THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 28, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 6:33 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada.
Senator Mary Robinson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Mary Robinson and I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Welcome to the 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 the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
Before we hear from our witnesses today, I’m going to ask senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting on my left, with our deputy chair.
Senator McNair: Welcome. John McNair from the province of New Brunswick.
Senator Burey: Senator Sharon Burey, Ontario.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, senator from Ontario.
Senator Black: Welcome. Robert Black, Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you for joining us.
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 to not speak too quickly. Clear audio supports accurate interpretation, transcription and captioning.
Today, the committee is continuing its study on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada. We have the pleasure of welcoming the Honourable Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell. Thank you very much for joining us. We will begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from members. You will have 10 minutes for your remarks.
Hon. Nancy Karetak-Lindell: Thank you so much. [Indigenous language spoken]
I would like to thank the chair and members of this committee for agriculture and forestry, of which neither exist in my territory. But I’m thankful you’re doing this important study on food insecurity, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about the challenges Nunavut faces.
It is very telling that we are not talking about food security but rather insecurity. This is not a new issue. This is one that people from Nunavut have been raising, documenting and advocating on for decades. Yet, despite this, meaningful progress has been slow and, in many cases, insufficient.
For many in Nunavut, food insecurity is not an abstract policy issue. It is a daily reality. It is families having to make impossible choices between paying for food, gas or basic necessities. It is parents going without so their children can eat. It is communities navigating systems that were never designed with their realities in mind. Southern frameworks cannot simply be copied and applied in the North. The barriers are complex, but they are not unknown.
The cost of food remains one of the most immediate and visible challenges. Nunavut has 25 communities, all of which are fly-in, and this is directly reflected in prices far beyond what many households can afford. Last month, I was made aware of watermelons priced at $70 each, with a Nutrition North Canada subsidy of a mere $2.19. Another example is a one-litre jar of no-name pickles costing over $66.
The high price of food in Nunavut is driven in large by freight. When nearly everything must be flown into our communities, these costs are passed directly onto families. As a result, many households are forced to make difficult choices, not just about how much food they can afford but about what kind of food they can afford. In many cases, this means purchasing lower-cost, less nutritional options, which have long-term impacts on health and well-being.
While federal programs such as Nutrition North Canada are intended to offset these costs, there are serious and ongoing concerns about their effectiveness, transparency and accountability. The subsidy is provided to retailers, not directly to consumers, with the expectation that savings will be passed on. However, there is limited visibility into how these subsidies are applied at the store level and no consistent mechanism to ensure that the full benefit is reaching households. This lack of clarity was a point of frustration raised by many rural and northern communities at Minister Chartrand’s Food Sovereignty Summit last month.
As a result, many Nunavummiut, who are people from Nunavut, continue to see little meaningful difference in their grocery bills. In some cases, subsidized items remain priced out of reach, raising valid questions about whether the program is achieving its intended purpose.
There are also structural limitations in what is subsidized. The program largely prioritizes store-bought southern food systems while providing insufficient support for harvesting economies and country food access, despite the fact that these are central to food security in Inuit communities.
Without stronger oversight, greater transparency and a shift toward Inuit-informed design, programs like Nutrition North risk reinforcing the very inequities they are meant to address.
At the same time, food insecurity in Nunavut cannot be understood without acknowledging its roots in colonial policy. The forced transition from a land-based, self-sufficient way of life to settled communities disrupted traditional food systems and created a long-term dependency on market food, without ensuring that this system would be accessible or affordable. For example, Inuit are not permitted to sell geese due to the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994. Despite overpopulation of these in some regions, the potential for this resource to support local food systems is limited by current national wildlife laws and regulations.
More broadly, there are policies and regulatory barriers that limit the ability of Inuit to support one another across communities. Traditional systems of sharing, particularly when it comes to country food, are essential to food security. Yet, restrictions around harvesting, transportation and distribution can make it more difficult to share food between communities, even when there is a need.
These barriers undermine systems that have sustained Inuit for generations. These are a few examples of many policy barriers Inuit face.
These limitations also extend to marine resources. Nunavut’s fish and seafood quotas do not reflect the same level of access afforded to other jurisdictions for adjacent waters. This disparity has very real economic and food security implications for our communities.
The territory is allocated roughly 52%, while seven jurisdictions often hold between 80% and 90% of adjacent offshore resources. For example, species such as halibut are harvested in Inuit regions and exported out of the country, while many local households continue to face food insecurity. This disconnect raises important questions about who benefits from these resources and how access is structured.
These conditions do not exist in isolation. As my colleague the Honourable Senator Dawn Anderson noted before this committee, Nunavut’s food insecurity rate sits at approximately 57%. I would also like to note that this reflects only reported data. It does not capture the full scope of the issue, particularly in the context of the ongoing housing crisis, where overcrowding and instability further obscure and intensify food insecurity at the household level.
Canada is a resource-rich country. We should not have Indigenous Peoples living in poverty at the rate that they do. This disproportionately impacts Inuit youth and is rooted in the ongoing effects of colonization, systemic inequities and intergenerational trauma. How can children, youth and families be expected to focus on school, work or even day-to-day responsibilities when they are hungry? Food insecurity is both a symptom and a contributing factor in this broader context. It directly affects mental health, family stability and overall well‑being.
Despite the deeply interconnected nature of these challenges, responsibility remains fragmented across multiple departments and programs, making it difficult to hold any single entity accountable for outcomes. Federal programs such as the Inuit Child First Initiative demonstrate what is possible when supports are responsive. This program supported Inuit families putting nutritional food on the table.
Canada is considered a country of the Global North, yet we continue to have citizens, the First Peoples of these lands, living with some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country.
Even with these challenges, Inuit communities continue to demonstrate remarkable strength and resilience, as they have for millennia in one of the harshest environments on earth. I totally understand some of these challenges and issues are not the purview of this committee, but it is difficult to separate issues, as they are all connected.
Addressing food insecurity in Nunavut requires more than incremental adjustments; it requires sustained investment, Inuit‑led approaches and a commitment to addressing the broader social and economic conditions that shape access to food.
Matna, thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Karetak-Lindell.
We’re now going to proceed to questions from senators. Senators will have five minutes in which to ask and have their questions answered.
Senator McNair: Thank you, senator, for your presentation tonight.
I hadn’t realized the subsidy was paid to the retailers — I guess I hadn’t thought about it — instead of the consumers. We hear a lot about Nutrition North Canada. Things aren’t going right.
Is there anything that’s going right, from your perspective? We understand it’s under review right now. Are there changes you would suggest immediately to try to make it better?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: We welcome the review. The consultations were done by someone from Nunavut. We’re hoping that that will bring a different perspective to the report that she would give to the minister. I don’t know what we can do immediately.
The Inuit Child First Initiative is sunsetting soon. That was given to families with young children. It was given out monthly. There were limitations on what you could buy. It could only be healthy food. That meant children were able to eat fruit, which is also very expensive because it freezes very quickly. In the wintertime, when it arrives and has to get to the store, there is a very short time where it can be delivered, or it’s going to be ruined.
Children were able to access healthy foods — fruit and vegetables and some meats. We do have to buy some meats because we’re not as dependent — we are dependent on our own caribou and fish. But we have a lot of single parents, single moms who don’t have the means to get their own country food. That’s where the sharing that I mentioned comes in.
This initiative was very welcomed by families because the schools even noticed that the attendance rates went up because children were eating healthier at home and were more inclined to go to school.
Senator McNair: In a 2018 report published by the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, they stated that Nunavut needs a shift from thinking about food security to food sovereignty. This means, according to them, empowering Inuit to feed their own communities:
Food sovereignty for Inuit means the right to nutritious locally-sourced food. In Nunavut this translates to country food. Harvesters pay an integral role in Inuit food sovereignty. They provide country food that feeds communities, reinvigorates Inuit cultural practices and stimulates local economies.
Do you agree with those statements? I think I know the answer. More importantly, what challenges are there for raising, harvesting and processing animals in Nunavut?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Yes, I agree with that. That’s the food we were brought up on. For many of us, that’s still the food that we would ask for first and then the other foods that we get in our stores, too.
The difficulty is that hunting is very expensive today. You have to have a snowmobile, which probably costs $15,000. You have to have a sled, winter clothes, and you have to get gas. Again, not every household will have someone who is able to go and hunt for them. That is where the shared environment that we lived in has to be brought back in at a higher level. Because everything is so expensive, organizations like hunter and trapper organizations do get some funding from the Inuit organizations, like you mentioned — the Qikiqtani Inuit Association. They’re able to support the hunter and trapper organizations to actually have hunters go out and harvest caribou, fish, seals or the skin of beluga whales to be brought into the community and shared. They deliver mainly to elders, single moms and, if there are things left over, other families. But it takes a lot of money to do all that today, especially with the price of gas going up all the time.
That is one program that they do and try to encourage young families to get back to eating our traditional foods instead of always processed foods.
Senator Black: Thank you for your insights. You talked about the Inuit Child First Initiative. Is that the same as the universal food voucher program? It’s not the same, is it?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: It’s a version of Jordan’s Principle —
Senator Black: Okay.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: — for our Inuit communities.
Senator Black: I understand the federal government used to support the rollout of the universal food voucher program, and it fed over 15,000 Inuit children and youth over two years. I understand it ended in March 2025. Can you speak about it some more? How are communities affected by that, specifically? Would communities benefit if it were reinstated? What changes should be made to make it better?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: I will speak about my niece who has — I’ve lost count — at least nine children. They range from maybe six to early twenties. I can’t remember the rate, but per child over 16 you got a lower rate and then a different rate for younger children. So, through that program, she was supported to be able to feed her family. She has nine kids, and there are 11 of them in one household. That’s almost normal for many families because there are intergenerational families living in one household due to housing shortages. You can add those numbers up in terms of trying to feed 10 to 15 people every day.
This program allowed them to buy the basics and the fruit and vegetables that are encouraged. The stores would have a list of what you can’t buy instead of what you can buy. At first, people weren’t sure what they could and couldn’t buy, but as the program got used more — and it was administered by our hamlets so that the voucher was at the store they chose. They didn’t get the actual money; credit would be given to the store. We don’t have very many stores. Some communities have only one grocery store — two if they’re lucky. We have three in ours, which makes us very lucky.
Once it started going, people knew what to buy and what they couldn’t buy. There were people helping each other in terms of what recipes you can use to feed your family. I’m not a cook, so I’m not a good example, but there could be larger meals like lasagna. People like to mix traditional foods into that, so instead of a beef stew, you have a caribou stew. All the vegetables are in there, but the meat is different — something people can identify with.
This program gave so much help to families such that they could concentrate on other things. Like I said, with this program, kids were eating better and there was better attendance at school.
Senator Black: It’s over now. Do you see a reinstatement?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Yes. How could it be improved? Maybe the guidelines were too broad. It wasn’t used just for food in the Jordan’s Principle concept; it was used for things beside food. So, I think they would need to narrow down what you can use it for because some people found a loophole and were using it for things that probably should not have been under Jordan’s Principle.
I think the federal government needs to redefine the criteria and be very specific about which areas it can be used in. In some cases, I can see it being used for travel, but that might not have been the intended case. The criteria were too broad.
Senator Black: I understand it has moved to an individual-needs-basis system. Is it working?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Maybe for the ones who can fill out applications. When you have to apply and submit something to the government, it’s usually a very complicated application form. Sometimes, the people who need it the most and who might not feel comfortable applying and writing things out in English are going to be left out if they have to apply for it on an individual basis.
This one was administered by the hamlet, so it was more or less just getting a voucher. Now, people have to fill out the application form. The ones who are able to fill out forms will benefit from it, but maybe the ones who really need it and don’t have the literacy capability of filling out forms might not access it.
Senator Black: Thank you.
Senator McBean: Senator Karetak-Lindell, thank you so much. Your testimony was clear and really started to sketch — because I don’t think we have as clear an image as we should.
One of the things you said even to me was that Nunavut has 25 fly-in communities. I went and looked at a map. That’s a really big area, with really spread-out communities. You indicated in your testimony that the issues — the cost of freight, because things are getting flown in, and I’m like, “Yes, of course they are” when I look at this. To be clear, once you fly into Nunavut, you’re still flying from community to community, correct?
Then there are issues with food sharing, country food and simply being able to hunt geese. It had me wondering: When grandparents, parents and aunties are around talking about this, do they have solutions? Because people who think about problems a lot usually have solutions in mind. What are the local solutions to this?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: It’s 1.9 million square kilometres, so it takes a lot of time to fly anything in. Because it’s so large, there are three time zones: We have western mountain time; I’m central time because I’m above Manitoba; and the east is with Ottawa’s time zone.
And we don’t necessarily have flights that go —
Senator McBean: East-west.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: We have to fly to a central place before we can go to the smaller communities. So, you’re right; it is very difficult geographically to get anything from one area to another.
My mother was a real activist in our community, a woman before her time. She tried to teach young parents about budgeting and what foods you can buy to create food on the table for a large family — stews, different ways to prepare caribou or Arctic char to make it into something you might see in a recipe book. It was about trying to make food last longer within your family and what things not to spend your small grocery budget on.
There need to be more cooking classes and instruction on how to feed a large family. In almost every household, whether they live there or not, kids and grandkids come home for lunch during that 12-to-1 hour away from school and work. You don’t have a lot of time to make meals. So, solutions are things like providing cooking courses, teaching different ways of how to use our traditional foods, making them in ways that kids are going to eat and using all the food around us. Sometimes younger people don’t eat traditional foods in the way that we used to. I think that’s a real solution for some of our communities. They want KFC; they want the things that you put in the microwave and heat up, a quick meal instead of a nutritious meal. I think there are ways that communities can do things to help young parents.
Part of our difficulty is we have a very, very young population. Almost 50% is 25 and under, and you have kids having kids who really haven’t been taught how to be parents or take care of their own household because there are no houses available for young families, so they are living with three generations or more in one household.
It’s about trying to teach people how to have the most with very little. I’m sure people who went through the Great Depression times became very resourceful and clever. And that’s how my mother was because there were 10 of us kids.
Senator McBean: I wonder if something like a community kitchen would help. I’m thinking about cooking for 10 people in my house. I have a fairly large kitchen, and that would completely take over my kitchen. I wonder if there should be community kitchens where people can come and cook all the lasagnas and take them home and get a cooking course.
I had another question in there —
The Chair: Would you like to go in the second round?
Senator McBean: Yes, I would. Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here and sharing the real experiences that will educate me and Canadians and will really inform this report.
I’m struck by some of the alarming things I heard about, like not being permitted to sell geese; the sharing — not being permitted to do that; the marine resources, fish and seafood access. Even though halibut is being fished, you can’t eat it or get enough where you are. I think that is very alarming. Thank you for bringing those things to the attention of the committee. That may lead to my final question, which is not now, but if I don’t get to it, it is about the recommendations around some of these regulatory things that need to be done.
Our clerk has really looked at giving us a structure for what the five components of food security are, and that was based on the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan University. They spoke about availability, which you spoke about; accessibility, which is physical and economic access; adequacy, which is food that is nutritious, safe and produced environmentally and sustainably; acceptability, meaning access to culturally acceptable food, which we’re talking about; and agency, which is what my regulatory question is about: the policies and processes that enable the achievement of food security.
What kinds of recommendations could improve the agency in communities? And if we have time, I was just wondering if you could expand on the impacts of access to traditional foods high in protein and nutrition on Inuit children and youth. You alluded to a few of the things: school attendance, school work, health and mental health. The question is on agency: What kinds of regulatory things could help that? And then how would having access to traditional food impact youth and children?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: We are permitted to eat geese when they come up north. Right now, they are starting to fly north. We are permitted to eat any traditional food around us, but some have quotas. Because the caribou numbers are not what they used to be, the Government of Nunavut has started putting in quotas on Baffin Island. Not so much in my region. We still have access to any caribou that we want to hunt.
In some areas, there are quotas on narwhals, also because of their numbers going down. There are quotas on beluga whales in some parts of Inuit areas. We are permitted, but there are some restrictions on what you can sell. For the geese, we can hunt it for ourselves, but we can’t sell it as an economic activity. For fish, we are able to eat whatever we catch, but for commercial fishing we don’t have access to the quotas that you would normally see. Take Newfoundland, for example. They probably have access to 80%, 90%, based on adjacency. We only have access to 52% because other fishing industries fish in our waters, and they say that’s because of historical attachment.
So some of these rules are hard for us to understand. They apply here, but they don’t really apply in the same way in Nunavut, because if they did, we would have access to 80% to 90% of our resources within adjacency rules. So some of those are for fisheries and for the Wildlife Act. Those need to be adjusted to reflect today. Those are areas that we have to pursue to see if the laws can be changed.
What was your second question?
Senator Burey: The impact of having traditional food on nutrition for youth and children — you started to expand on that.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Using myself as an example, I grew up eating only traditional foods as my main diet. It was the same with my parents because our stores did not have access to very many choices. It was also our choice to eat. Today, we have a lot of junk food that comes to our communities. We have processed foods coming into our communities that you can put in the microwave.
We as a people have to get back to eating our own foods, too. With the internet and access to all the different platforms, the advertisements want you to eat KFC, pizza and all these different southern foods. That compels children to want to eat those instead of caribou, Arctic char and whatever.
We have some work to do ourselves to make sure that our children grow up eating the foods that we did, but we have so much competition. That is always difficult.
The Chair: I have a question. I’ve heard you talk about what I think are proteins — seal, caribou, Arctic char, beluga — your traditional foods. What would you have eaten beyond animals? What else would have been in your diet if we looked at the diet of Inuit people 100 years ago? You talked about the nomadic lifestyle. Can you help us understand what the diet looked like?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: I’m 68 and not 100 years old, so I don’t know what they ate. It is true that we were nomadic because we followed the food. We followed where the caribou went. The fish go down to the sea in the spring and then back up. The geese fly up in the spring. So, we were nomadic and followed the food.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is this: Where I live, and that is quite southern Nunavut, just above Manitoba, there are a lot of berries. There are some leaves that people ate and also used for medicinal purposes. We do have that knowledge still. We go berry picking every season. That supplements our food. People wonder how we get vitamin C. How do we not get scurvy? Fish is the substitute there. So, we still ate what would be Canada’s food groups but in a different way.
Then, in the higher Arctic, the vegetation is a lot scarcer, so I can’t speak for them. However, there are certain little plants that people ate as well as berries. They ate what there was. We ate eggs only in the spring, when different birds came up north. We just followed the food, but we ate pretty well everything of that animal and then used the skin for different purposes. That was the lifestyle of my grandparents and even my parents. I lived a bit of that until we all went to residential schools and were separated from that type of life.
Our challenge today is to blend the two worlds we live in now: keep as much as we can of the traditional ways of life — the diet and customs — and incorporate the modern life that we have to live with. We’re not going to go back to living in igloos or a nomadic way of life, as much as we might want to. However, people still go out in the spring, especially. Families that are able to live out at their cabins as much as they can. On Friday night, everyone is gone, except it’s to the cabins, not cottages.
The Chair: Thank you. This committee has done a fairly robust study on wildfires. We heard how the weather and climate have changed. I’m wondering if you can speak to how the climate has impacted Inuit’s ability to do that traditional collecting, gathering and harvesting.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Even though we don’t have forest fires ourselves, we get the smoke from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and even Ontario. It has affected how well we can go out and harvest or go berry picking or whatever, because people have asthma and they have allergies now. It really affects us, even though we don’t see the actual fires.
We also have invasive species coming among us. Even in the waters, we have killer whales coming up that have no predators, so they are hunting everything — seals, whales, anything that is in the water; we have cod, too, besides Arctic char. They are an invasive species. We’re trying to adjust to these new species coming in.
Someone mentioned they saw a beaver up in an area where they never have been. I haven’t seen one myself, but we have moose coming in, which is, to us, an invasive species. Grizzly bears are seen more often around our communities. We have muskrats, which we never used to have. We have plants that are growing in our areas, as well as insects that we never used to see.
So we don’t know yet what effects those will have. But when we dry our meat in the spring, we have to do it before the blackflies come in, but now they are coming sooner because our spring comes sooner. Our ice and snow are melting sooner, so we have all these species coming. We don’t know how they affect our food. We dry meat, like caribou, in the spring. We also dry fish when the char are in our waters. Having these different kinds of insects is challenging because we don’t know what they do; we are not familiar with dealing with them.
We also have different plants that are growing that didn’t used to grow in our areas. We’re not sure yet how those will affect things. Will they take over some of the other plants that we are used to seeing? So, we do have invasive species coming in, and I don’t think we know all the effects yet.
Under water and under the ice — there are things we can see, but we worry about what we can’t see. The water is warmer, obviously. What micro-organisms are coming in that we didn’t used to have? These are all unknowns and areas where research needs to be done.
The Chair: Thank you. That was a very informative answer. I appreciate that.
Senator McNair: Just to go back to the harvesting of animals so that I understand — the migratory bird — I realize that geese and ducks can’t be sold because of the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Are you able to sell caribou, seal or beluga?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Yes. In my region, there is a community north of me. We have a meat and fish plant. But they have a quota, too, of how many caribou they’re allowed to buy so that it doesn’t endanger the herd population. But that is up for debate today because I live in an area of plenty. We have caribou. We have a lot of species that we can hunt that people in other areas might not have. People are always asking to buy caribou from our community. Because it is a right given to us through our land claims organization, Inuit are able to hunt and sell. That’s not regulated. It’s starting to be an area of concern.
We are not restricted in selling fish, Arctic char, but in some places, again, there are quotas.
Even the polar bear hunt is very limited. There are only so many tags that can be used each year. My community has many polar bears now. Sometimes they have to be killed in defence because they come right into our communities now, which they didn’t used to when I was a child. That tag will be taken from the next allotment of tags. It’s very controlled as to how many polar bears can be harvested.
We’re still able to harvest food, but climate change has also changed their migratory routes, so they’re not always where they used to be. Someone told me that the geese lay eggs further and further away from our community to the west because of climate change, because the snow melts faster inland — all our communities are coastal except one. Baker Lake is on a fresh lake.
So climate change is affecting when they come. They come a lot sooner, when there is still snow. But because the snow melts faster inland, most of them are nesting inland. So the distances that you have to go to harvest are changing.
Senator McNair: Who enforces the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994 in Nunavut? Is it the RCMP?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: No, the wildlife enforcement officers.
Senator McNair: And that would be the same on the other animal processing, the quotas?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Yes. And they are territorial employees, but they do enforcement for both federal animal legislation, wildlife legislation and any territorial ones if we have them.
Senator McBean: Senator Karetak-Lindell, I feel like we could have you here for two hours. In one hour, we could focus on the issues. I feel like I came here with lots of questions about access, but it was going to be access to southern food; that food is always going to be at a premium, and it’s never going to be totally right. I feel like if we’re doing things in a good way, then we are trying to figure out how to make access to more country food better.
If I think about the meat that I keep in my home, the proteins that I keep in my home, I keep them in the freezer, and I have reliable energy to keep that cold. What is the access for all the hamlets to have reliable electricity? Is it all generator-based power?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: It’s diesel-generated electricity. Every community has fuel tanks that are filled every year through ships. We get an annual delivery of fuel, gas, aviation gas and all that once or twice a year, depending on which community you’re in. I’m in a bigger one, so we have more ships than let’s say Whale Cove, which is 90 miles away from me. They might only get one.
We have community freezers also for people who might not have freezers. Most homes have refrigerators that have a small freezer with it that are usually supplied with social housing. There is home ownership also, but everyone usually has a refrigerator in the house.
There are community freezers that are also funded by the federal — I can’t remember the department, but they provide funding for communities to have a community freezer. That is run by our local hamlet and limited hours. If someone catches a lot of fish, they are not going to have room in their little freezer fridge, so they have to pack them in a way that they can put them inside the community freezer. I think every community should have a community freezer.
Senator McBean: Interesting. Do you have a community freezer, or the federal government could help with that?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: I think they all do.
Senator McBean: Okay.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: But because we have such aging infrastructure, including our power plants, we are experiencing a lot more power outages.
It’s not surprising if the power has been off for two days that a store will announce on our local radio that all the meat is going on sale because it’s going to thaw out in the next few hours. A company has no choice but to sell their meat stock at lower prices than usual, which probably doesn’t help their bottom line.
Senator McBean: So it might be hugely advantageous if the federal government was doing regular assessments and upgrades of the electrical infrastructure.
I remember there was a line going across a river, and that community lost power for quite a long time. I can’t remember what happened. All of a sudden, this community had this big problem with food spoilage. Lack of power could wipe out an entire community’s meat for the year kind of thing. Okay. Thank you.
You could say it, because I can’t, but this infrastructure would be a critical need, wouldn’t it?
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Well, it is for community members who may not own freezers, because even a small freezer is pretty expensive. Some people who do a lot of harvesting need two freezers to keep their food over the summer.
That’s one of the reasons, I guess, Inuit really know how to preserve food in the traditional way, because, obviously, we did not have freezers. That is where our permafrost came in very handy because you can make a little freezer in the ground, and that’s how the RCMP used to store walrus meat for their dog teams. Because in my lifetime, the RCMP travelled by dog team. My father was a special constable. He did patrols by dog team. That is in my lifetime. So they would need to hunt walruses on Southampton Island and bring them back to the community to feed the RCMP dogs. They had a door and a big dug-out freezer underground, in the permafrost.
Senator McBean: Two quick questions on that: Does your community eat bannock? Do you have any grains and stuff like that? When Senator Robinson was asking about foods, are there any grains, flour or —
Senator Karetak-Lindell: No. We have to buy all our flour. We don’t make anything. We don’t grow anything.
Senator McBean: It was a pure protein diet, really. Traditional food would be pure protein and berries.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Well, the stores carry —
Senator McBean: The stores do now.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: Yes.
Some people have experimented with greenhouse options, but you really need people in the community who are willing to do that. People do have greenhouses, but it’s individually done. Some communities might have a pilot project where they’re trying to run a community greenhouse, but it’s very difficult to have a whole community involved in it because we’re not farmers. That idea is really hard to get across to families — that they can grow their own food.
Senator McBean: And the last question: Are you losing the permafrost? When I was in the Yukon, I spoke to someone who said there are areas where there is just no permafrost anymore.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: It’s melting, and our houses are proof of that because most of our houses today have drywall, so they tend to shift with the foundation. A lot of the houses are built on steel poles that are dug into the permafrost, so we’re having to deal with the fact that many of the houses and office buildings are shifting. Every building is shifting now. That leads to different issues with housing, that all our drywall is cracking.
Senator McBean: You can’t just dig a hole and freeze your food anymore.
Senator Karetak-Lindell: We do when we go camping. When people are at their cabins, they dig into the ground to store their store-bought stuff that they brought with them, like vegetables. You still can do that, but no one does it at the large scale that I was talking about — storing walrus meat — because we have community freezers to do that for us now.
Senator McBean: Thank you. It has been so interesting.
The Chair: Once again, I really want to thank you, Senator Karetak-Lindell, for taking the time to be with us. We appreciate your opening remarks and taking all of our questions.
For the second panel today, we have the pleasure of welcoming online Darrell Petras, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network; and, joining us in person, Lauren Comin, Director of Policy at Seeds Canada.
Thank you both for joining us. We will begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from members, and you will each have five minutes for your remarks. The floor is now yours, Mr. Petras.
Darrell Petras, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network: Thank you so much. Good evening, committee members. On behalf of the staff and board of the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network, or CAAIN, thank you for the opportunity to share our perspective on food security in Canada.
Some of you are familiar with CAAIN through our annual fireside chats, but for those who are new to our work, we were created through a successful 2019 submission to Stream 4 of the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund, now the Strategic Response Fund. We are investing the funding in data‑driven and digital agricultural technology and have built a 1,000‑member agri-food network across the country.
We are here today to discuss food security, but I want to emphasize a foundational truth: There is no supply chain without producers. Canada’s farmers and ranchers are facing unprecedented, potentially catastrophic pressures, such as price volatility, climate uncertainty, geopolitical instability, rising interest rates and historically high input costs. When these pressures collide, farm margins disappear. When a farm goes out of business, we lose more than a family operation. We also lose community.
Historically, innovation has helped restore balance in periods like this, and that is where CAAIN plays a critical role. We support the development, demonstration and validation of data‑driven and AI-enabled agricultural technologies, or “agtech,” that help producers do more with less.
Since our formal launch in 2020, CAAIN has invested nearly $40 million in 48 agtech projects. These investments have contributed to a 15-to-1 return on public dollars deployed in Canada and multiple billion-dollar transactions, and ensured that the intellectual property created remains in Canada. Most importantly, these projects are delivering real impacts for productivity, profitability and sustainability on Canadian farms and ranches.
One of our most effective tools is the smart farm and commercial farm network. These are commercial, educational or research farms where new technologies are tested in real-world conditions to validate whether they improve productivity and profitability. The network approach allows technology to be tested in real time across our unique Canadian landscape, with the ability to collect data through CAAIN-owned software. Subsequent commercialization of the technology will be supported with a track record of performance.
Two examples illustrate the impact of our work.
SWAT MAPS, developed by Croptimistic in Saskatoon, produces real-time 3D maps of soil, water and topography. Using CAAIN funding, farmers were paid to test-drive the technology on their own land. Those early adopters became champions, and just two weeks ago, Croptimistic celebrated deployment on over 1 million acres.
Similarly, CATTLEytics, a Hamilton-based digital platform created by an engineer-turned-veterinarian, now supports managers of over 250,000 dairy cows across North America, providing producers with real-time insights from a mobile device.
Food security is also a matter of national security, particularly when it comes to data. As agriculture digitizes rapidly, Canadian farm data is increasingly stored on platforms hosted outside our borders. Securing our data sovereignty and ensuring we remain competitive in agtech are critical to protecting the continuity of food production itself.
However, sovereignty does not make security. Canada’s agriculture and food systems must be treated with the same strategic importance as energy and transportation, including protection from cyber risks.
In 2026, agriculture is a strategic resource. It is no longer defined by romantic imagery but by automation, digitalization and advanced intelligence. We can either import that technology or build and validate it here in Canada, creating an environment for Canadian data to be used in Canada.
That is why CAAIN has applied for a second round of funding — CAAIN 2.0 — with a major focus on expanding the development of technology and demonstrating the innovation on smart farm and commercial farm networks, proving novel Canadian technology on commercial farms. We believe that developing innovative solutions for farmers and ranchers must be treated as a national priority. CAAIN is prepared to engage in and contribute to that discussion at the national level and to support national strategies, including the ability to collect data.
This is not just about more funding; it’s about accelerating the pace of adoption. We’re currently at a tipping point, where Canadian-made AI can either be a leader in the global market or be outpaced by foreign technology platforms that don’t prioritize domestic sovereignty. By investing in Canadian ingenuity, validating technology in Canadian conditions and securing our data, we can ensure that Canadians continue to benefit from a resilient, efficient and homegrown food system.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Petras. You were bang on five minutes. That’s impressive. I appreciate that.
Next, we have Ms. Comin.
Lauren Comin, Director of Policy, Seeds Canada: Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to appear this evening. My name is Lauren Comin, and I’m the Director of Policy for Seeds Canada, the national association representing seed developers, growers, analysts, retailers and service providers across the country. I’m here to support your study on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada.
Canada’s long-term food security is rooted in our capacity for agricultural innovation. As climate variability, shifting global markets and evolving consumer demands reshape the landscape, the ability to develop and deploy improved plant varieties becomes increasingly central to ensuring a stable and reliable food supply.
Seed is the foundation of Canada’s $112 billion agri-food industry. Our sector contributes $6 billion annually to the economy, 63,000 jobs and $700 million in both imports and exports each year. Seed is also the starting point for all crop production and, by extension, food production.
Innovation in seed is one of the few tools that consistently deliver gains in productivity and resilience. Improved genetics can increase yield stability under drought conditions, reduce susceptibility to emerging crop pests and diseases, and lower crop input requirements. Seed innovation directly reinforces food security by ensuring Canadian farmers can reliably produce sufficient volumes of high-quality food crops, while providing value chain partners dependable access to consistent high‑performing supply.
Seed innovation has immense potential to secure Canadian food security and contribute to global food stocks. However, deployment is currently constrained by weaknesses in our intellectual property frameworks and an overly burdensome regulatory path to commercialization.
Intellectual property protections, like Canada’s Plant Breeders’ Rights, or PBR, framework, facilitate farmer access to improved genetics and ensure ongoing investment in innovation. Strengthening PBR is, therefore, not only an innovation policy concern but a matter of national food security. Without modern IP protection, the research and development that enable crop production cannot be sustained at the scale required to meet future demand.
Existing PBR legislation does not provide plant breeders with sufficient mechanisms to recover the costs of innovation, particularly regarding farm-saved seed use. This suppresses investment and slows the release of new varieties, leaving Canada dependent upon a vulnerable public breeding system and at risk of falling behind competitors that have already modernized their intellectual property frameworks.
Canada also requires a regulatory environment that accelerates rather than impedes agricultural innovation. Unfortunately, regulatory culture has shifted away from innovation facilitation and toward a narrower focus on health-and-safety risk mitigation.
To overcome this, Seeds Canada recommends that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, realigns with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, or AAFC, restoring cohesion lost in the 2013 transition to Health Canada. This realignment would strengthen regulatory responsiveness, improve predictability for innovators and support the timely movement of new varieties from breeding programs to Canadian farmers.
In summary, Seeds Canada has two recommendations: First, the government should strengthen the legislative framework for Plant Breeders’ Rights to enable sustained innovation, correct market imbalances and support a resilient and competitive plant‑breeding ecosystem. Second, the government should return oversight of the Seed Regulations and Plant Breeders’ Rights Act to the Minister of Agriculture by placing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, aligning regulatory governance with agricultural innovation and long-term food security.
By prioritizing both the PBR modernization and regulatory realignment, the federal government can reinforce Canada’s position as an agricultural leader and safeguard the innovations that underpin food security for Canadians and global markets.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We’re now going to proceed to questions from senators. Senators will have five minutes in which to ask questions and have them answered.
Senator McNair: My question is for Ms. Comin.
In an article published in January 2026 on RealAgriculture, Doug Miller, former executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, stated that there was an urgent need to stabilize funding for public plant breeding in Canada and that the country is headed toward a seed innovation shortfall. I take it you agree with that statement, but maybe you could expand a little bit on that.
Also, to what extent have the recent closures of federally funded agricultural research stations contributed to a potential seed innovation shortfall in Canada, from your perspective?
Ms. Comin: Thank you for the question.
I certainly agree with my colleague Mr. Miller that the federal agricultural breeding capacity, which is housed under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, is critically important to our breeding ecosystem as it exists today.
Seeds Canada members are private developers themselves, but they work in concert with the public system and also depend on the public system. We are at a critical juncture in terms of the stability and sustainability of our breeding ecosystem because so much of it relies on Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s capacity. The recent cuts to capacity, which include several research stations as well as a number of scientists, are certainly concerning for our membership and the seed sector at large.
Breeding is a long-term game. It can take over a decade from the very first cross to getting a variety in a farmer’s field. The last stage of the commercialization process is to make sure that varieties are grown in multiple locations over many years to ensure that their performance is stable and adequate to make sure we’re providing farmers with solid innovation and that those varieties are adapted to the local growing regions.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has been the source of that network of locations and much of the expertise that goes into testing those varieties. We are very concerned about the loss of that capacity and are working with the government to ensure that the capacity and the processes that rely on it are protected and replaced in the future.
Senator McNair: In your recommendation to the federal government, you say you’re in discussions with them to ensure that Canada does not experience the seed innovation shortfall that he mentioned.
Ms. Comin: Right.
Our system has relied on public breeding for a very long time. One of the reasons why we don’t see private innovation and private investment in many of our crops is because we have very high farm-saved seed use in those crops, which means that those innovators who are providing the genetics only receive compensation or a return on their investment once every five years, on average.
There is not an adequate return on investment to attract private investment, which is why the public system has played such a critical role, so, as mentioned in my statement this evening, strengthening plant breeders’ rights protection and ensuring that there is a return on investment for all use of genetic innovation, whether it be farm-saved seed or certified seed.
The Chair: Before we go to Senator Black, I wanted to take a second and say that I look at farm-saved seed and what that means to a plant breeder who has invested years and years into developing that seed in the same way — maybe people outside of agriculture might be familiar with this — when you could download music online and how an artist wasn’t getting paid for that, and what that did to the entire music industry, and how we saw protections coming into place for those artists to make sure that they could continue to be paid.
I want to make sure that when we talk about farm-saved seed, people understand what that is. Maybe you could walk us through that a little bit more.
Ms. Comin: I appreciate your example, because I know you know all about it.
The Chair: No.
Ms. Comin: For those who are unfamiliar, when you purchase new genetics, a farmer would purchase what is called “certified seed.” That is a product of guaranteed purity and germination and quality, and it is sold by variety name, so you know you have these genetics that were bred by this breeder, and they should perform in this way.
The funny thing about seed is that it replenishes itself. You plant a seed, and you harvest it as grain, but there really is no difference between grain and seed, other than how you use it. You sell grain into a market for animals or human consumption. You replant seed to provide more grain.
Farmers will save part of their harvest. They’ll keep it aside, and they’ll store it. They’ll clean it on-farm or at a registered seed establishment or a conditioner, and they will replant that seed. That allows them to continue to use the genetics without the cost of repurchasing certified seed.
Generally, the breeder only gets paid when certified seed is purchased. They do not get paid for farm-saved seed use.
The Chair: Thank you. Great.
Senator Black: Thank you for that. That was great.
Let’s give Mr. Petras a similar question regarding the Government of Canada announcing research cuts. From an innovation standpoint and from the work that CAAIN does, could you please share with the committee how food security could be affected if we reduce this research capacity that we’ve all heard about over the last number of months?
Mr. Petras: I appreciate that question. Thank you.
From my perspective, the cuts will impact the expertise available to drive innovation into the supply chain. More specifically, if I think about the plant breeder scenario and about the expertise that is being affected by these cuts across the country in different locations, I think of those locations as effectively what we call “smart farms” — farms that have the capacity to do testing, development, validation and demonstration.
These are relationships that are built with industry within these farms and within these locations, more generally, and they’re built with industry from the breeder side, from the seed company side but also from the producer side. I see those relationships are interrupted, and I can only hope that that expertise finds its way into the innovation system in some other shape or form, because some of the work we do at CAAIN around smart farm networks could certainly leverage the existing expertise in place.
Senator Black: Thank you and thanks for your opening remarks and the examples you gave us.
Dr. Comin, how can policy-makers work together to strengthen Canada’s food security, from Seeds Canada’s perspective?
Ms. Comin: Thank you for the question. As I indicated, and as Mr. Petras indicated as well, innovation is so critical to our ability to provide food for not only Canada but for the world. We are a net exporter.
We need to ensure that we have a policy environment that is predictable, that is fit for purpose and that provides innovators and investors a very clear path for introducing their innovation and getting their innovation into the hands of farmers, who are ultimately going to use it to produce food, but also how they’re going to get a return on investment.
Innovation is a competitive landscape on its own. Many multinationals or even smaller investors will look at various regulatory systems and policy environments all over the world and make a decision where they want to put their money. I want them to put their money in Canada. I believe that we still have some progress to make in creating a policy environment and a regulatory environment where investors will look at Canada and say, “That is the number one place where I want to do business.”
Senator Black: I have this fear, and it actually keeps me up at night some nights, that we’ll come to a time when we can’t feed our own province or country, let alone the world, and we’re expected to do that. Do you foresee this, and what would you say to that?
Ms. Comin: I guess I don’t quite have the same fear. Maybe a new fear has been unlocked now, though.
I do believe that agriculture is resilient. We are innovation-driven. Farmers are resilient. Farmers are entrepreneurs. They realize that they require innovation to continue to be competitive and have a return on their investment. I am hopeful that as a community across the value chain — including government — we can ensure that we put in place a regulatory and policy framework that supports innovation.
What we do run a risk of if we are not agile enough and fast enough in that endeavour is falling behind in terms of our ability to be competitive. It’s not just our ability to produce X amount of food, but what talent we are attracting to Canada and how much investment we are attracting in Canada.
We have several groundbreakings in the next month or so of investment in canola research facilities across the Prairies. I want that to happen every month. I want to hear about that happening in Canada.
Senator Black: She said exactly what I hoped to hear.
Thank you very much. Thank you to you, Mr. Petras, as well.
The Chair: Fantastic.
Mr. Petras, I really appreciated your comment that we don’t have a supply chain without producers, and I appreciated you speaking to the immense amount of pressure and unforeseen circumstances that producers and ranchers are facing, particularly this spring.
We know that in agriculture this is go time. Does anyone here know the number of dollars that are invested when we put our crop in the ground in spring? It is a staggering number, and I don’t know it offhand. Does anyone here know it? No? We’ll find out.
With the work that you’re doing at CAAIN, can you maybe tell us what limits you from doing more? Do you need more public or private funding, or is there something that could be done to facilitate your doing even more of the good work you’re doing?
Mr. Petras: Yes. I mean, we’re a young organization. We got our first funding in 2020, and we’re already seeing commercialization of one third of the projects we’ve invested in. We have momentum, but it is just that — momentum — and there is a lot more work to be done.
We have a vision for smart farm capacity and for us to drive adoption across this country. We have a lot of work to do from coast to coast to — ideally — coast. With that, we’ve established a couple of pilots where we are engaging smart farms in multi‑province jurisdictions. We are also engaging producers. We have now proven those pilots can be effective in driving adoption, which is the end goal. Innovation has caused, in large part, the producers to be so resilient.
I’m going to share a quick fact here. In the 1970s, winter wheat price was $7 per bushel; last fall, it was $6.75, approximately. How does that work? We heard it works with new seed genetics and greater efficiency in equipment. That being said, the costs are rising.
For farmers to be competitive, they need to see technology that is going to address their most pressing challenges, and they need to ideally see it working on the farm, in the field and in the barn, so to speak, before it’s commercialized.
What we’re seeing now is increased interest in our funding programs, where we started with a handful of capable, competitive projects in our first funding call. In our most recent funding call that we completed — we have one that we’ve just announced here again — the one we just went full cycle with, we had over 70 solid applications of a technology that can directly impact on-the-ground farming and ranching.
It’s a combination of relationships and funding. It’s a combination of us working toward a common goal as a Canadian community in agriculture when it comes to data and addressing some of the challenges that pop up. I won’t go into too much detail with this particular answer, but some of the challenges that can pop up are the interoperability of data and technology so that as we find solutions, the solutions can scale very rapidly and be effective for farms.
The Chair: I was impressed with your 15-to-1 return, and I was thinking about the proposed sovereign wealth fund that is a bit of a buzz this week. That might be a nice addition to the portfolio of the sovereign wealth fund to be able to have people invest in that.
On your $7 and $6.75 per bushel example, I wanted to clarify. I think what I heard you say is that efficiencies, greater genetics and all of that mean that the real opportunity is in the more bushels per acre. Is that accurate?
Mr. Petras: More bushels per acre and cost of production going down on a per-acre basis. Of course, that comes with economies of scale. But that’s exactly right. Farmers are getting paid less, at least last fall, on a per-bushel basis. It comes down to genetics, to increased yield and to the efficiency of the equipment, even though the equipment can be much more expensive, of course, than in the 1970s.
Those drive a change in the landscape of farming, for sure. Farms get bigger to remain competitive, generally speaking, and communities change as a result. So in addition to carrying on with, as I said, the momentum, we want to ensure that we can help smaller producers realize more efficiencies and more competitiveness as well.
The Chair: We have certainly heard how consolidation is being driven out of the need to capture the efficiencies of the economies of scale and the impact that is having, as you just said, on rural communities across the country. We see fewer grocery stores, fewer banks, fewer post offices and fewer welding shops — all of those things that happen when we see this streamlining. Thank you very much for that.
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here. I have one question on the recommendation, Dr. Comin, for the CFIA to go back to AAFC. I’ve heard that a number of times, and I want you to expand on that. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the historical context of how it was in one ministry and then moved to another and by whom. Do you think going back to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is going to decrease the regulatory burden?
Ms. Comin: I’m sure that there are others who can probably explain the history of the CFIA and where it was better than me, but in 2013, the ministry did shift from Agriculture and Agri‑Food Canada, the minister responsible, to the Department of Health. Of course, there still is a great deal of communication with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
What we have seen in terms of a regulatory culture since then is a culture that is not responsive to innovation or productivity. It is so important to agriculture that we consider the economics of our regulation, the products that can be commercialized and the ability to improve productivity and remain competitive when we are considering how to regulate risk. Those things need to be balanced, and we need to consider if the regulatory burden is worth the perceived risk. We are just not seeing that balance today. We do feel that moving it, shifting it under the mandate of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada would return that focus on productivity and innovation and provide that balance.
It’s not about making products less safe or not considering the safety of humans, animals and the environment. It is about considering the entire ecosystem, and we strongly believe that our competitiveness should be part of that consideration.
Senator Burey: Would you have anything to add, Mr. Petras?
Mr. Petras: Thank you for the question. That was very thorough. No, I agree with the statements. Thank you.
Senator Burey: When we compare ourselves to other countries, where do the CFIA-like agencies reside?
Ms. Comin: We don’t have any direct comparisons because the CFIA does cover so many different files, but if you look at the United States, for example, their organization, which is called APHIS, is under the USDA, which is agriculture. Many other countries internationally — in Europe, for example — are also under agriculture.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
The Chair: In this kind of balance of risk and reward and how in life there is risk, I heard someone recently say that if Health Canada or the CFIA were assessing whether Canadians should have access to cars, they would say, “definitely not,” because they are unsafe and they do all of these horrible things. I think those kinds of comments help people put in perspective just how high the regulatory standard is and how the risk-reward analysis perhaps — not perhaps, definitely — lacks said economic lens and the overall benefit, as you’ve said. Thank you for that.
Senator McBean: Mr. Petras, I live in downtown Toronto. When people talk about Toronto, they often say they live somewhere outside of the city. I live right in the city, so the fact that I’m part of the Agriculture Committee has taken a bit of work. I am in my second year. There is a segue here.
I think one of the very first onboarding sessions I went to at one of the agriculture conferences was on automation and AI. I was like, “This is so cool and amazing.” It was talking about automation in slaughterhouses and butchering. I thought there is so much cool stuff going on in this industry — you had me at “Hello.”
I think my first question was answered a while ago about how automation can help. You were talking about that and the price of seed and how innovation has increased. You’re getting more per acre, and it’s being harvested faster and more efficiently. In your view, what investments in innovation or infrastructure — and I will suggest maybe something like the internet — would have the greatest impact on proving Canada’s domestic food security with respect to automation and intelligence?
Mr. Petras: Thank you for the question, and thank you for the work you do and, of course, the work your colleagues do in agriculture.
When it comes to the greatest opportunity for investment to drive impact in that data-driven decision-making space — we’ll call it robotics automation — for me, we could talk about individual projects. We could talk about the internet. We could talk about internet capacity, which is generally addressed in rural areas by satellite. That only works if there is power. These are considerations for sure.
One of the most interesting opportunities for rapid deployment of innovation is a network — and I don’t mean to touch on this point too many times in our conversation this evening, but the idea that Canada has a very unique agricultural landscape. It is a large country, of course. You can look at the Far North. The previous discussion addressed a lot of the challenges in the Far North. We are interested in that as well.
The individual jurisdictions have their own challenges, whether it’s drought for the last five years or flooding or bumper crops. We hope we can continue the momentum in planning for the following year when it comes to planting based on the expected yields.
What does that mean for Canada as a whole? What does that mean for the deployment of technology and innovation? This goes back to some of the test sites that are being affected by budget as we speak. If we could have an interconnected test bed for different commodities or different types of agriculture — for example, broad-acre farming, maybe dairy, maybe beef production; the list goes on; controlled-environment agriculture is big — if we could have a network of networks to deploy test technology in these different challenged regions and collect that data real-time, because we are often dealing with just one growing season, whether it’s peak-production cycle or outdoor farming, broad-acre production cycle, we have limited opportunity to test technology. If we can do that, we can be a showcase for the world.
I know there are other countries right now that could potentially do that down the road, with the same kind of agro‑climatic diversity that we offer, but they are unfortunately occupied with other things. I won’t go into all the geopolitical discussions that we could potentially go into. But I see our neighbours to the south have just moved on this idea for themselves and are building that kind of network called Proving Grounds Network to rapidly deploy validation of innovation across the country.
If we do this, we could be a showcase country, but we also could give an opportunity for other countries to evaluate their innovation here in Canada and bring solutions to farmers. We’re currently exploring that right now with a European country.
We can talk about the nuances of internet reliability. We can talk about, just to recap, making sure there is consistent power supply where this technology is needed. But Canada has something unique that we don’t often talk about. We often talk about the challenges of the logistics, but we don’t talk about the opportunity of the logistics in Canada — if that makes sense.
Senator McBean: Yes. Data collection can be over a wide area and in unique and challenged areas, if I can paraphrase. If you have any information on that or a nice picture that would look good in our report, that would be great if you could send that to the clerk.
Again, back to being a city girl here, you guys are talking about taking my music away, because that’s what happened when Apple Music had it. If you didn’t have Apple, you didn’t have access to music. If you don’t have a Spotify account, you don’t have access to music.
I am all for commercialization, but I wonder a little bit about over-commercialization. What protects farmers’ having access to seed that they have grown themselves? Are we making sure that those plant breeders aren’t recouping their costs because they’re tying them tightly to something like a pesticide, and it’s actually the sale of the pesticide that pays for the seed? How do we protect farmers’ access to reasonably priced seed?
Ms. Comin: There are a few different points I can make to answer your question. First, there are multiple ways to protect plant innovation. Plants are so unique. We can use a CD example; we can use copying a book as an example. But there is really no perfect example of how plants can be regenerated and reused.
We have different options for protection, as I mentioned. We do have the ability to patent genes or gene constructs. You can’t patent a higher life form, but that is often used for genetically modified organisms, and you were mentioning the pesticide piece.
What is more common for crops that are saved on-farm and reused are Plant Breeders’ Rights. There is a limitation on Plant Breeders’ Rights, just as there is for patents. Once that period of protection is up, or the rights holder chooses not to protect it anymore because they have something better in the pipeline, or it’s just not selling the way they wanted it to, it becomes a public good.
Many varieties are still being grown today that were never protected, so they are public good, or the protection lapsed or was not renewed, or the timeline ran out. They become a public good. That is one way that farmers can access seed without having to purchase new genetics.
The other piece goes down to a clause within our Plant Breeders’ Rights Act which is called “farmers’ privilege.” That is the ability to save and reuse seed on their own farm. That privilege is in there based on an international convention called UPOV, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, which is an international treaty. When UPOV made allowances for this clause, this privilege, this exception to Plant Breeders’ Rights within legislation, their intention was to have limitations on that use. It was not intended to be any seed for any condition. It was based on the innovation ecosystem, the ability for the breeder to receive a return on investment. There are certain plant types which just shouldn’t be saved for various stewardship reasons.
So, yes, seed is a commercial product. It is an innovation. It is intellectual property. But our protection frameworks do allow for those innovations to become a public good.
Senator McBean: I just wanted to make sure that if we’re going to go and include something like your recommendation, we’re not being the bad guy. Thank you very much.
The Chair: When someone saves seed and uses it over and over, there are a few drawbacks. The seed kind of becomes dirty. You will see your emergence drop off and issues like that. I also want to make sure we make the point that it means you’re not accessing new technology. When we heard earlier from Mr. Petras about going from $7 to $6.75 a bushel, you need to access that new technology as part of your work to get your yields up and to spread your costs out over more yield. Right? Okay. Thank you.
Senator McNair: Dr. Comin, I really liked your response to Senator Black’s fear question. Senator McBean let out a collective sigh of relief for the whole committee.
My question was going to be around your second recommendation. Like my colleague Senator Burey, I was trying to understand why CFIA was a recommendation, and I think I’ve got it. Their culture is just not responsive to innovation. You’re hoping that reverts back to where it should be, from your perspective.
There are a number of take-aways from what you both said, but it’s clear that innovation is so critical. I want to personally thank both of you for the work that you do on driving that in agriculture each and every day. Thank you.
The Chair: When we look at the regulatory framework within Canada, and we’ve talked about how we attract different innovation, different capital, different technology and building minds to Canada, I’m wondering if you wanted to speak to how we might have — I was going to try to come up with some kind of a growing analogy, but I probably shouldn’t — a more welcoming environment for businesses like that.
Ms. Comin: Thank you for the question. It obviously depends on the regulations that we’re considering. There are many improvements that we can implement that mirror other jurisdictions. There was a private member’s bill introduced two weeks ago that would consider approval of products in other trusted jurisdictions — not as a final approval in Canada, but the ability to commercialize in the interim while the regulatory hurdles are cleared here in Canada.
That is one actionable way to provide some relief to the regulatory burden and allow commercializers and innovators to test their products in the marketplace. It may turn out that their product isn’t viable here in Canada after all, but they are able to determine that prior to investing in the regulatory process, which is costly. It is a consideration when companies are deciding whether or not they should invest here in Canada.
The Chair: Mr. Petras, do you want to jump in here?
Mr. Petras: I couldn’t agree more with Dr. Comin’s comments about following the lead of other trusted countries and processes, having worked in the IP space myself for a number of years. I am aware of the IP Patent Prosecution Highway, which is analogous. Other countries that have trusted IP evaluation standards, their results can be used to maybe fast-track the Canadian evaluation of certain IP. That is really great.
I think it depends on the regulation and the technology, and, in my view, we can talk about technologies that are available today and deployed and how we could maybe impact further deployment or the scaling and commercialization of those technologies with maybe a modified regulatory pathway.
I am also considering the technologies that are coming — autonomous tractors with large horsepower — and what the regulations will look like down the road. So, without “crystal balling” it too much, I can see in other countries, including in Europe, the regulations followed considerably later than the technology was available. In one example, the regulations now state that the owner-operator or operator of that autonomous large tractor must be able to shut the tractor off by walking up to the tractor and manually shutting it off if it is working autonomously.
That really limits the potential of that kind of innovation. I do appreciate and will give a shout-out to the Canadian Standards Association. I volunteer with them, and they are looking into the future. I am looking forward to some of their findings coming down the pathway because that can shape which technologies we might more readily welcome into our innovation system here in Canada.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That concludes our questions. I wish to thank our witnesses for being here with us, for preparing your opening marks, which were fantastic and very well timed, and for answering our questions.
(The committee adjourned.)