THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 14, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 6:32 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada; and examine and report on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries, as well as rural and Indigenous communities, throughout the country; and, in camera, for consideration of a draft report.
Senator Mary Robinson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Mary Robinson, and I am chair of this committee. Welcome to members of the committee, our witnesses, as well as those watching this meeting online. I would like to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
Before we hear from our witnesses today, I would like to start by asking the senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator McNair: Senator McNair, New Brunswick. Welcome this evening.
Senator Burey: Hello. Senator Sharon Burey, Ontario.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory.
The Chair: I would like to ask all senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. I would also like to remind all those participating to refrain from switching languages mid-sentence and not to speak too quickly. Clear audio supports accurate interpretation, transcription and captioning.
Today, the committee is continuing its study on the role of agriculture and agri-food with regard to food security in Canada. We have the pleasure of welcoming the Honourable Senator Pat Duncan; Derrick Hastings, Farm Manager, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation; Randy Lamb, Agrologist, Agriculture Branch, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources from the Yukon Government; and Kari Johnston, Volunteer, Kluane Region Food Hamper Program.
Thank you all for joining us. We will begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from members. You will each have five minutes. I will signal that your time is running out by trying to get your attention, and I will do that when you have about one minute left. With that, we’re going to start with Senator Duncan. The floor is yours.
Hon. Pat Duncan: Good evening, Madam Chair.
Colleagues, I want to express my sincere thanks for the attention given by this committee to the very important issue of food security, most especially in rural and northern Canada.
The three territories are often referred to as “Canada’s Arctic.” Northern Canada extends from Iqaluit, Nunavut, in the east, to Grise Fiord, Nunavut, the northernmost community in Canada, to the Yukon, with Old Crow in the north, which is 100 kilometres from the Arctic Ocean, to Beaver Creek, bordering Alaska, and it’s the most westerly community in all of Canada.
To put your study in context, I was told during the Arctic Winter Games last month in Whitehorse that a bottle of ketchup in Whale Cove, Nunavut, on the coast of Hudson Bay, is priced at $39. I can buy that same bottle of ketchup in Whitehorse for $3.
The three territories are vastly different. The Yukon’s land, water and resources have been ably cared for by 14 Yukon First Nations for millennia, who have, in turn, welcomed for a number of generations the non-First Nations people who now call it home. No less than 11 of the 14 Yukon First Nations have attained self-government agreements with Canada and the Yukon.
Today, there are government-to-government-to-government relationships in the Yukon. First Nations govern with the Yukon Government on such matters as wildlife harvesting in their traditional territory. Canada, Yukon and First Nations, through the Yukon Environment and Socio-economic Assessment Board, govern on such matters relating to development and the environment.
Every community in the Yukon, except for Old Crow, is served by road access, notably the Alaska Highway. It is a major supply chain corridor connecting southern Canadians and Americans with Alaska.
My family moved to the Yukon in 1964. At that time, the food to feed our family of five children would come up that highway by truck as a “freezer order” from Edmonton. Other goods could be purchased from the Taylor and Drury store. These were general dry goods stores that served the territory dating back to the Klondike Gold Rush.
Many individuals, especially in Dawson City and Mayo, both further north in the Yukon, had gardens, and the Government of Canada operated an experimental farm outside of Haines Junction, on the traditional territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. Colleagues, that’s in southwestern Yukon, near present-day Kluane National Park.
The Government of Canada’s experimental farm near Haines Junction began operating in the 1940s and closed in 1970. Yukoners today continue to have their gardens, big and small. Notably, there is a community garden in Whitehorse that has existed since 1998, managed by the Downtown Urban Gardeners’ Society, or DUGS. Randy Lamb is most familiar with that.
In Central Yukon, near the Village of Mayo, the Minto Bridge Farm has served the community with farm gate produce for many years, particularly when the United Keno Hill Mine operated nearby.
Further north is Dawson City, the site of the Klondike Gold Rush. During that gold rush, it became the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco that was reportedly feeding itself. Dawson has a unique farming and soil history.
Derrick Hastings, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in farm manager, will provide more details on their work.
The Yukon has experienced a 27% increase in population over the past 10 years, and 80% of the 48,000 Yukoners live in Whitehorse. We are served by five grocery outlets, two owned by Loblaws, one by Sobeys and two smaller independent operations. The groceries in those stores still come up that Alaska Highway by truck.
Old Crow, home of the self-governing Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, with approximately 250 people, is the only community that receives the food subsidy program Nutrition North Canada.
Food availability is different throughout the territory. Kari Johnston, in this panel, will share her experiences, including the efforts of the Food Bank Society of the Yukon, about the challenges around food security in rural Yukon.
In Whitehorse, the Walmart opened in 2001, and although not a full grocery store with produce options, it’s a significant service centre for Yukoners, as well as our neighbours from southeast Alaska, Inuvik, Tsiigehtchic and Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, who use the Dempster Highway — Diefenbaker’s Roads to Resources — that are shared between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
In Whitehorse, the “Your Independent Grocer” store reflects a growing Yukon agriculture sector featuring locally sourced eggs, carrots, beets and potatoes available year-round when they don’t sell out.
Agricultural food production in the territory has grown — if you will forgive the pun — from 2% market share in 2015 to up to 7% in 2021.
Randy Lamb, agrologist with the Yukon Government’s Agriculture Branch and one of the founders of the Downtown Urban Garden Society, will provide you with the details.
Madam Chair, thank you again for the committee’s attention to this very important subject, and for the opportunity to put Northern Canada into context.
I would especially like to express my thanks to the Yukoners on the panel tonight. My fellow Yukoners are truly experts in this field. Thank you so much.
Derrick Hastings, Farm Manager, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation: Good afternoon and thank you for that opening, Senator Duncan. I appreciate being considered some sort of authority or some sort of professional in the field. I’ve been farming in the Yukon for about 20 years. I have been managing the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in for nine years.
The original goal of the farm was for food security, but also for youth training and youth employment and development, but it has morphed over the years into a broader-based approach: a social enterprise. During the pandemic, we offered a place to host social engagement that still abided by social distancing and that provided for a lot of wellness opportunities. I think that opened our eyes to the idea of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in farm as a social enterprise. We have developed micro-businesses within the model, but in its broader importance, it’s about serving the people. We were under the Wellness Department for quite a few years, and now we’re under the Governance and Executive Operations branch of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nations.
We are very optimistic, and we work together. I’m not Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, or TH, but I work with seven other individuals who are all TH citizens, and we are working toward long-term food sovereignty for the nation. We consider food security as national security, and, in this case, First Nation national security. It’s for their people, it’s for their future and the infrastructure we’re putting together is to lay a foundation so that youth can succeed in their goals in agriculture, whatever those might be. They will design the future, and we just recently have implemented a farm advisory committee that’s led by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens that will set forth the path for the farm so it’s no longer just somebody from outside the community and myself, outside of the First Nations community, dictating the results. It’s going to be citizen-driven and consensus-based, and we’re hoping to produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of food for the most vulnerable citizens and for the people who want to contribute to the cost-recovery model that we’ve set up as our method of distribution.
I hope that is a good opening.
The Chair: Great opening. Thank you, Mr. Hastings. Next we will go to Mr. Lamb.
Randy Lamb, Agrologist, Agriculture Branch, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Government of Yukon: Good evening, committee members.
My name is Randy Lamb, and I have worked as an agrologist with the Yukon Government Agriculture Branch for about 10 years. I first started working for Yukon Agriculture in the early 1990s. Over that time, I have observed significant changes in our level of food self-sufficiency, which directly relates to the committee’s study on food security.
The challenges to agricultural production in the Yukon are well known. These include cold and often poorly developed soils, short growing seasons, a semi-arid climate in southern Yukon and long distances to markets and supplies. Being north of 60, the Yukon is vulnerable to transportation and supply chain disruptions. This was clearly demonstrated in 2012, when flooding damaged the Alaska Highway and as a result, grocery store shelves were bare within days. That highlighted the importance of local food production for food security.
Despite these challenges, Yukon agriculture has made meaningful progress over the last 30 years. Three main factors have worked together to contribute to this progress. Those are a series of government policies to help guide and strengthen Yukon agriculture, a series of federal-territorial funding assistance programs, which have provided critical support to Yukon farmers, the agriculture industry, First Nation and NGO projects, and there are emerging opportunities related to climate, including longer growing seasons and the ability to produce crops not previously possible here, such as grains and oil seeds like canola.
Self-sufficiency levels are not routinely tracked by the Yukon Agriculture Branch. However, we have two available reference points that indicate substantial progress. A 2010 Yukon food system report was quoted in a Kwantlen Polytechnic University report that only 1% to 2% of food consumed in the territory was produced locally. A more recent review conducted in 2020 by the Yukon Agriculture Branch estimated Yukon’s agricultural self-sufficiency at approximately 4% to 8% depending on the methodology. This suggests that local food production has roughly increased by three to four times in the last 10 to 15 years.
Some extra details in these three contributing factors are 2020 agriculture policy: cultivating our future, which sets our direction on agriculture for the next decade. It builds on the earlier 2006 Yukon Agriculture Policy and the 2016 Local Food Strategy for Yukon. Our current policy has specific sections on First Nations agriculture and climate change, among other programs.
Funding programs, such as the current Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, are a fantastic addition to Yukon agriculture. They support environmental best-management practices, equipment-efficiency upgrades as well as programs on First Nations and community agriculture, and more.
Climate change opportunities have been well documented. Our annual average temperature has warmed by two degrees over the last 50 years. This has been found by recent studies. I have references for all these documents as well. I can add those later.
The results of this are a growing season that is now approximately a week or longer in some regions of the Yukon and an increase in annual precipitation by about 6%.
This has caused changes in production levels and crop types in the Yukon, and these are reflected in our state-of-the-industry reports, which is based on the Agriculture Census of Canada numbers.
For quick reference, in 1990, most of the crops in the Yukon were hay grass — half to three quarters — because they perform well under these challenging conditions. In 1992-93, our farmland inventory showed 700 hectares of forages and 18 hectares of vegetables. There is a trend starting here. From 2000 to 2001, there was a reported 2,000-plus hectares of forages and 23 hectares of vegetables.
From 2005 to 2007, our hay grass production was now less than half of gross farm income at 43%, and in 2011 to 2016 reporting, there were 142 farms reported in Yukon with $4.3 million in total gross receipts.
Historically, hay and forage crops dominated Yukon agriculture. But over time, the sector has developed further land and diversified significantly. Census and Yukon data show steady growth in farmland, farm revenues and the number of farms.
In the last decade, in particular, several developments have contributed to increased self-sufficiency. These included expanded vegetable and grain production supported by modern vegetable storage infrastructure, a 500-tonne storage facility, and a high-tech greenhouse upgraded in 2017, supplying fresh produce nearly year-round. We now have local grain farmers milling flour into retail food products available in grocery stores, increased egg production through modern grading and barn facilities, and steady growth in local meat production. We have also certified organic market gardens that have expanded into greenhouse investments, supplying farmers’ markets, grocery stores and restaurants.
We continue to face real and ongoing challenges. Strategic policy support, targeted funding programs and changing climate conditions have together enabled significant gains in food self‑sufficiency. These gains demonstrate the important role that agriculture can play in strengthening our food production and food security in northern Canada.
As I mentioned before, I have a lot of reference documents, and I could submit those as well if people want to check out the web links.
The Chair: Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Lamb.
Our last witness is Ms. Johnston. The floor is yours.
Kari Johnston, Volunteer, Kluane Region Food Hamper Program, as an individual: Thank you, chair and honourable members of the committee. My name is Kari Johnston, and I am here today as a volunteer for the Kluane Region Food Hamper Program.
I live in beautiful Dakwäkäda Haines Junction, on the traditional territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. I’m also a hobby farmer. My family and I keep chickens, tend a large garden and are very slowly converting boreal forest to pasture. I have owned and operated a farm‑to‑table catering company as well in my small town.
For my nine-to-five, I serve as the CEO of Sha Shäw Corporation, the community development business entity of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. Our food hamper program started at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. We didn’t expect to still be running it five years later, but it is, and it’s growing. Today, we serve a conservative estimate of 25% of households in Kluane region every single month. In collaboration with the Food Bank Society of Yukon, we’re spending between $15,000 to $20,000 a month doing so.
For those unfamiliar with our region, Kluane region sits at the southwest corner of the Yukon. We’re a collection of about nine small, dispersed and isolated communities. Haines Junction, our largest community, sits about 160 kilometres west of Whitehorse, and communities like Beaver Creek are nearly 300 kilometres farther northwest.
We’re connected by a single highway corridor that closes in storms, wildfires and ice, and on top of that, our highways are buckling, bending and sinking due to permafrost.
This committee knows the strategic importance of the North. When northern communities are food insecure and southern supply chain dependent, that’s not just a humanitarian concern; it’s a structural weakness. Investing in northern food security is investing in the strength and resilience of Canada itself.
When the Alaska Highway was built in 1942, a massive urgent investment in the midst of World War II, it was quickly followed by an investment in the establishment of the Pine Creek Experimental Farm just outside of Haines Junction. The federal government of that era understood that securing the North meant that investing in the capacity of northern communities was required to feed themselves, and that same vision is needed today.
I know Nutrition North Canada is currently under review, and from my vantage, I’d love to see more northern communities included, perhaps all zone A communities as defined by the Northern Residency Deduction, and at a minimum, I would ask that we include the Harvester Support Grant for those communities. At the very least, I ask that Beaver Creek and Ross River be included — two of the most isolated communities in the Yukon.
We are building solutions in our community. At Sha Shäw Corporation, we are developing a modular food hub with Food Banks Canada, five sea cans being converted into food security infrastructure. Those five sea cans will house a hydroponic growing unit, a rentable commercial kitchen for small businesses, a rentable butchery for local and wild farm meat production, frozen food and root crop storage, and a permanent purpose-built home for our food bank.
We’re partnered with the National Research Council of Canada and will advance their work on growing wild strawberries and Arctic raspberries hydroponically. This is all made possible by a $1.1-million investment from Food Banks Canada and $375,000 over three years with the National Research Council.
This design will be open source, and engineered plans will be shared with Food Banks Canada’s vast network. It’s built in sea cans so that it can travel to the next community when we outgrow it.
Underlying all of our work is a business model centred on entrepreneurship, not dependency, which brings me to what I believe is the deeper work. Today, I’m asking that we consider expanding not just subsidies but also advocate for grants and investment in infrastructure and entrepreneurship. The Champagne and Aishihik First Nations have shown what is possible in our community. Their economic development policies, including wage-matching and equity-matching programs, are the gold standard or Yukon Indigenous-led business development. With these policies in place, we’ve seen dramatic growth in the number of citizen-owned businesses, and several of those are in the food industry. But what we know is missing is commercial infrastructure for those businesses to grow, and we have to be really realistic about the cost of commercial construction in the North. We have housing subsidies to support affordable housing, and that matters, but commercial construction costs in the North are higher than residential, and we need investment there, too, because without physical infrastructure for commercial development, our policies can only go so far.
So I leave with five requests: First, we include zone A communities in Nutrition North. If not the full subsidy, then the Harvesters Support Grant, and at a minimum, Beaver Creek and Ross River. Second, we index the northern residency deduction. It hasn’t changed since 2016, and the cost of living in the North is dramatically increasing. Third, we ensure that food security, agricultural support and infrastructure programs are open for all Indigenous development corporations, regardless of whether they’re structured as an NGO or a for-profit corporation. Fourth, we invest in business development funding for rural northern communities for business planning and business coaching, which is absolutely essential, marketing support and equity matching. Fifth, we have commercial construction grants for rural northern agricultural production. Housing subsidies exist, but we need more business infrastructure investment.
Thank you very much for your time.
The Chair: Thank you. I’m trying to write down your five requests. That was a lot. Thank you. I like a to-do list. It makes it easier. Thank you all.
We’re now going to proceed with questions from senators. Senators will have five minutes for their questions and your answers.
Senator McNair: Thank you to the witnesses for being here tonight, including our Senator Duncan. It’s nice to see her on the other side of the table.
In testimony before our committee on November 20, 2025, Georgina Lloyd, the ADM for Northern Affairs Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, said the following about Nutrition North Canada:
Since Nutrition North Canada began, the number of communities benefiting from the subsidy program has grown from 79 to 124 across Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador. A key element of eligibility in the program is communities that lack a year-round road, rail system or marine access. The uptake and use of the subsidy program are now at unprecedented levels. Subsidy rates have increased by over 50% since 2011, and while the program is lowering the cost of some grocery items by as much as 76%, overall food affordability continues to be a real challenge.
I’m curious to know the following. Do you agree with those statements? Maybe you could explain specifically what the food access and food affordability challenges that people face in Yukon are. Kari, you have already touched on some of this. Also, what work is being done to overcome these challenges? Lastly, how should the federal government better address these challenges in Yukon?
Senator Duncan, we will start with you, and you can direct where you think others may join in.
Senator Duncan: Thank you for the question. I certainly agree with your point that Kari has started to address this.
I think there are a couple of points to recognize. I mentioned the price of groceries in Whitehorse, but we have to remember that Whitehorse is not the whole Yukon. While we have access to locally grown items in many of the communities, they are more expensive than they are in the grocery store, and for good reason: food production costs are higher. Yukoners choose to pay that amount when they can, but Yukoners have seen, as all of Canada has seen, an increasing use of food banks, exponentially, and Whitehorse has seen that as well. Kari can speak to that as well.
One of the key points of the program is that it says that eligibility in the program is communities that lack year-round road, rail or marine access.
That’s a bit of a misnomer, because the Alaska Highway goes to Beaver Creek, but the nearest grocery store really is in Whitehorse, so in any of the other rural communities, you’ve got to factor in the cost of gas and time going to Whitehorse. That’s why it really has to be recognized in rural Canada. Eligibility in these programs has to have a real understanding of what rural Canada means and the cost of groceries. As I said, Kari is better able to address this as well in terms of her work with the food banks.
Senator McNair: Kari, is there anything you want to add?
Ms. Johnston: Thank you very much for the thoughtful question. So, yes, access to Nutrition North has expanded but still only Old Crow is the only Yukon community that is eligible. I hope I painted a bit of a picture of the conditions of the highways in our Yukon communities. In particular, those highways going to Beaver Creek and Ross River are in very poor repair. I also note that our population is aging quite significantly, and the cost of driving to Whitehorse, the mileage, the cost of fuel, the time and safety as we age, commuting on those roads gets pretty significant and not to be thought of lightly.
So although we have roads, they’re not great and they’re getting worse, especially the road to Beaver Creek.
The freight subsidy is of critical importance in the Nutrition North Canada Program. As I said at the board table with the other First Nation Development Corporations, they operate grocery stores, many of them, and we talk about where costs are rising, and freight is a huge portion of that.
The other piece around that is the harvesters subsistence support grant, which many nations and communities that are able to access speak very favourably about. What can be included in there, to my understanding, is the ability to provide some operating costs for the operations of community greenhouses. And those operating costs are extremely expensive, as we see the cost of energy rising in the North as well.
So, yes, there is the freight subsidy, but there are other components to the Nutrition North Program that could enable the operation of infrastructure that can be grown to support local food production in our communities. I will end it there. Thank you.
Senator McBean: I have really appreciated the sort of entrepreneurial sort of “can do,” “get it done,” attitude. It makes me really value my Yukon-made hoodie that I got last month at the Arctic Winter Games.
Maybe I can start with you, Mr. Hastings. I recently read an article speaking about how Alaska has a grower’s expo. What struck me in your testimony is how the farm started from youth training and employment, and it grew from there in an educational way.
Are you invited to take place in this grower’s expo? It seems they are also discussing things like food security and food independence.
Mr. Hastings: Yes, that circumpolar agriculture community does work together, although not enough, in my opinion. It is also at inopportune times. Most of the gatherings are in the fall or the spring. Any time is really busy, honestly. Again, it gets busier.
Most of the people that I work with here are farmers in denial. They are more like jack-of-all-trades types. They identify as carpenters or mechanics, or a number of different skills that are required in farming such as refrigeration technicians.
I was speaking to quite a few people this week when I said I was speaking at the Senate, and everyone had their opinion to express.
Farming is not considered a Red Seal trade, by any stretch of the imagination. I think that diminishes the importance of it at times. I have a list of Red Seal trades on the fridge at the farm that youth can see and endeavour to take on. They can be bakers or a number of other professions related to food, but farming is not one of them. Farming has a number of transferable skills. I would like to attend an expo where that type of information exchange is taking place.
Last year, we hosted a food security gathering of 150 people from across Canada. We showed off what we were doing and discussed with a number of people what they do in their communities. We’re trying our best to be a part of that conversation. We are also involved with Food Banks Canada.
I think my goal in the Yukon here is less about relying on food banks, less about relying on external supply chains for our security and trying to develop skill sets, and understanding that it can be done, it has been done, and people have subsisted here for tens of thousands of years. So it is within the opportunity.
It is just how you engage and discipline your mind to express that daily and provide for your needs and the needs of your people. When you do that, it leads to a broader advantage.
The North has a lot of problems, and it brings about wellness, you know, a hopeful embrace for the next season. Even through all the disasters that may and have occurred, such as flooding, fires and wildlife interactions with our livestock, I think we have a very resilient people here, and that will lead to that knowledge transfer.
Traditionally, that’s how First Nations have engaged in communication over the generations, through stories, et cetera. I hope that answers your question.
Senator McBean: It does, thanks.
Ms. Johnson, did you have anything to add to knowledge transfer and sharing information in the circumpolar area?
Ms. Johnston: Thank you, Senator. I just sent myself a reminder to send some of the Tlingit seed potatoes to Mr. Hastings for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Farm. I had forgotten, and we talked about that at the last food security conference.
There is some organizing happening. It’s my understanding that the next food security conference is being planned for my community, not this summer, but the following summer. We’re excited to welcome northerners and Yukoners to that event when it happens.
I think we’re getting more organized. We’re getting better at trading. We have periods of high activity in farming and food security, and then our winter lull in the North. But I think we’re getting better organized at that sort of thing.
There’s still certainly work to do. One of the things that we struggle with is capacity. You build something and then somebody else moves or they find a new opportunity, because there’s really a 0% unemployed rate here in the territory oftentimes. People are often able to move around to different opportunities quite quickly.
I think we’re lucky that we have wonderful community members who continue to support the work we’re doing in our community with the food hamper program.
I echo what Mr. Hastings was saying. We really don’t want to run the food hamper program for the rest of our lives. It was something we started because of the pandemic, and it uncovered a really significant need in our communities, but we don’t want to do this forever.
When we survey and connect with the community, asking what people are looking for in our communities, they are asking for larger grocery stores, more selection and better price points, but they’re really asking for locally grown food. It’s what people want. They want the security that we’re doing it here. They want to buy a tomato that’s not just grown in Whitehorse. They want to buy a tomato that was grown in Haines Junction. That’s what we’re aiming to do.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. I will start with Mr. Lamb. I’m going to ask you to expand a bit further on your comments from earlier. Could you expand on the research and work done regarding the challenges of growing food in the Yukon and how those challenges get put into play with the government’s local food strategy? From your perspective — and I think you’ve touched on this, but please expand on it — how does research or applied agriculture work better to connect with community-level food needs, particularly in these remote areas?
Mr. Lamb: Good questions. I will throw in that the local food strategy was a five-year strategy, and at the end of it, most of the initiatives rolled into our 2020 ag policy, so they are still current.
We have supported community knowledge where possible. For example, every year for the last 20 years, we have been working with Yukon University to have the annual Yukon Master Gardener program, which is a month-long course in February, and people get a certificate. We have people locally and from the communities. It is sold out every year. It’s very popular.
Plus, the Yukon government has a small research and demonstration farm. It is only about four or five acres, but we have demonstration crops on new varieties of grains, vegetables or oilseeds. We have an education component where, every year, grade 1 students, high school students and youth groups come out, plant crops and learn about what we are doing.
We have an annual agriculture demonstration day, which pales in comparison to Alaska’s expo. Sometimes, we have a dozen people show up. Sometimes, 100 people show up. We showcase what can be grown. You never know what will be a hit, but we also showcase new techniques, greenhouse-gas-related best management practices and efficiency practices. We teach people by letting them see and ask questions, so that helps out quite a bit.
As Senator Duncan mentioned, I have been heading up the Whitehorse Community Garden for, well, over 20 years now. It’s one of my passions. It is a bigger community garden. It has 75 to 85 raised garden beds, and we have workshops there because backyard production and community garden production are quite large. We usually run a plant-a-row, grow-a-row program, but one year we documented 1,400 pounds of surplus food donated to food groups in Whitehorse. We do not do that every year, but we do work with different NGOs, the Whitehorse food bank some years and the Golden Age Society to get the surplus food out to people in addition to what people grow for themselves. It is ongoing.
Related to the previous question about the Circumpolar Agriculture Association, I was lucky enough to go to the conference held last September in Tromsø, Norway, and ironically, it was a great place to link up with our Alaskan counterparts and our Newfoundland counterparts. We do try to work together on research projects. We had a three-year trial with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Newfoundland research centre a few years ago, and we are starting a new project with the Kentville Research Station on Indigenous berry crops, and that will run for several years as well. We are trying to get out there as much as possible.
Senator Sorensen: I was going to ask Ms. Johnston a question, but I have one minute. Rather than asking the question, I’d like to make a comment. You had so much information about what needs to be done, really, at our level, and I know that the chair was scratching notes down. I was not, so my question was going to be, can you give us the top three? We’re recording. We will be able to hear it again. There were just so many great suggestions. I did not grab them all, so I would love to hear the top three, whether in another question or in writing later.
I would be remiss if I did not say I am coming to the Yukon this summer, Whitehorse, Haines Junction and Dawson City. I may ask Senator Duncan to help me find some of you when I am there because it would be great to meet you in person. I am totally intrigued by your farm, Mr. Hastings. I just do not have enough time to ask you any more questions, so I will just come and see it.
The Chair: I have to say, I’m pretty sure someone said One Health, and I’m pretty sure I saw someone write something down.
Senator Burey: I think it was a great segue. First of all, I just want to thank all of you for being here and our colleague Senator Duncan for insisting that we need to hear this and for bringing the gang here. We are thrilled.
I was so thrilled to hear about One Health, but I had already been crafting a question about the whole-of-society approach, and I was really, truly intrigued by how, Mr. Hastings, you spoke about what started out as food security ended up as food independence, social entrepreneurship, a wellness opportunity and business development, which really tied into the whole thing that we are doing with this food security issue, and how important it is, as you said, Ms. Johnston, to Arctic security.
I was also intrigued, Mr. Lamb, when you talked about the drivers of this change, which were your policies, funding assistance and emerging opportunities. I would like you to expand on anything else that you want because you have said so much. There are so many interesting things, but I would really like you to expand more. If you wanted, could you tell us more about training opportunities, any ideas for business development, things that you are doing or some of the other research that you are doing? Could you expand on those three areas?
Mr. Lamb: Absolutely. There is so much more to talk about. Let’s see. I could talk about some of the current levels of production at that vegetable storage facility that received some funding assistance through our federal-territorial funding program. They have carrots available in grocery stores until this time of year, April. They’ll have potatoes available in the retail stores, and these are some of the bigger stores, into June, and then they run a bit low at that point. It’s been an issue to keep things stable and stored. Everyone has potatoes in the fall, but only one farm has proper storage.
Usually, my background is a field of flowering canola that looks like Manitoba. Our local farmer sometimes has up to 50 acres of canola. There are vegetable fields. I did some quick work on Google Earth. Their vegetable fields each year are about 40 to 45 hectares, and when they say, we’re going to try an experiment with parsnips this year; we put in six rows — that’s six and a half thousand feet of parsnips. Some years, they have suey choy. They grow garlic, and they do the canola as well.
Senator Duncan can attest to the flour mill products up here. Not only do they produce flour, but they do baking mixes and cereals like Cheerios but they call them Yukon-Os. Maybe you will see them around the Senate if you have not already. They have one-bite brownies made with local grain. The list goes on. It is amazing what has happened in the last 10 years, especially. It’s huge.
As for the research projects we’re doing, we do more demonstration projects, but we have linkages with other universities and other research facilities, such as, as I mentioned, the Kentville Research Station in Nova Scotia, who reached out to us. We are eager to take on partnerships and to trial things up here, and we frequently get requests like, “Could you test these new potato varieties for us or these new barley or wheat varieties for us?” So things have really changed, and the opportunities to grow grains, like barley and winter wheat. It is great. I can go on and on.
Ms. Johnston: I would echo what Randy was saying and mention the importance of why we’re building food-processing and storage infrastructure in our community. One of the things that we saw with the food hamper program and sitting at interagency and it is early days was all of this harvest comes in, in the fall. Our community members then get totally overwhelmed with trying to process, store, eat and consume what comes in, in the midst of going back to school, hunting season and all these things.
It is being able to store food as a community and move it into community throughout the years so that it does not come in as massive volumes. That’s one of the things that we are really excited to work on with our food hamper projects.
Also, the Cereal O’s are really good. I really recommend the raspberry kind for a pickup snack during the day.
The Chair: I can attest to those one-bite brownies, because I had the pleasure of visiting Senator Duncan. We toured around, and I am trying to remember which of you I might have met. We did have some of the one-bite brownies. I also think we went home with barley tea. It was some kind of tea, I think. Regardless, there were all kinds of interesting things growing there.
I wanted to ask a few questions. I remember Senator Duncan talking to me about the challenges of slaughter and abattoirs. I’m from Prince Edward Island, and we have the ability, provincially, to have provincially inspected meat. We have one plant in Atlantic Canada, east of Montreal; there is only one plant, and it’s in my backyard. That one does federally inspected meat.
I wonder if any of you could speak to the challenges of the process of slaughtering meat, having it safe and being able to sell it in the Yukon.
I also wanted to ask you something else. This committee has heard testimony from a business that has containers and they do contain hydroponics — leafy greens, predominantly. Do you have experience with that? Is it at all practical? Are you seeing it used, and is it something to look at?
Kari, if there is any time left, I would love for you to explain to us in broad strokes the timeline of what it means to reclaim land. I think it was you who said you were reclaiming land. What is involved in that? The challenge of having soil to grow things — I saw some of that when we visited. It is impressive.
Those are my questions, and I am the chair, so take your time.
Mr. Lamb: All three of us could talk about meat processing.
Over the last 20 years, Yukon has had a mobile abattoir that goes to the farms in the communities, but that has been aging out, which raises a new issue. There is a stationary abattoir outside of Whitehorse where people can ship their animals. We have meat inspectors and territorial inspected meats, so you can sell it in retail outlets. Otherwise, if the meat is not inspected, farmers can sell it at their farm gate. People have to come out and buy the animal. So, it is a little bit different than down south. I know Derrick is part of that program, and Kari will be dealing with that program; they are planning ahead for a facility there. However, getting those facilities is a task.
I will let them talk about their two regions.
Mr. Hastings: We raise a lot of livestock, particularly for meat. For many a year, we did farm gate sales and distributed through the First Nation in a way that was probably just meeting the minimal standards for safety.
We have worked with the Yukon government, and we have accessed the mobile abattoir when it was available. It worked out great, but it is not consistent enough for us. Last year, it was not available — or maybe it was, but it was not certain. Then, the year before, we did not know who was operating it.
There is a lack of consistency sometimes with who is operating it and what the schedule is. When you are raising livestock, as you know if you have been engaged in that, you are pretty time sensitive. Everything has to be certain.
We worked with CanNor to purchase a large livestock trailer, and we work with a guy in Whitehorse who runs the abattoir, Cain Vangel. It is 600 kilometres away, so it is not a short run for the animals. It is challenging to transport them, but we find it to be effective. Some of our crew will go down and work in the abattoir with Cain when we take our chickens there. We did the chickens here for eight years, all on-site. Our crew are very adept at slaughtering and processing animals. It is a First Nation farm, so it is traditional knowledge.
It is not about the skills; it is just the amount that we can accomplish in a day at an actual facility, like a professional facility, makes a big difference in terms of affordability. We can do 300 or 400 in a day at the abattoir down in Whitehorse, but we can only do 120 to 130 if we are really rushing it in a day on site here.
We have worked through the abattoir in Whitehorse. We find that’s a good solution for now. There is a regional organization that started up here with local farmers who are trying to establish their own abattoir in town and have people operating it in town. I think that will happen eventually. Sometimes, we just don’t have the population of animals to process to make it economically feasible.
As the industry grows here, the infrastructure will hopefully have funding and backing to be in place, but we have incredible bottlenecks here with cold storage, slaughter and butchering. We have been working toward having those facilities built within the greenhouse; we’re building a year-round greenhouse. We want to build the capacity for a butcher on-site in that facility to make it cost effective to operate.
Yes, there are all sorts of challenges here that not too many other places in Canada have.
The Chair: Did you have anything you wanted to add quickly, Kari? I probably do have to be mindful of my time, to be fair, to my colleagues.
Ms. Johnston: I will leave the abattoir question and speak about hydroponics.
The business case around hydroponics growing is challenging. We are working with one of the leading experts in designing and building hydroponic growing units in our community, and we’re building something that is slightly different. He will say that the plants are going to come to us, so it is like a 2.0 of the previous hydroponic versions that he has built in the territory. It is as close to automated as we can reasonably get. We are seeing a lot of automation in this area down south, but there are training, technical and capacity challenges when we do that sort of thing.
I have a husband who is a circuit rider, so he supports the operation of water plants across the Yukon. We can always see what it looks like you get computerized systems and the impact that has, as well as the interface between people who code and those who don’t, as well as how realistic it is to have that in our communities. We do not want fully automated hydroponic growing units, so we’re building the second-best thing to it.
On land reclamation, where my farm is situated, it used to be a lake. There is not a lot of soil there, so we are taking an incredible painstaking process in our soil reclamation. We are removing the stumps one by one rather than with a Cat. It is a slow process, but it is yielding tremendous results in the soil composition. We are quite happy with that.
Thank you.
The Chair: I have to say, not only are the challenges in the North unique but so are the people. I don’t know if it is optimism or stubbornness, but it is impressive. I think it is one of your biggest strengths.
We will continue with questions, and we are likely to go about five minutes over. You have two minutes.
Senator McNair: Just to step off from what the chair said about the resilience of people up north, I heard you, Derrick, talk about the goal being to obviously move to relying less on food banks and to have food sovereignty for your nation. That is the same goal for us all in the larger context.
Obviously, Yukon is doing something right. We have been looking at a chart, as we do for all of these hearings — food insecurity by Canadian province and territory. Quebec has done the best. Yukon is ranked as second best, so you’re ahead of all the other provinces. It’s something I’ve looked at, and it doesn’t line up the way I think it should, but that’s the reality. Listening to the three of you tonight, I think I understand better why Yukon does better.
Anyway, you’re ahead of B.C., Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the last two, which are struggling the most, are the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which I expected.
Do you have any comments or an explanation about why the Yukon is ranking so well on this chart?
Mr. Hastings: Yes, it’s the people — just a hardy breed of individuals.
I was speaking to Trevor Amiot, a grain producer who makes the flour and that. We like to talk. We don’t have much to do in the winter. We like to talk a lot. We could just sit there. I know I have a six-hour drive back to Dawson, and we talked for an hour before he said, “You better go. You have six hours ahead of you.”
We’re constantly pushing each other. We have a competition. Kari and I probably have mutual goals at our facilities, and we’re like 1,000 kilometres apart, and we consider ourselves almost neighbours in the Yukon. The communities are very far apart, but it’s small enough and entrepreneurial enough that, working together, we’re actually making inroads. You can see results.
I think that inspires young people to start saying, “Hey, look at this. This is an actual potential job,” where I don’t think it traditionally has been in the Yukon. It’s mining, government, health care and whatnot, but agriculture is becoming more — not romantic — but it’s more in line with things people can be proud to engage in.
I’m sure other provinces do things of that nature, too. Look at Ontario, though. I don’t think going toward farming is necessarily what is deemed to be prideful. In some communities — I shouldn’t say that; I’m from Brampton, Ontario. Brampton has changed quite a bit. There were farms all around when I was growing up, and it is substantially industrialized now. I think the Yukon is still rustic enough that agriculture is novel. There’s that joy of embracing change and trying to overcome what most see as a crazy opportunity. “Can it actually work? Maybe.” We’re going to be the ones to prove it out.
That’s it.
Senator Duncan: I really appreciate the comment. There are lies, damn lies and statistics; that’s the problem. A very small amount can make a huge difference. I’m grateful that we’re number two here in the Yukon. I want to be sure to understand the points that Kari made about Beaver Creek and Ross River.
Ultimately and most importantly — and that’s why I wanted to make sure you had a map: That way, you could see the distances between us.
The territories are so very different. The Yukon is an entirely different example than Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. We all have our challenges, but they’re very different.
I think the fact that we are as far ahead is to the credit of people like Kari, Derrick and Randy. Perhaps if there is time, Randy will also be able to address the whole circumpolar movement, as well, and our links with our Nordic neighbours.
The Chair: We have one minute left.
Senator McBean: I’ll try and make it quick, Randy.
In your opening testimony, you said there were three good things going on. Working backward, there were the climate change advantages, federal funding assistance and government policy. Have they been federal policies that have been advantageous or provincial policies? I was wondering how the federal government can align — one minute is so stressful.
Was it federal or provincial? Then, maybe you could also outline — Senator Duncan gave us this map, but we don’t see power lines on this. You’re talking about storage to all these places. What can the government do with respect to natural resources and energy to support food security in the North?
The Chair: If you want to submit an answer in writing — for all of this — I say with staff on each side of me — if you have points you wanted to make and run out of time — because we have had a highly engaged crowd here tonight. I think everyone would love to have another hour with you, but we’ve already gone over our time; we do have more work to get to. Senator McBean is begging for 15 seconds more, which I’ll give you.
Senator McBean: I want to give props to your child, Kari, who wanted to get a pen off your desk a while ago. All I saw was a hand come up and grab it, staying off your screen. Tell them they did it, and they were great.
The Chair: I have written down my favourite quote of the day: Wildlife interaction with livestock. That is fantastic.
That gets us to the end of our session. Thank you so much. In particular, thank you, Senator Duncan, for persisting and ensuring we had this time with your wonderful representatives from your territory. I want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to be with us and answering our questions.
Thank you all and take care. We look forward to speaking to you again.
(The committee continued in camera.)