We saw the crisis coming. When it hit, we were told: ``No one saw it coming'' We said ``No, hang on there, we saw it coming.'' We tried to find solutions to ward off the crisis. No one listened to us.
What I am asking you today, and Ms. Julien mentioned it too, is to build a bridge between the government and the industry in this time of crisis. But I am also proposing something else as a first step; when workers begin a job, they pay into the employment insurance scheme from the first day. When the time comes to get back what they have contributed, it takes a minimum of two weeks to find out if they are eligible. Then it takes another two weeks before they receive their first cheque, if they get a first cheque. Now we are up to a month. If this is the only support the family gets, whether it is a man or woman, it is a real shame, but look, they are a month behind. There are not many people who are able to have three months' savings at hand. Three months is the minimum you need in the bank to take care of all your payments, all your regular bills. Things like gas, electricity, food and housing. It is a minimum of three months. You need from $5,000 to $6,000. Not everyone has that amount. If you are a month behind, it is really difficult; the first to suffer will be the families, the children. We all understand what I mean. What I am proposing to the government is to change the law on employment insurance. Be the bridge. You must do it to help these families because the workers are in crisis and it is getting worse. We have to solve this.
It is true that, previously, there was some abuse on the workers' part. They went to work for three months, they got a year of unemployment, bingo, it was heaven. The government found out, and turned things around. I do not blame anyone, but now there is abuse from the other side.
I feel that elected people are smart enough now to find solutions by sitting down with people like those of us here today. This is a panel of real people, of workers. Let us sit down and find a way of coming up with a law. Of course, there will always be abuse on both sides. But if there is abuse, we can reduce it to a minimum. It is up to us to find the best way to arrange these laws so that they help the people who are paying into the pot. It has to be done, as quickly as possible, please, because we are in deep trouble. The crisis is getting worse and worse.
We can even go with the simplest solutions, if you like. Mr.Wayne Easter was talking about Prince Edward Island. This week I heard that potato producers were going to set limits for themselves so as not to produce too many potatoes because they would lose them otherwise. Those potatoes would end up as feed for livestock. So look, governments, the G8, come along and promise millions and millions of dollars to countries in difficulty. The government should help the potato farmers on PEI. Okay, you are saying, Fortin has potatoes for brains. Too simple. Help them to grow potatoes. The millions of dollars never get to Africa or Afghanistan. So send them potatoes since the money never gets there. Then bring the money you save here to the Gatineau Valley. If you do, I guarantee that our crisis will not last. That is for sure.
I am going to end by thanking you for having come here, and for having listened to us all. We have tourist facilities. We have a really lovely valley, with beautiful things to see. Everyone in the valley invites you to spend your holidays here. Come visit, and help us. Thank you very much.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you very much. This is precisely why we are having this town hall meeting at the end of our hearings. We have these meetings to be sure to hear all that the people have to say. Witnesses today are very much a part of the process.
Senator Segal: Mr. Drury, you spoke about Wayne Easter's reference to the farm price issue. Europeans pay a lot more for food, a lot more. They have very high demands in terms of quality. They are very concerned about GMOs and a whole bunch of related issues.
If we put policies in place to massively increase the cost of food so that the farmers got more, which I would not be opposed to, we would have to engage to assist the clientele of Ms. Lachapelle who are now having difficulty buying the food they need according to the Canadian Food Guide.
What is your view on that?
Mr. Drury: I think part of the problem with the farm net income crisis is not necessarily that there is not enough money in the food economy. There is a terrible distribution of that money. Right now, it is definitely not the farmer getting the bulk, yet he is putting in the most effort, the most investment. It appears that he does not even cover his cost of production. At the consumer level, they are paying I would not want to say through the nose, but they are paying enough already.
It is the distribution system, and this is where I agree with Mr. Wayne Easter. If you empower the farmers so they have a better negotiation with the distributors, the wholesalers and the retailers, that money will be better distributed without causing an increase of the consumer's price and Fabienne will still be able to feed her people.
[Translation]
Senator Segal: Ms. Lachapelle, that also applies to the other members of the panel who have told us about the quite serious problems they are facing. A number have suggested paying farmers and rural forestry workers a guaranteed income for what they do for the environment, using the example of countries like France or Germany.
In English, it is called —
[English]
— a basic income floor for environmental stewardship.
[Translation]
Looking at the various programs available to your clients, do you think that it would help to have a guaranteed income for everyone to solve their present problems here, even if it is someone who has been out of work for a time, or do you think that it would be best to work with the programs that you presently have and make them better?
Ms. Lachappelle: I think that I would work with the programs we presently have and make them better. I think that it is essential for the region to make sure that we are self-sufficient in food. At the moment, we still have a problem. If farmers' incomes are stabilized, we still have no market gardeners here. We have very few. So it is a problem. We have to work so that a region can support itself, we have to work to diversify our production so that people here can use what we produce. If we cut out transportation costs, prices would be much more affordable. That is where we start. We must cut transportation costs. At the moment, our work is here in the region.
My clients often no longer have any income, no longer have anything. My clients are people on welfare, on unemployment. Even those who are below the poverty line have to prove that they are really poor in order to qualify for the food that we prepare at l'Entraide de la Vallée. So we have to increase the number of jobs, but, like the forest, they are being cut. I feel that it is a vicious circle. What has happened is that the number of customers at the region's businesses has gone down and the number of customers at community organizations that help the most disadvantaged has gone up.
[English]
Senator Harb: We talk about government assistance to the farmers. One thing comes to mind and that is the mad cow disease a few years ago. There was pressure by the farming community on the Government of Canada to pitch in and the Government of Canada contributed a substantial amount of money supposedly to help the farming communities, only to find out in the end that the farmers did not get that money. The money ended up being channeled to some of these corporate boys.
When one would say there was a surplus of beef because nobody was eating the beef. The farmers were selling it at a very, very cheap price. As a consumer, you would think that benefit will trickle down. You would go to the shops to buy your beef and nothing changed. The consumer did not benefit from that; the farmer did not benefit, but somewhere, someone in the middle, was reaping the benefit.
What is important in a sense, whatever we do federally or provincially, is that we have a mechanism where it goes through the pipes all the way down to the people who should really be receiving that benefit. I think that is where we have the strangulation of the program that it is not coming down. Whenever we commit a lot of money, we hire a lot of bureaucrats in order to manage the money or we send it where it should not go in the first place.
Everyone who appeared before us talked about the poverty and about the problems, the lack of employment; it is all true. I am puzzled by the fact that Statistics Canada's report of 2006 indicated that you had a tremendous amount of growth to the tune of about 14 per cent. Normally, when there is economic depression and high unemployment the people leave the region to go to the urban setting. There is a reverse trend here. Can somebody tell me what is going on?
Mr. Bherer: It is because it is cheaper to live in the country. That is why even poor people from the city come to the country. In addition, many retirees come to live in their cottages. This could be an explanation. Some people have told me they moved from the city to live, for example, in Gracefield because it seemed to be cheaper or they have more access to health or social assistance.
Senator Harb: Is there a movement out of the town to the city? If we were to take those people out of the equation, is there an outflow of people in this region?
Mr. Bherer: Young people are going out to get work. A professor told us that in the next 15 years 1 million baby boomers will leave Montreal and buy cottages.
Mr. McGregor: To add to what Dominique is saying, you have an out-migration of youth but an in-migration of baby boomers. I do not think that has been looked at seriously. What is the discrepancy? What is the comparison of what is occurring?
Honourable senators, many of you are going to retire. You are in the baby boomer generation. You have dollars and you are definitely either staying within an urban setting or moving out to a cottage where you have always wanted to live.
What do you bring in? You bring in the RRSPs and all the rest with it. But in the rural area, all we see is the youth leaving for further training. What comes back in? I do not know what the difference is and how great the discrepancy. Is it negligible or is it considerable?
Statistics Canada is trying to look at the Aboriginal situation, trying to get a measure of the Aboriginal statistics. The joke here is that Statistics Canada always does its statistical reporting at the wrong time. You miss hockey tournaments and you miss powwows. That is when we have our biggest population. It is the running joke. But you have to think of the time you measure.
[Translation]
Mr. Fortin: Ten years ago, Maniwaki had a population of over 6,000. Today, it is about 4,000. So there really is a migration.
[English]
Mr. Drury: I come from the southern region where it is just the opposite. People are flocking out of the city to live in the country, not to work in the country or do any development in the country, but just to live in a nice place.
The Chairman: Thank you very much all of you. This is a great way to finish the day.
Fred, I agree with you completely about the Pow Wows. I am from Southwestern Alberta and very close to Treaty 7, surrounded by Treaty 7 and I am an Honorary Chief of the Kainai. I wish more Canadians could see those parts of the culture and the enthusiasm of the population on reserves. It is great.
Mr. McGregor: Just to add to what Mr. Fortin said, I think there was the issue of tourism. The mindset is there within the rural areas, particularly in the Maniwaki area. Everyone knows forestry is on the decline and we do not know how long it will remain. We have tourist events such as the powwow and the water events in the month of August. The powwow in our community fills up the town and the surrounding areas. We should look at those avenues and cooperate with each other to see what is possible.
The mindset in the rural area is self-sustainability. How to achieve it? I do not know how and I think we should look at it seriously. It was not alluded to in the report. I think the report is superficial. It does not go into a lot of the informal economies.
Another running joke in this region is the informal economy. When they deforest or they do not replant fast enough, the marijuana growers go in and they replant something else. You have that kind of informal economy, but then you have all the problems that go with it. You have an overload on the justice system. You have racism with the police in dealing with various cultures. The gentleman here alluded to one police force, one province and one country. Unfortunately, that is not the reality.
Darlene Lannigan mentioned the big rumble. The small little community of Maniwaki that has barely 6,000 people hit Global Television because there was a standoff in town. The rumble was drug-related, but there was also racism and all the other stuff. That is sad, but that is not only in Maniwaki. I think that is throughout rural Quebec, rural Ontario, rural Canada and it is a serious problem.
The Chairman: I agree with what you are saying. I should make a point that the report that you are reading was a very basic beginning. We had been pulling together some of the things that were coming up in other hearings. We decided that we had to do something more. So we started with that, with the ideas that are in there and the purpose of that was to lay the foundation for the tour that we are now close to completing. That has been to get out on the ground in every province and later in the territories of Canada so that we can hear it from you and not just in the buildings in Ottawa.
We have heard a lot from you today and it has been important. We thank you for coming. We thank you for your patience. Most importantly, we thank you for hanging in there because we, on our side, will do everything we possibly can to try and bring forward something that will in some way cause not just one government, but governments at every level, and the people of Canada at every level to understand that our agriculture community, our farmers and their families and the little towns that grow because of our agriculture community cannot be left on the sidelines.
We hope that we will have some effect in helping at least at the federal level when we have our final report out perhaps by the end of this year. You will certainly be part of it. I thank you all.
The committee adjourned.