Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue No. 42 - Evidence - Meeting of February 15, 2018
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 15, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:02 a.m. to study the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors; and in camera, for the consideration of a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Diane F. Griffin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. I’m Senator Diane Griffin from Prince Edward Island, chair of the committee. I’m going to start by asking the senators to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: I am Ghislain Maltais from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Doyle: Norman Doyle, Newfoundland and Labrador.
[Translation]
Senator Pratte: I am André Pratte from Quebec.
Senator Petitclerc: I am Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Bovey: Pat Bovey, Manitoba.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I am Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Mercer: Terry Mercer, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: Quite an assortment from across the country. A lot of people involved and interested.
Thank you for accepting our invitation to appear today. It’s great to have you. I will now invite the witness to make her presentation. I’m sure the clerk has mentioned to you it’s something in the range of seven to 10 minutes. We’ll follow that with questions and answers. The floor is yours.
Anja Geitmann, Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill University, as an individual: I thank you for having me here today.
[Translation]
You can ask me questions in French after my presentation, but I’ll be giving it in English, if I may.
[English]
I’m here to speak on behalf of one of eight agricultural faculties in Canada. Our own faculty has about 2,200 students and about 100 professors, many of whom do research related to agriculture and climate change. But I want to emphasize that, in Canada, we have a total of eight faculties of agriculture and five faculties of veterinary medicine. Together, we form what we currently still call the Association of Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, but we’re about to change the name to the Dean’s Council of Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Medicine.
This group represents more than 1,000 professors countrywide. At any given time, we have about 26,000 students enrolled. It’s quite a group and a significant number of qualified people and researchers. Very important, we train the future workforce that will work in this field.
I’ve learned that you have worked on the topic of the connection between climate change and agriculture for quite a while now, so no introduction is needed.
I would like to emphasize the dual role that agriculture plays in the context of climate change. On one hand, it is one of the major contributors to climate change. On the other hand, it is one of the major victims, so to speak, of climate change. These two sides need to be addressed by research, by better understanding what the complexities are.
The most difficult part is the complexity of the issue, and that is the intimidating part, too, for the general public. For the general public, unless I can say something is black or white, it’s really difficult to understand how many complexifying factors there are. There’s no doubt that climate change is happening, but how we deal with it and what implications it will have for agriculture and any other field is quite overwhelming for the general public. All we can do is try to continuously better understand what the implications are and how we can deal with it.
Research is in the business of trying to better understand. This is what we do all the time. Better understanding helps us to then actually make decisions that are evidence-based. This government is in the business of making decisions that are evidence-based, and we are in the business of producing that evidence. That is how we see our role.
I’ll just give you a few questions of things we need to better understand that research can contribute toward producing the evidence for, although you have heard many of those in the past weeks and months, I believe.
One set of questions is in the field of how we can mitigate and reduce the contribution of agriculture to the production of greenhouse gases and climate change. On the other side, we have a set of questions such as how can we anticipate the effects, and how can we increase resilience. That is the most important thing. What will be happening through climate change is weather that is more dramatic and unpredictable. We don’t know exactly how it will play out, but we do know we will have to increase resilience in the system.
I’ll start with a first few questions. I’m not going to answer them; I’m just going to tell you we will need the answers to these. For example, how can carbon and nitrogen flows be managed efficiently in order to reduce the production of greenhouse gases? Very concretely, what kind of forages will reduce the production of greenhouse gasses, and how will this depend on geographical location, type of livestock, et cetera? How can we change manure practices to optimize and, most importantly, minimize emission of greenhouse gases? What are the metabolic processes that can be manipulated in livestock and in new breeds in order to reduce that effect?
How do we need to treat our soil to make sure it remains a sink of carbon and does not become a source of carbon? Soil has the potential to be both. How we treat it will enormously affect the way in which it reacts, and climate temperature concretely will affect that also.
As scientists, we are mostly interested about producing these scientific data, but it shouldn’t end there, and it will not end there because we also have experts in calculating the effects. We need to also understand how any measures we and governments take or policies farmers and the industry will implement will actually affect the ability of farmers on the international market. Cost/benefit calculation is crucial. Otherwise, we will not be able to effect any change, because no farmer will be convinced by any measures that reduce their income.
That calculation and anticipatory modelling can be done by our researchers as well.
We need to make that cost calculation throughout the supply chain, from the farm but also including how measures taken have an effect on pollution and environmental cost at later stages. It’s very tempting to take measures that have immediate effects within the coming years — say, for instance, we’ll reduce emission of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent if we do this measure — but what collateral effects will that have if we look 50 years from now? If we don’t look at long-term effects — and politicians don’t necessarily look more than four years ahead, but this generation has a responsibility to look ahead more than one election period.
In order to anticipate this, we need people to actually calculate the effects and to model the effects. In order to do so, we need more data. These are pieces of evidence we need to obtain to determine measures to reduce the effects of agriculture on climate change.
On the other hand, in order to cope with what is going on — and it is inevitable that the climate will change — we need to build resilience. In order to do so, we need to better understand, for example, how our plant cultivars we use here react to the invading pathogens that will, without doubt, move northward. There are pathogens we don’t have yet because our climate is too cold that will come north.
It’s not sufficient to simply look 200 kilometres to the south and see what the U.S. does with certain pathogens, because our plants are different, our cultivars are different, our geography is different and our microclimate will be different, so we need to do the research ourselves. No other country will do the research relevant for this country because their geographical situation, livestock and plants are different — everything is different. We need to do the research ourselves.
How will we consolidate the need to feed the 9 billion people anticipated in the next couple of decades, the need for more efficiency in agriculture and more and higher production with the need to reduce the impact on climate? It’s very difficult. For that, again, we need data.
We also need to understand how the general population will respond to any measures. You heard about this, I believe, on Tuesday night. One measure that will be necessary is to rethink our consumption of meat. Meat, as we all know, not only wastes 15 or 20 times as many calories as the direct consumption of plant material does, but it also produces an incredible amount of greenhouse gases. Can we as a first world society continue the consumption of meat that we do currently while seeing the third world and developing countries wanting to do the same, with good reason?
We need to rethink the economy and we need to rethink what we focus on and we need to rethink how the consumer will react to any measures. And Canadian agriculture needs to anticipate this movement. We probably need to anticipate having to produce more protein from plant sources, for example.
Then there are these collateral effects. What will happen through changing climate to vector-borne diseases, for example, that affect our livestock directly and us indirectly? We need to anticipate that.
All that to illustrate that there are many questions for which we need answers in order to take measures that are based on solid information. To do so, we need support for research. Research in the agricultural field happens, of course, in the context of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and happens at the academic institutions in this country.
What we need is simply an increased amount of funding for research, and that applies to all research. The Naylor report has pronounced that very clearly. But we also need to look strategically at where we put those research dollars. The discipline of climate research in the context of agriculture needs to be one of the strategic funding opportunities for our researchers.
What is really important is that we need to think across conventional disciplines. Researchers have the tendency to be very siloed. They go very deep into one single problem, but they don’t have the tendency to reach out to other disciplines to actually work together.
That, unfortunately, is also a result of our funding system. We have these — I don’t want to say silos — but we have these subcategories identified in Canada as NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR, with good reason, of course, but it’s very difficult to get funding for multidisciplinary projects. Maybe a biologist wants to collaborate with an economist and a social scientist and get a policy-maker in.
Getting this funding for a multidisciplinary approach should be made much easier. What happens at the moment is that these interdisciplinary projects tend to fall through the cracks. NSERC says, “No, this is CIHR’s area,” but CIHR says it should be funded by NSERC, and in the end no one funds it. That needs to be addressed.
Finally, a plug simply for research infrastructure. The eight faculties of agriculture and the faculties of veterinary medicine in this country are globally housed in the oldest buildings of all the academic institutions. Their infrastructure is pretty much the oldest, and we simply cannot keep up internationally. More tragically, we cannot even keep up with what happens in the industry.
I get kids from farms coming to Macdonald Campus looking at our farm and wanting to learn. They’re coming to McGill University and wanting to learn what the standard of the industry is. They look at our farm and ask, “What did I come for? This is not what the industry standard is.” We need to supply these researchers with state-of-the-art equipment and investment that is strategic.
Finally, what has evolved over the past decade, and certainly under the previous government, is a tendency for research money to be given to research projects into which industry partners have to chip in. There’s good reason for that because, first of all, it ensures that a research project actually will have applications, eventually. Secondly, it ensures that the industry has skin in the game. There are good reasons for having this.
However, not all research can be funded with matching funds. I’ll give you an example. Thomas Edison would be unlikely to get funding from candle makers because he would put them out of business. The automobile would probably not have been invented with funding from horse breeders. True disruptive innovation is not made with industry matching funds. It is made within academia, so there must be funding for pure academic research in order to do what we do efficiently.
Thank you for listening.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Geitmann. We’re going to open it up to questions, starting with the deputy chair.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Welcome, Ms. Geitmann. It’s a privilege to have you here with us today. I would like to congratulate you for your phenomenal work in agricultural research.
I have two or three quick questions for you. Your faculty welcomes 26,000 students in its different research phases. Do you believe that this is enough for a country like Canada, which has 36 million people?
Ms. Geitmann: That is a very interesting question. Over the past decade, the number of students has gone up significantly, by approximately 1,000 students. We now have 2,200 students. There is a need and an interest. Once they graduate, our students find work very easily. In Quebec, we do not have a sufficient number of agronomists. There is very large demand for agronomists who can provide information to the agricultural industries. Clearly, we could increase the number of students.
With regard to our faculty, we do not have enough space to accommodate our 2,200 students. Some have to remain in the corridors. Our classrooms are always busy. We have the expertise, the professors and the will, but we simply cannot accept any more students, unfortunately.
Senator Maltais: You must expand.
Ms. Geitmann: Yes, with pleasure.
Senator Maltais: You raised a concern — and we’re currently studying the matter — with regard to how to feed future generations.
Canada is a vast country, with impressive agricultural land. It could be even larger, if we wanted it to be. As you said, eating habits have to change and this does not simply happen overnight. How can Canada move forward over the next 10 or 15 years with a view to better feeding the world while reducing pollution as much as possible?
Ms. Geitmann: That is a very complex question. We have the luxury of living in a country that has an abundance of both land and waterways. These are two factors that give us the possibility of increasing our agricultural output. We will benefit from the first stages of global warming, as we will have more usable land for agriculture.
We must make the most of this. We must ensure that we are leaders in developing technologies that reduce greenhouse gases as much as possible and in producing quality food. Food safety is a concern and we can play a key role in that area, as we have an exceptional quality control system. However, as a leader, Canada must export its expertise globally.
We will have to ask ourselves many questions about the matter.
Senator Maltais: Canada is world renowned in the field of traceability. Have we reached our full potential, or do we still have options to explore to guarantee that Canada will remain a leader and that the Canadian population will eat quality food?
Ms. Geitmann: We are far from having reached our full potential. There are so many new methods, including molecular farming, which helps with traceability. There is immense potential and opportunity. For example, we are able to produce fingerprints of each of our food products and so, in theory, we can ensure their traceability. We still need to develop a scalable affordable methodology. But our researchers are working on it. We can trace micro-organisms in nutrients, among other things. From the outset, we have the potential and the expertise. There are many expansion opportunities in this field and opportunities to export this expertise.
Senator Pratte: Thank you, Ms. Geitmann, for being here this morning. I’d like you to be a little more specific. I might ask you for some numbers that you may not have with you. If that’s the case, you can send the information to us at a later point.
As far as agri-food research in Canada is concerned, how much of that is dedicated to climate change? Is it a significant proportion?
Ms. Geitmann: It’s hard to answer that question because, in this context, researchers are in charge of projects that more or less have to do with climate change. It’s a matter of definition, which we could, however, review within our institutions.
At our faculty, we have an inventory of researchers. I can, with a single click, see who is working on projects that deal with water, with food safety or with climate change. I can get that information for every faculty. So it is possible to get an estimate.
That said, it’s obviously not just our faculties that are working on climate change. In the science faculties, in the departments of geography and biology, amongst others, researchers are working on those issues as well. So there is a certain amount of overlap in all of these faculties.
Senator Pratte: When you say there should be better communication between the researchers and the producers, who is in charge of that?
Ms. Geitmann: The United States has a system called land-grant universities, whereby a mandate and funding are given for an extension system. There are people at the university who transfer knowledge to the producers.
In Canada, it’s different. It varies depending on the province. In Quebec, this work is overseen by the MAPAQ, the ministry responsible for agriculture, fisheries and food. In Ontario, I believe it is the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs that is involved. The work is carried out by agronomists — who are often our graduates — working in institutions connected with the ministry.
Since these are all different institutions, there may not be direct communication between them, which has to be reciprocal. On the one hand, the data our researchers produce are published in articles that no producers will ever read. The data has to be turned into a white paper and policies to make a difference. On the other hand, it’s the same thing on the other side. Our researchers are not always in direct contact with industry to find out what the issues are. There could be better communication.
If funding was available to our researchers to encourage them to make those connections, it might make things easier. I’m not saying that there is no communication whatsoever. On the contrary, we have researchers and professors who have very good contact with industry. However, it’s not as automatic as it is in the United States, where there is a direct system of communication within the same institution. Since this is a provincial, and not a federal, matter, it’s necessary to look at the flow of information to see whether there is a way to facilitate and improve communication between researchers and the end users.
Senator Pratte: Since the beginning of our meetings on climate change and agriculture, I’ve been struck by the fact that those from the agricultural sector state, on the one hand, that they have always been guardians of the environment. They do not see themselves as greenhouse gas emitters, but rather as guardians of the environment. They state that they have always protected the environment. Then, on the other hand, faced with the climate change threat and its impact on production, they say that they have always been confronted with changes in nature, so they are not truly aware of the threat. It seems that they are not very concerned by this issue. What concerns them the most is the carbon tax.
Ms. Geitmann: We are just at the beginning of the climate change impacts. We haven’t yet seen the worst of them.
I will give you an example that does not come from the agricultural sector, but rather from the forestry sector: the emerald ash borer. When this creature is a threat to our gardens, it’s a problem. However, when it threatens the survival of our trees, it’s all of a sudden a tragedy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that producers are sticking their heads in the sand, but they are not aware of the immediate impact. That may be the problem.
Second of all, you stated that our farmers and producers are the guardians of our land. Indeed they are. At the same time, they have a great responsibility because they farm very large surface areas. Their actions have consequences. Everything they put in their fields will end up in the water system.
[English]
It’s a very big responsibility.
[Translation]
This responsibility cannot be placed on their shoulders alone. We must work with them to educate them on the effects of their activities on the St. Lawrence River. Lake Saint-Pierre has been greatly affected by agricultural phosphates.
Producers’ responsibility goes beyond their land. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s completely on them, but there is a much more significant impact. We have to send the message to farmers and producers, and we have to help them. I’m not blaming anyone. It’s a great responsibility that we all have to share.
Senator Pratte: Could you check with your colleagues the percentage of research that is focused on climate change? If our committee were to make a recommendation with regard to research budgets, this information would be useful to us. Thank you.
[English]
Senator Mercer: Dr. Geitmann, thank you very much for being here. It was very informative. You’ve posed a lot of questions, and we’re hoping to find some answers as well.
In all of those questions, what would your priority be? You’ve given us a great list of questions. What would the number one priority be?
Ms. Geitmann: That’s a really hard one.
Senator Mercer: And your faculty is listening.
Ms. Geitmann: Exactly. We have to think bigger than individual small questions because any small piece of research data will only be a drop in the bucket unless we see the big picture. It’s very tempting to say, okay, with this particular measure we could reduce this amount of carbon to be released and we are good for now. It’s really hard. We need to really look at the big picture and the longer term.
That is made really difficult because the predictions in terms of weather, to start with, are so variable. We don’t even know what’s really going to happen. What we do know is that things will be more erratic. We will have both more drought and more water, just at different times of the year, more irregularly. Both might be devastating. It cannot average out.
We need to anticipate that, build resilience and think globally. We need to get researchers out of their silos and try to get them to think that bigger picture, beyond their own really thrilling and interesting research projects. It’s about thinking in the bigger picture, getting the different disciplines and trying to model a bigger picture to predict what happens.
I’m not going to answer your question in the sense of choosing one project or the other. It needs to be a multi-pronged approach.
Senator Mercer: You fit right in here. We always have a lot of questions; seldom do we have a lot of answers.
The issue, though, is that the research done on your campus and other campuses across the country is extremely important. I notice that the Association of Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine is changing the name to be a little clearer. These are very important faculties on various campuses across the country.
As you continue to research — and we encourage you to continue the research — somewhere in the back of everybody’s mind has to be how we commercialize it. We only have to go to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation at the University of Wisconsin. The initials spell WARF, as in warfarin, and that’s where warfarin was invented and where they got their seed money to get their research going with the rat poison.
Is there coordination among the faculties of veterinary medicine and agriculture across the country so that as somebody gets closer, maybe at McGill, Guelph, Dalhousie or one of the other universities — is there coordination so that if we get a breakthrough, we’re prepared to commercialize it?
Yes, commercialization will have a major effect on the industry, but it will also have a major effect on research dollars available to the various faculties of agriculture and veterinary medicine across the country. We can’t miss that opportunity.
Ms. Geitmann: I can speak about my own faculty. We created an entrepreneurship program to train our students to think that way, to give them the skills beyond knowing how to pipette, how to use a microscope or how to acquire data in the field, to develop these skills to start up something that could be commercialized. We give them training. We even have a minor in that discipline. That’s one aspect.
The other is that we have an office of sponsored research that aids with the same, with intellectual property. Universities nowadays are very interested in promoting and getting not only professors but graduate students, and even undergraduate students, to translate their ideas into something applicable, changeable, something that can be commercialized.
Senator Mercer: One of the things you mentioned was the infrastructure on agricultural school campuses. Those of us who had the opportunity to visit a number of campuses can testify to the fact that the infrastructure is not in great shape. There hasn’t been a lot of money poured into agricultural schools or veterinary medicine schools in a number of years. You mentioned that students arrive and say, “I’ve got better equipment back on the farm at home.” It’s hard to train future farmers if we’re not giving them exposure to the best equipment.
Is that a result of the fact that many faculties of agriculture and veterinary medicine are not located on the main campuses of the universities? McGill is an example in that Macdonald College is outside the city in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, and Dalhousie’s isn’t in Halifax but in Truro, et cetera.
Ms. Geitmann: It may be a contributing factor, yes. Central administration is very easy to — I don’t want to say “overlook” — but to not look at that second campus, which a faculty of agriculture often is, as a primary point of investment.
Having said that, my own senior administration has definitely realized in recent years what they have in Macdonald College, in the campus, as being a jewel, not only in the faculty but as a green space. It’s one of the biggest green spaces in Montreal, as it includes the arboretum and waterfront properties.
There is the realization that investment needs to be done, but there are only so many dollars going around for capital projects, even with the recent investment. In the case of McGill, there’s the challenge of maintenance, not only on my campus but on the downtown campus as well.
Research infrastructure is directly linked to the availability of financial means to update these. Rarely are faculties of agriculture at the top of the list, yes.
Senator Mercer: My background is in fundraising, so I’m doing the linkage here. It’s difficult to convince Canadian industries, in particular, to engage and invest in research in Canadian universities unless they see — going back to my second question on commercialization — that out of this there is going to be a new warfarin or a new Pablum, like the SickKids hospital in Toronto was able to turn into a source of research funds.
Ms. Geitmann: These are underexploited opportunities. Sometimes industry has to have the long-term vision that nothing will come out within the next three years. It has to be a long-term vision, and the case for support has to be made. We’re often working with industry partners, but it’s often easier to get them to contribute to a concrete research project where we know we’ll have something for them in five years than to invest in a building where the earliest outcome could be in 10 years.
Getting funding for brick and mortar is the hardest part. I’m in the fundraising business as well, as a dean, and brick and mortar is truly difficult to fund, despite the fact that we offer the opportunity to put their names on the tops of our builds.
Senator Oh: Thank you, professor. It was a wonderful presentation. It was so clear to understand.
First, I would like to congratulate you on receiving the CFI funding last month on ECP3. It aims to develop new plant varieties, precision agricultural tools and management practices adapted to climate change in Eastern Canada.
Can you tell us more about this so-called best plant for a changing climate? How could it help to combat climate change?
Ms. Geitmann: I would be delighted to. I’m fortunate because our team recently obtained funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation — a significant amount that is shared between McGill University and Sherbrooke, between our faculty as well as the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science. With this funding, we want to acquire research infrastructure that allows us to build resilience. One of our questions I raised earlier was around how we will cope with increased pathogens coming into the country, as well as increased droughts, increased temperatures, changing CO2 and increased rainfalls at non-opportune times of the year. What kind of plants will allow us to cope with that, and what kinds of cultivars do we need to do so? In order to even start working on that, we need to look at understanding how plants do that.
I’m a cell biologist and a plant biologist. I try to understand how plants grow. It’s fundamental research. Plants grow by cell division, as we do, by the way, and we try to understand how plants grow bigger or taller and with bigger leaves, et cetera. These are the fundamental pieces of information we need to understand how yield is produced because yield is a direct result of plant growth.
Then we need to understand how plants defend themselves from pathogens. There are molecular mechanisms that some plants have and others don’t. Can we transfer that ability from one plant to another?
Let’s say a potato has that ability and corn doesn’t. Can we translate that gene into the other plant to allow that plant to defend itself without putting pesticides into the field? That’s the whole point, right? We want to reduce the amount of pesticides and fungicides we put into the field by enabling plants to defend themselves.
So this research infrastructure allows us, first, to understand how plants work, and the second thing is selecting new plant lines that are able to do what we want them to do. One of the instruments in this huge infrastructure will be equipment that automatically reads plants, so to speak. Not only does it measure how big it grows and how big the leaves are, but how much photosynthesis it does, how much carbon it stores, et cetera.
Not only does this machine do that in the lab — we have one where we have all these small plants going through it and pictures are taken and it’s all quantified — but we now have machines that do the same thing in the field. You can imagine a huge robot driving through the field and taking pictures of each single plant. We were able to do that experiment in the field under real environmental conditions. That’s one step.
Another important component of this is precision agriculture. You know what this is. For precision agriculture to work, we actually need to measure the conditions in the field: How much humidity is there? How many nutrients are there in that square metre, and how much is in the next square metre? How many weeds grow in that square metre?
We have the robot driving through the field, taking pictures and identifying, with artificial intelligence, that this is a weed and this is the cultivated plant I want and identifying in the field exactly what is happening. That method allows us, instead of just spraying pesticides all over the field, to get to just spraying at that precise location or even ripping out the weed we don’t want.
These methodologies enable us to produce cultivars adapted to a changing climate and identifying the methodology that will enable us to reduce the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, et cetera, we’re trying to adapt Eastern Canadian agriculture to a changing climate. You have to be regional in this. We have a totally different agriculture here than in the Prairies.
Senator Oh: Would these new plants be considered GMO?
Ms. Geitmann: It depends on how you produce them. Currently, it’s considered GMO if you take a gene from one plant and put it into another plant. You have probably heard about CRISPR-Cas9, which is a methodology that enables us to just modify genes already in the plant. It’s not generally considered GMO anymore because we’re not introducing a foreign gene into it.
We’re able to manipulate it, but it’s not a GMO anymore because the technology is such that the plant’s own gene is being used; it’s just modified. It’s the same as we would do with breeding. Conventional breeding methods do the same. We select plants that have been modified through the effect of UV light emitted by the sun, for example, and select the ones we want to have. We do the same in the lab, just faster.
Senator Oh: To follow up on Senator Mercer’s question, Canada has a lot of land. In your vision, do you think Canada is set up as a major centre for state-of-the-art infrastructure, building on future research?
Ms. Geitmann: Definitely. It’s a huge opportunity. The only answer I can give is yes. What we really need to do is that global thinking. We have to think beyond our own borders. We have that responsibility globally to think of the growing world population and to think not only about our own agricultural methods but also about what will happen, for example, in African countries.
Can we help develop methodology that can be applied there? I have researchers, for example, who look at irrigation methods. It’s a huge issue. How do we distribute water? If you use it on this field, you take it away from that lake. How do we work on that and optimize irrigation methods?
That applies here in certain areas, but also in other countries where the drought situation is worse. Having a state-of-the-art centre will be a game changer. We’re doing what we can. There are big centres in Saskatchewan, like the Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon that is being built. We have centres and excellent universities. What is lacking is just the state-of-the-art group that works on that very topic. Yes.
Senator Oh: Okay. We approve the building.
Ms. Geitmann: Okay. The cheque will be written at the end of the session, right?
The Chair: We would love to be able to help, that’s for sure.
Senator Bovey: I’m an interloper today sitting in for someone else, and I found this fascinating. I’m obviously from the West and have long ties with the University of Manitoba. I want to comment that perhaps our agricultural buildings are the oldest because so many of Canada’s universities were actually founded because of agriculture faculties. I’m going to say that like plants and their roots, the roots of academia in this country often started with agriculture.
Ms. Geitmann: Indeed.
Senator Bovey: I want to talk about collaborative research and research funding and ask one quick question. I know there are cross-research projects from university to university. Are there also cross-research projects with the federal experimental farms?
Ms. Geitmann: I believe there are. Individual researchers have these contacts. I would have to look up what we have in our concrete case.
Senator Bovey: I think that might be another approach.
Ms. Geitmann: Absolutely. Another thing we need to think about in terms of infrastructure, in order to not double up, which would be highly inefficient, is to look not only at academic institutions but also at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and CFIA, et cetera, to optimize access to research infrastructure. Rather than buying the same microscope, or whatever, for each campus, we should optimize access to the different facilities.
Senator Bovey: That brings me to dollars. You talked about research from the federal agencies and means and you talked about industry sponsorship of research.
I want to bring the provinces into this, which might be a dangerous thing to do. I worry about an uneven playing field in different parts of the country. If I may talk about Manitoba for a moment, I’m well versed in this issue. Manitoba’s government will only provide research funds where research funds have been given by the federal government. In Manitoba, if you look at the proportion of provincial funding to research overall, it’s less per student or per faculty member — whatever metric you want to use — than in many other provinces across the country.
Given that so many of you are doing important, forward-looking research that is reacting to and dealing with the future of societal issues, changing climates and environmental situations, is there a way, through the deans of your association, to help address these inequities so that researchers in every part of the country in these collaborative projects are able to work to the maximum?
Ms. Geitmann: This is an interesting question. In order to assess that, we would have to actually canvas the situation.
Although we meet twice a year and have monthly phone calls and constantly exchange on the federal funding situation, we don’t necessarily exchange on the funding in each province, because each of us deals with our own situation.
Quebec is the only province with two agricultural faculties; the other provinces only have one, if they have one at all. That would be an interesting situation to address. It could be addressed, definitely, in a working situation where we compare notes.
Senator Bovey: Madam Chair, if I can be this interloper, may I suggest this is probably a national topic to look at? I know from my experiences as a university board chair recently that we have looked at it as board chairs. It has been looked at by university presidents. I’m not aware in my work with this that it’s been done with the root faculties of so many universities, and you’re really dealing with the future in multiple dimensions. We have to find a way nationally for us all to step up to the plate.
Ms. Geitmann: Absolutely.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Ms. Geitmann, I would like to ask you whether you have conducted research on growing cannabis, but that will be for another day.
Amongst other things, you spoke about issues in knowledge transfer, which is a very important question. Now I don’t want to impart any bad intentions, but the desire to transfer knowledge implies the necessity to grant funding.
When you ask for funding, is there a waiting time? Must your research be validated before you receive funding assistance? Do you sometimes feel as though your findings aren’t conclusive enough to merit funding?
Ms. Geitmann: Are you asking me whether it’s necessary for a researcher to transfer knowledge?
Senator Dagenais: Exactly. You say that you have conducted research and that you need funding in order to continue your work. The person on the other end of the line tells you that your research must be validated in order to figure out whether it is eligible for funding.
Ms. Geitmann: Research validation is done on a peer basis. Funding is granted by the Quebec ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food and is evaluated by their staff, and not by peers. I’m unaware of the criteria that the ministry uses and whether the result of research must be applied for funding to be either granted or renewed. I could ask my colleagues whether they have experienced that. I’m unaware as to whether the situation has occurred before.
Senator Dagenais: You say that we need to change Canadians’ eating habits, for example, with regard to meat consumption, given the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. I imagine that this will be difficult because even with oil, people are told that they have to use less, but, at the same time, there have never been so many SUVs on our roads.
Unless we experience a severe crisis, it will be difficult to truly make us all aware of the repercussions. Have you developed a strategy with regard to the significant problem and the importance of changing our eating habits? Do you have anything that we could use as we draft our report?
Ms. Geitmann: It is very difficult to change people’s habits. It is also impossible to force them to change. We live in a country where people have a choice.
However, we can raise awareness and, at the very least, compel industry to justify the price of a product. The price of meat should take into account not only the producer’s costs, but also the environmental and pollution costs. If we include these factors in the price and we explain the reasons for this to Canadians, they will at least be aware that we have to make our choices taking into account all of these factors.
How can we do this without triggering a revolution? That is a difficult question. I’m not saying that we should all become vegans. The price of foods should take into account environmental, transport and greenhouse gas related costs. Those are the costs that we will have to pay. If we do not pay them, our children will have to. We must be aware that we have the choice, but we must make this choice fully conscious of contributing factors. It’s a very sensitive question.
[English]
Senator Doyle: Are we still clearing a lot of forest land in Canada for agricultural use, or do we think about that in terms of third world countries?
Ms. Geitmann: I don’t have numbers for Canada. I don’t believe it’s huge in Canada. It is huge worldwide, of course. If we think of South America and Brazil where we produce the livestock sold worldwide, that is a global problem rather than a very specifically Canadian one.
Senator Doyle: In your presentation, you asked this question: What are the long-term effects of measures in the short term to increase agricultural productivity? Could you be a little bit clearer about what you mean by that?
Ms. Geitmann: Yes. We realize that we have a growing world population. We need to produce more food, and, in a country such as Canada, we can. We have the surface.
In order to increase agricultural efficiency, the most rapid thing to do is to grow monocultures, huge fields, get the huge machinery to harvest this. In the short term, it’s great; we get much more yield. In the long term, what we are compromising is biodiversity. We are compromising the resilience in the long term because we reduce the number of insects by reducing the biodiversity in the plant system.
We have to reconcile our immediate tendency to increase production with the long-term effects on biodiversity and the environment because in the long term it will come back to haunt us. That requires not only agronomists but ecologists to think about the long-term effects. We have a tendency to think short term. We need to include people who have the ability to think beyond tomorrow and next year.
Senator Doyle: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: You spoke passionately about the research you have done. I would like to know whether you’re satisfied with the tools and, most importantly, with the independence and the latitude you’ve been given in terms of the choice of your research.
At one point, there was talk of industry having the power to decide. We heard from witnesses who talked about underfunding in terms of organic farming studies. Are you satisfied with the independence and freedom you’ve been given? Are your funding requests granted in accordance with the government’s priorities?
Ms. Geitmann: We always say that one of the advantages of working for an academic institution is the freedom to do what you want.
In practice, you can do research that you have obtained funding for. We try to sell our ideas to obtain the necessary funds to conduct our research, which is a limiting factor. If we find an industry partner who can help, that dictates the research project. It mustn’t steer the results of the project, of course, but it does determine the topic we’re working on. There are some clear limits: if we don’t have a research partner, we don’t have a project unless there’s a way to find federal or provincial funding.
The Canadian system, including the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or NSERC, is very good because it funds basic research projects through the Discovery Grants Program, which offers five-year funding for the completion of a research project.
Nevertheless, the funding is very limited, which is not the case abroad. A discovery grant from this program would allow me to employ one or two graduate students. This is very, very limited. I can never hire a group of 10 researchers with just my NSERC funding because it doesn’t go far enough.
Under the previous government, research funding remained relatively the same in terms of net value, but it was not indexed to inflation, which meant there was a net loss. It was quite dramatic if you compare the situation with what was happening south of the border and in Europe.
Senator Petitclerc: Would you go as far as to say that some necessary research you would like to conduct on climate change is not carried out?
Ms. Geitmann: Yes, absolutely. It is the limiting factor. We use our research grants to hire graduate students to do the research and to do postdoctoral studies. A little bit of the money goes towards buying chemicals, but most of the funding is used to pay people. The amount of funding received translates directly into the number of students we can hire and the research projects we can conduct.
Senator Maltais: By how much have your budgets increased over the past two years?
Ms. Geitmann: Our research budgets in general? Not by very much.
Senator Maltais: Not a significant amount?
Ms. Geitmann: No, not by a specific amount. Last year, we received no additional funding from NSERC. We were told that perhaps things would be better this year.
The government has good intentions. It has taken measures by creating the Chief Science Officer position and undertaking a federal review, culminating in the Naylor report, which I hope will lead to more funding for research.
Senator Maltais: What would help you most would be concrete measures?
Ms. Geitmann: Yes.
[English]
The Chair: I note that the name of your faculty is Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and it’s great to see it expressed that way. In so many ways, at your university and at Macdonald College, it was a long time before environmental sciences was actually included in the title.
Ms. Geitmann: Yes, indeed.
The Chair: It jives very nicely with the mandate of our committee, called Agriculture and Forestry, but it has so much to do with conservation in general. We have a big mandate also.
In your written statement, you mentioned that biodiversity and environment need to be conserved and reconciled with the need to expand large-scale farming. You’re talking about innovative measures to increase biodiversity. Then your final bullet says, “At a bigger scale, the same question arises: How connected do patches of forest or green spaces have to be to allow movement of species between them?” Can I get you to expand upon that? I know you asked it as a question, but now I’m asking it as a question.
Ms. Geitmann: I believe you already had Dr. Andrew Gonzalez here, and he must have talked about that. In order for animal species, insects, birds, et cetera, to move around, they need to be able to actually “cross the road,” so to speak. If that road is too large, you don’t get there. If forested areas are too far apart, they won’t be able to get there. If an isolated forested area is too small, then we have a limiting factor in terms of resilience.
This applies on a very small scale. Let’s say we have one agricultural field. If that field is larger than, say, 500 metres, the butterfly will not be able to go across. I’m pulling totally arbitrary examples, but you get the picture.
What we could do is plant small strips of wild flowers in between to make sure they can hop from one to the other. That applies within a field and within that half kilometre or two hectares of a field. That applies equally over a bigger ecosystem, where we have to ensure we have a distribution of land that allows connectivity between forested areas and between areas that house biodiversity and ensures the global biodiversity is maintained.
I believe Dr. Gonzalez will be able to speak to that in more detail; he’s much more qualified. But it is something to be considered in the bigger picture of land use. Ecosystems management is really important. When we think about how we use the land, how the land serves us and what kinds of effects we have on the land, agriculture is not the only use. We use land for leisure activities and for all kinds of things. How we use the land, while playing that role of stewardship of the land, is something we need to look at and for which we need data. We need to actually know how far that butterfly can fly.
The Chair: Thus the importance of research.
Ms. Geitmann: Indeed.
The Chair: Great. Thank you, Dr. Geitmann, for being here today. This has been interesting. There have been lots of great questions, so you know you’ve certainly stirred a lot of interest. On behalf of the committee, we sincerely thank you for appearing today.
Senators, if you’re in agreement, we’ll take a brief pause and then we’ll go in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)