QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Fertilizer Tariff
June 2, 2022
Thank you. Welcome to the Senate, minister.
Minister, over a month ago, the grain growers of your province of Quebec joined the grain farmers of my province of Ontario to ask you to take immediate action to eliminate the burden on farmers caused by tariffs your government imposed on fertilizer from Russia. In many cases, this fertilizer was purchased last fall, well before the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is not hurt by this tariff — Canadian farmers are, at a time of growing food insecurity worldwide.
Minister, you have known about this issue for two months and yet your government has done absolutely nothing to fix it. Why is that, minister? You told the media you’re “following the situation” and “exploring options.” Are you going to take action to actually help the farmers?
I understand very well what you are talking about — the customs tariff of 35% being imposed on Russian fertilizer as it is included in our financial sanctions against Russia.
First, we acknowledge it was very important to make sure that this fertilizer was coming to Canada. That was the first issue. It is a matter of food security. We did what was necessary to let the boats get to the Canadian ports, and the fertilizers reach the farmers.
What we’ve also done quickly — and I’m still looking at other options with my colleagues — is a modification to the advance payment program. This program is meant to support grain producers and horticultural — fruit and vegetable — producers to have access to an interest-free loan of up to $100,000; it could go up to a loan of $1 million.
Normally, they can get this loan in two payments, one in April, more or less, and one in July when they confirm what they have really planted, based on the revenue they expect for the coming fall. So we have allowed them to get 100% of this loan as soon as they submitted their request. So that was a quick change that has been made to a program. I’m still looking at different options with my colleagues.
