EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, April 17, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We have a sufficient quorum to hear witnesses this afternoon. I welcome everyone here, and I welcome those who are joining us today by video conference.

Just to give all of us a bit of an explanation of how this meeting is going to take place, I will ask Craig Shorten, from ADCOM, who is looking after this service for us, to walk us through it for a couple of minutes.

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For the information of the committee members and everyone who is with us in one way or another today, we will be doing this as a committee at least four times in the foreseeable future. It saves time for witnesses. It gives us very similar contact and communication with the witnesses as if they were here in the room. The bottom line is that in the four meetings we will be having between now and the first week of May, using this procedure, we will save in excess of $10,000 of the cost of assisting witnesses to be with us. I will turn it over to Craig for a second to explain.

Mr. Craig Shorten (Regional Sales Manager, ADCOM Electronics Limited): For the purpose of this meeting, we will be delivering a few of the witnesses electronically through video conferencing. For video conferencing, we've allowed the witnesses to appear electronically on the monitor where they would normally be. For transmission, we're using digital phone lines and for these particular calls we're using four digital phone lines. You may notice initially that what you're viewing is not what we would consider to be cable quality with its smoothness. We are compressing our audio and video signals down significantly.

From a cost-saving perspective, in order to get what we might ordinarily expect on cable we would need the equivalent of 1,200 phone lines. In this case we're using four. So the technology is really compressing the signal down so we can transmit it over these digital phone lines.

Operationally, everything is as normal. The witnesses can hear us in the language of their choice through the translation system, provided our microphones are on. We'll be able to hear the witnesses through both our earpieces and the speakers as if they were here in the room. Other than that, everything should be fine.

This is a slightly unique scenario in that we have what's called a multi-point conference with two remote locations joining us simultaneously. We have Halifax on line. When Calgary begins to speak we will see and hear Calgary.

The system is voice-activated, so whoever is speaking will be seen by us and by the other location. We will be asking the witnesses at the remote end to speak. When it's their turn we'll see and hear them. That will switch automatically. The chair, of course, will be here in Ottawa. Other than that, everything will be live and full duplex. Everyone should be able to be heard just as easily as if the witnesses were here in the room.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Craig.

As the members here can see, the bottom corner of the screen is what our witness - in this case Bill McCurdy - can see from his location. We will start with our presentations today.

I understand, Bill, you're going to go first. I want to say hello to you. When I had the opportunity to be out at your convention last fall, if I'm not mistaken, I believe you were under the weather a little bit. We certainly missed you there, but we're glad to see you back in the trenches and to have you with us. I understand we'll be talking to Marjorie Zingle, your executive director, in a few minutes. Maybe she will be doing part of your presentation. Welcome to Ottawa. I hope things are well in Halifax.

Mr. Bill McCurdy (Chairman, Canadian Forage Council): Thank you, Lyle. First of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to meet using this technology. You've mentioned the cost savings to you, but it's certainly very efficient for us to meet in this way too. As you know, it's a long, lengthy and expensive process to meet national organizations in one spot. I think it is extremely important for you and your committee to understand our concerns. We've met some of you before, but to the rest of you we are new.

I want to give you a word about me and my background. I'm a very active dairy producer from Nova Scotia. My sons and I keep about 200 head of pure-bred Holsteins with about 100 milkings a day. I've spent over 15 years representing dairy producers locally, provincially, and nationally. I was a commissioner on the Nova Scotia Dairy Commission for six years and spent twelve years representing Nova Scotia on the Canadian Milk Supply Management Committee.

I give you this background only so you can see that I'm aware of how other commodities have developed and evolved with government support and assistance over the last two to three decades. Two key aspects to that development were strong producer funding mechanisms and strong government support and recognition for the potential development of their culture sector in Canada.

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We would like to apologize for the lack of preparation today, especially for not getting draft copies of our presentation to committee members prior to our meeting. Our first notice of the meeting indicated that we were to meet with you to discuss draft organic food regulations. Needless to say, we were baffled. It took a few minutes to realize a mistake had been made.

When we questioned the subject, we were told our meeting was postponed until further notice. Hearing this, our executive director, Marjorie Zingle, left her office in Calgary for a meeting in Saskatchewan. When we were told we were back on the agenda for today, it was difficult to make all the necessary presentations and fax them back and forth between Calgary and Nova Scotia this morning.

Without further excuses, that is why we are less than adequately prepared, and we are sorry. Nevertheless, we are grateful for this chance and we did not want to pass up the window of opportunity to meet with you.

First of all, I want to give you a very brief history of our organization, because without that you really can't comprehend why some of our problems are so unique.

We have been officially organized as a council representing national forage interests since the late 1980s. Until a year ago we were an association of associations, some provincial and some national. Currently our member criteria provide an opportunity for any interested entity to belong - individuals, provincial organizations or other commodity groups.

Our goals are listed and include some very challenging situations, especially when you consider that we have a very meagre budget and a volunteer board of directors. You can appreciate how difficult it is to run a national organization with no structured financial support such as other mature commodity groups have.

Our current challenges include the following:

We want to give the forage commodity a voice that can be heard nationally and provincially, a voice that represents all our members' interests, a voice that has been challenged to correct many of the inequities that have occurred in the past, mainly due to the lack of this voice in the first place. I might add that this voice has been strengthened as a direct result of Agriculture and Agri-Foods' forage committee under the direction of Lucie Larose. We are forever grateful to Lucie and her team.

At the farm level, our greatest challenge is to provide an awareness of the need to improve our forage quality for livestock feed. That's the key to the ability of our livestock to be competitive in the future. This same quality aspect is the key to capturing what is reported to be one of the best opportunities for growth in agricultural export marketing, mostly in the compressed bale hay form.

Some of the impediments to these challenges are the lack of a standard to indicate what the grower needs to produce to attract these markets and what quality and standard the buyer is getting. No other agriculture commodity is marketed without this basic information, and some have very lengthy regulations to support that standard or grade. Forage has nothing except word of mouth, and, as you can imagine, that becomes quite flexible sometimes, depending on the needs of the grower or the buyer. The term ``good quality'' can have a completely different meaning, depending on whether you're buying or selling.

In any event, this method of describing quality is certainly not very conducive to developing national and international markets. Currently we are attempting to implement a national hay certification program that will address these problems. We've been trying to do this for three years, and Marjorie, when she comes on, will talk more about this in detail.

A second impediment is the lack of funding. It's probably a universal impediment these days, but more serious to a commodity that's immature, lacks a structured financial supporting system from the grass roots, and mainly because we're not the end product. In 95% of the production cycle it is milk or meat.

To add to our frustrations, we are not able to implement a federally designed check-off program that was supposed to be designed for promotion and research development. It is this impediment, the lack of funds, that threatens the dedicated efforts of all the volunteer individuals and government work up to this stage. As you can appreciate, we don't have marketing boards or commissions or strong organizations to fall back on for support.

Bill C-54 was our hope to resolve at least part of our funding problems. But when it was finally introduced, it was apparent that it was a piece of legislation that was impossible to implement by national organizations.

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In the private sector today there is no room for this kind of performance. Our council, along with several other commodities that were waiting for this legislation to assist in financing much-needed research and promotion, is having a difficult time understanding how this could have happened and, more importantly, why it has taken so long to correct. It is well over a year now since government has recognized the problem, but using this legislation to help us in the future is still just that, a long way in the future.

To compound our frustrations, though, we have moved and are moving faster every day to a trading environment that pits our ability to produce and market against the best in the world. We were told with the signing of the GATT or the World Trade Organization agreement that research was green and that would be one area we could count on for government support. Not only is the direct support for research from government funding disappearing, but lack of workable legislation to fund this research from industry is not here either. It seems irresponsible to us that we don't recognize some of the potential opportunities in our future and make things happen so they can be achieved.

I'm known by my peers to be a very optimistic person, almost to the point of not being realistic. But I must confess I don't know of any time in my involvement in farm organizations when I have been more discouraged about our ability to be a significant contributor to our Canadian economy. This is especially depressing when we know the opportunities are there but we just can't seem to get the kick-start we need to prepare for them.

A third impediment is in the area of statistics. This is a result, again, of not having a voice for forages in the past. No one needed to know facts that are pertinent to developing an industry when that industry was only a supplier of product to another commodity, beef or milk. Developing export markets then was not a priority; today it is very much a priority. It is an opportunity for Canada to exploit some of our natural strengths.

Forages grown in Canada are recognized for their superior quality and it's mainly because of our cooler climate and growing conditions. It's about time we recognized we have a strength our southern neighbours can't compete with. However, to develop this opportunity we must know more about our industry than we do now. Stats Canada is being very cooperative with us and is currently trying to get priorities from us regarding what we need the most.

Again, because of the tight financial situations in government, they must only be doing what is necessary. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are also working with us to define those priorities and have agreed to help get the message to Stats Canada as to what these are. Until we can document some of the values and the volumes for forages available for marketing, it is hard to design policies and programs to assist in the development of these markets.

An example we can use relates to baled hay crossing the U.S. border. This is one of our most common areas where hay is trading now, and the regulations are such that only those trucks that have in excess of $2,000 worth of hay on board need to declare their value or volume. Needless to say, there are not many drivers who admit they have in excess of that value, regardless of what the actual value is.

One other value relating to forages and their importance to our total economy is their conservation role. As we all know, forages are used by other commodities to correct or protect soil elements from losses to wind and water erosion. Vegetable growers use it in their rotation for various reasons, disease interruption being one of the most important ones. Grain and oilseed producers use it in their rotations to improve soil structure and to protect against erosion. Livestock producers use it to utilize animal wastes, an environmental problem that would be unmanageable without forage crops to help.

All the above important sectors need the value of forage to be enhanced to help them to be environmentally good farmers. Without a competitive value on forages, they may choose to use forage in their rotation less than they should.

The current trend in P.E.I. is a good example of what I'm saying. There is so much potential to market processed potato products from this province that land values and return from land rentals is so great that many farmers are fearful of the impact on their soil's ability to maintain its integrity in the long term for sure, and to some degree in the very short term. That's just another reason why we feel it is not the right time to ignore forage or potential forage markets.

In government's long-term plan to make Canada competitive and a healthy place for agriculture to develop in, we must recognize there is a need to address some of these basic development demands. If we lose this voice of the Canadian Forage Council, it will be a long time before another voice comes along with the dedication to address these concerns.

Summing up, we need a government that fully understands what our ambitions are and the potential those ambitions can have for Canada's future economy and for our agriculture industry as a whole. If you haven't interpreted by now that we, the Canadian Forage Council, are very frustrated by the attempts we have made to help develop this commodity and its potential opportunities, then you've missed the thrust of our presentation.

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To be very frank about it, unless there's a change in events relating to some very real happenings in the development of our goals we won't need to worry about the future of the Canadian Forage Council. We have gone as far as we can go without some indication at least that some of our efforts are being recognized by the government.

We don't expect any handout. We don't think we can snap our fingers and everything will fall into place for us. We do expect, though, some indication that we are trying to do the right thing to develop the forage industry. We do expect a partner in government.

Ms Marjorie Zingle (Executive Director, Canadian Forage Council): Should I go ahead?

The Chairman: Yes. I think for the final few seconds of Bill's comments the line got disconnected in Halifax.

Bill, we certainly got the conclusion. Whether we heard your last sentence or two or not I'm not sure, but what we will do now is hear from Marjorie. Then I'm sure the committee members will have some questions or comments for one or both of you.

To you, Marjorie, welcome to the committee today. I must tell you personally I had a note to you about a copy of a letter I got. I pulled it out of the mail a day or two ago when I realized we were going to see you here at the committee today. Welcome to the committee. Go ahead.

Ms Zingle: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'll echo Bill McCurdy's comments that we very much appreciate this opportunity and compliment you on the haste with which your committee has been formed and is proceeding. We are delighted that we have a chance to be among the first, I believe, of the organizations that are presenting to you.

Bill said I would elaborate a little on the CFC national hay certification program. I'll elaborate very quickly, but I want you to know we have a committee that had spent a long time putting together a proposal and a plan, and it's as solid now as it was three years ago, when it was put together. Our only problem is getting it up and running.

It's simply a method to describe the level of quality the seller can rely on to judge the value....

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The Chairman: Just bear with us, everybody.

Can you hear us again, Marjorie?

Ms Zingle: I can hear you well.

The Chairman: We can hear you. I'm just not sure whether or not you know when we lost you.

Ms Zingle: I don't know when.

The Chairman: We're having some technical difficulties that I hope we can iron out. We're saying on this end that maybe the satellite went through a rock cut someplace or whatever.

Could you start at the beginning? You said you were going to elaborate on some of the challenges and impediments that Bill had commented on.

Ms Zingle: All right. I hope you got my thanks for the opportunity of being able to make this presentation. That's very important to us.

I wanted to go on for the benefit of the committee to quickly explain what the certification program is. It's actually quite a simple program that was put together by a nationwide committee to establish a national hay certification program. It's simply a method to describe the level of quality that, number one, the seller can rely on to judge the value of his sale, and number two, the buyer can rely on as a credible guideline for any Canadian purchase of forages. It's not a grading system; it's a description system.

The absence of a national hay certification program that reliably describes the quality of forages hinders Canada's ability to establish a....

[Technical Difficulty - Editor]

The Chairman: Marjorie.

Ms Zingle: Where are we now?

The Chairman: Not very far along from where you were before, unfortunately. You were talking about the quality and the credible guidelines that are needed for the sellers and the buyers.

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Ms Zingle: Oh, wow. I have to go back a little ways.

I reiterated that it's not a grading system; it's a descriptive system. We have been trying to make that clear. The absence of a national hay certification program that will reliably describe the quality of this commodity hinders Canada's ability to establish a reputation for consistency and credibility in the forage export market.

Our problem is that because value-added certification requires education and promotion to both the seller and the buyer, it does not fit into the present granting criteria. While other industries have received generous consideration, the forage industry hits a brick wall every time because we simply don't fit into the present granting system. We're at the preparation stage, market readiness if you will. Those who put the granting programs together have not included considerations for an emerging industry like the forage industry. The programs are designed for established industries that are expanding their present marketing activities.

We've made presentations to both Mr. Goodale and to you, Mr. Vanclief, detailing the roadblocks in the granting system. We were delighted recently when the adaptation fund was announced because we felt that the hay certification program is 100% in line with the thrust of that fund. But now we've been told that because the fund is channelled to the provinces, there is little hope that we can access it for the national component of the hay certification program, and it's a component that's vital to the total program.

Staff within the department have walked us through every conceivable granting process and there is always a reason why our program cannot be done. We have yet to find from your department how it can be done. Perhaps the most consuming frustration is to be told that we must convince one person at a time along the bureaucratic hierarchy. There is no clear ministerial directive recognizing a need for value-added certification in the export mix.

We have developed a successful pilot certification program in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, including important national awareness and promotional elements. These elements are critical to the success of forage exports and should be recognized as fundable.

The CFC is a relatively new organization and has not received years of assistance enjoyed by other commodities. Certified bale hay is a new product and we have an established market that is clamouring for it, yet we are unable to get the department to agree that a national program is absolutely essential to the success, not ten provincial certification programs. We have requested a very small amount of assistance compared to the return Canada can receive from this commodity.

Certification is the selling tool to capture the precise requirements of forage buyers. We must have it. The adaptation fund encourages ten separate certification programs, which is confusing to those buyers. I believe it does not reflect the ``team Canada'' approach.

There is more work to do in this area as well. We need to be able to describe the quality of other forage products such as timothy and orchard grass, and we need to be able to reflect the wide range of soils, types of land, etc. We have further to go than where we are now.

I've spent most of the time on certification because our members have continually told us that it is the number one item we have to pursue. We had a meeting just three weeks ago in Ottawa and this subject was again the major discussion point all day.

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With regard to check-off, I know Mr. Vanclief is very familiar with the province relating to check-off. Of course, we are frustrated, and there are some 20 other agriculture-related associations that are experiencing the same frustration as we are.

Bill C-54 imposes a complexity of onerous and costly requirements that most of these organizations simply cannot meet. Even though we have a government representative appointed to us to take us through the maze, we have been running around through this maze for about four years and there's still absolutely no hope of achieving check-off under the present situation.

We are told that the problem has to do with the constitutional right of each province to decide on agricultural matters. In my opinion, the federal and provincial governments have a responsibility to set aside politics and address this matter. It's unreasonable for the government to withdraw funding and tell the private sector that it must finance its own promotion and research programs on one hand and on the other hand leave roadblocks in the way that keep the members of the private sector from checking themselves off.

I'm told that in the United States there's over $600 million in check-offs that come out of the agricultural industry. If we use the 10% ratio, we're talking about at least $60 million that could be available to the various agriculture industries.

We urge you to bring this problem forward as much as your committee can. Certainly CFC has done everything it can to the extent of rallying those 20 other associations together to try to form some kind of a consortium, but to be honest with you, CFC does not have the resources to do that. Secondly, I'd like to think that it's Ag Canada's responsibility to do that. I don't really think that's something we should be doing.

With regard to research, I'll just elaborate, and perhaps you'll want to ask us some questions about it. Important projects have been lost and it will be years before the forage industry recovers from the recent brain drain. Canada has an unprecedented opportunity to be a primary competitor in the world market if and only if the product continues to be developed to meet the emerging requirements for higher protein and better digestability. Without this kind of research, Canada loses this advantage.

Bill has referred to statistics. The dearth of statistics creates the following problems. Administratively we lag behind other industries in government policies and planning because we have no statistics. We have insufficient evidence for established and quality assurance programs. We have an inability to communicate the impact of the industry back to the producer. This leads to slow development of domestic and international export programs and it does not provide the background we need to develop innovative research programs and initiatives.

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We believe CFC can be an association of producers, self-supporting financially, but in doing that, because it's a fledgling organization, we have some underlying problems. One of the problems is that there are over 100,000 forage producers in Canada and the problem of communication is very difficult. It's because we're such a fledgling organization. That is a serious problem for us.

There are a number of producers, not necessarily small producers, that have grasped the present opportunities enough to export. Your committee should know over $120 million worth of forage products are already exported annually. I think the figure is actually higher than that. But the estimates are as high as $5 billion. If we reached just the $1 billion mark we would be doing well. I'd like to emphasize that there is a tremendous opportunity here for the forage industry to capture a market and get ahead of its competitors very quickly and very easily. We just need a couple of little things changed.

A lot of farmers do not have a sense yet of how important forages are and the fact that they can get into them in place of some of the other things they are doing. For example, until just recently forages were not included in NISA, so the farmers did not have an incentive, or confidence, to produce a product for which they could not get insurance. There are several other things like that. We need to increase awareness in the farmer.

We request that your committee take these four points under advisement. We request that you put them on your agenda. We will do everything we can to work with you to try to solve these problems. We think if they are given some serious thought, at least one or two of these impediments could be removed very quickly. We implore you to give the matter your attention.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Marjorie. We have to give our apology to you for two reasons. One is the mix-up in the notice, and therefore the short notice. The other is that we have an apology to Bill. It seems every time the phone line to Halifax hooks up with Bill, we lose you. The bottom line is that Bill isn't with us in this setting any longer today, so it's yours to look after. I know you certainly are capable of handling any questions or comments.

You answered a couple of points I had on the size of the export business today and the potential of that. So now I will turn it over to Mr. Collins.

Mr. Collins (Souris - Moose Mountain): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

It is a pleasure to have you in conversation with us, even if it is somewhat hyphenated and disjointed.

Some of the things you raised are of concern to us. Let me touch on just a couple.

One of the problems you mentioned is that you must convince one person at a time. Let me assure you from a parliamentarian's point of view that we must be at quite few meetings with the same kind of wavelength. We go through the same approach.

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How can we assist you to avoid the pitfalls so that as you move along, you'll know that the program, as you have in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, may be one that we can move very quickly to a national level? I wonder if you'd respond to that.

Ms Zingle: Just to give you an example, we were, I believe, the first organization to make an application under the adaptation fund, and many, many applications that have been presented have been successful while we languish for one reason or another.

When we had our meeting in Ottawa, we met with one gentleman in the granting area. His response to us was that he agreed with us completely, and he was behind us 100%, but it was another person we had to go and convince. So we went to that person, who asked us why we didn't just do check-off. Then he put us in a complete circle again. We had to prove to him that check-off funds were not available to us, which took half a year to do. We had to convince him. Then once he was convinced, there was another person we had to convince.

So, Mr. Collins, I don't know what business you're in, but I know if I ran my business like that, I'd be bankrupt very quickly. There needs to be some directive from the top.

The forage industry, as we said a number of times today, is a fledgling industry. Something has to be done to inject some initiative, some way, for a fledgling industry to get on a level playing field. We're way down here, the cattle industry is up there and the dairy industry is up here. We need to have some way to catch up. It's the forage industry's own fault, I guess, but they have to catch up. I feel a political policy or a political directive has to make that happen. I don't think it's going to come from the bottom up. It's going to come from the top down.

Mr. Collins: When you talk about your system, it's not a grading system; it's a description system. That seems to be a reasonable approach. Is it acceptable to those people who are going to be players in the system that this will fly?

Secondly, I guess it would be nice for us to have those people here that you have to go around the hoop once or twice with so we could avoid playing three-handed pool. Then I would know who I might direct the question back to, and say, look, let's stop the nonsense and move forward on this if we're going to be successful.

Let me just say one other thing. I know you see the political arrangement, but you can imagine, with all the problems we have with ten provinces.... How do you bring ten provinces on board? We at the federal level put in legislation. I'm not so sure my friend opposite might not say, look, we're going top down on this thing.

I just sat in on a group yesterday where they said there was too much federal intervention in this. So I'd like some of your wisdom on this.

Ms Zingle: Are you talking about check-offs or are you talking about certification?

Mr. Collins: Mainly certification.

Ms Zingle: Okay. The first point you made was whether there was a buy-in for the provinces. Yes, there is. Saskatchewan has bought into it. They actually provided the leadership in getting a program going. It was their program that the national program was built on. They have had financial difficulties, so they've just about gone down to zero. They actually had quite a strong program going for two years.

Manitoba was able to get some funding from the Green Plan. They have been very successful. They're very excited about new sales they have made across the border that were never made before. They are now in a position where they don't have enough product to meet the demand, and one of the reasons they don't have enough product is because we need that training and awareness program.

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With Lucie Larose's assistance, we conducted - I can provide you with the information - cross-Canada conference calls with most of the provinces to make sure that we had their buy-in. We estimate that it's going to take three to five years before all the provinces will buy in. It won't all happen in year one.

We believe we'll have Saskatchewan and Manitoba for sure if we start this year. There's a good possibility that Quebec will be one of the first, as well, depending on how quickly we can get started. We have B.C., Alberta, and Nova Scotia next, which would give us six provinces, and Ontario. We're not sure, but we think they would come in in the second or third year.

So we're looking for a program whereby there's a smooth flow. We don't want to drop on anybody anything that they don't want to do. Certainly some of them have to be convinced.

We don't want it to be a program that is run by the government. It is a volunteer program. If they don't want to have their hay certified, they don't have to. But if it is certified, it gives us a quality product to sell.

Have I answered your question?

The Chairman: That's fine, Marjorie.

Mr. Hermanson.

Mr. Hermanson (Kindersley - Lloydminster): Thank you, Ms Zingle, and alsoMr. McCurdy, although I guess he's not electronically connected with us. I thought your presentations were excellent on such short notice. Thank you for presenting your concerns to the committee.

I sensed a couple of things from what you and Mr. McCurdy said. First, you recognize the important role that forage plays in the conservation of our land, with which I certainly agree. I sensed from the presentations that governments often forget about forage producers when they're designing whatever they happen to design that affects agriculture.

You mentioned NISA. I received a lot of letters regarding the Crow buy-out package and the fact that forage was overlooked, even though often forages were used in rotation and forage products are used for export and were affected by the demise of the Crow benefit.

I wasn't aware until today that there are shortfalls with Bill C-64, which apparently was passed by the Parliament previous to this one. We will certainly look at that.

I want to know if you concur. Did I understand your concerns correctly? Am I right in saying that you don't want more regulations, but rather you want roadblocks that are preventing your industry from going forward removed?

Also, it sounded as if you are looking to the government for assistance. Is that assistance in the form of market development, or is it in the form of subsidies?

Ms Zingle: We've gone to NISA insurance and you're talking about.... What was the name of the payments that had gone to the provinces?

Mr. Hermanson: The western grain payments program. It's called the Crow buy-out.

Ms Zingle: I can probably send you some information on this, as well.

The Canadian Forage Council made a presentation suggesting that payments should go back to the forage producer. We were simply not strong enough. Something to the tune of $68 million was set aside, and it's going to the processors. We were amazed, and slightly devastated, when we saw that. So that's just a little point that you might be interested in knowing or following up.

I understand that as a result of the work both we and some of the other agriculture associations have been doing this might actually get on the federal-provincial ministers' agenda for their meeting coming up in July.

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On Bill C-54, if a provincial agriculture minister wishes, they can agree to allow the national association to be an agent for the provincial. They can give up their rights for the national association to be an agent to collect checkoffs. But the way the bill is written, if you went according to the bill, you'd have to have ten agencies.

If the Canadian Forage Council had ten agencies, we would spend all of the money we collected, which doesn't make any sense at all. That becomes very bureaucratic; we'd be collecting money to exist. We don't want to do that. We want to have one agency that collects the money and we want to be able to distribute that money however the Forage Councils want it distributed, but we don't want to have ten agencies. I won't elaborate any more on that.

The last point was with regard to financing. Yes, we have applied for a grant, just as everyone else has the right to do, to assist us to get started, but we have set out in our business plan for the program to become self-supporting in five years. When you consider some of the other commodities and the length of time it's taken them to be self-sufficient - and as a matter of fact some of them are not self-sufficient at all after maybe 50 or 75 years - I don't think that's asking a lot. Even if it did take a little longer, I don't think it's asking a lot.

Given the information we have from the department and given the tremendous potential we have if certain circumstances with regard to exports continue, I don't think we have a problem in becoming self-sufficient in five years. That's not off the top of my head and it's not just from me. Many people in the business have looked at this, and it's not outlandish or off the wall. It's a well-thought-out program.

Mr. Hermanson: I was really wondering about the support you're looking for and in what form you want it. You're not looking for a cash grant for your association. Are you looking for help in market development or in research for the forage industry, or are you looking for a producer subsidy? That's what I'm not clear on.

Ms Zingle: This is for a certification program only. We haven't applied for dollars for anything else, just certification. We came up with a figure over a period of five years, so what we asked for, which is the most difficult part for the government, is to give us a boost at the beginning. We asked for a 90% grant at the beginning, going down to 10%, and what they want is 50% across. Our problem is with that 40%, because we just don't have the dollars to get started and there are no means available through the present programs to help us get started.

Mr. Hermanson: How much money in total would that require? Where would you be starting in dollars and what would the total amount be after the program was completely developed?

Ms Zingle: I'm going to give you some ifs. If all ten provinces were involved for five years, averaging it out, we figure it would cost about $60,000 per province. That would cover everything we need: the measuring tools, the mileage, the cost of the inspectors, the promotion, going to trade shows, marketing programs and so on. We figure we need about $60,000 per province per year.

The balance of whatever we would need would be generated through an increasing fee to the farmer. Some say the farmer should pay that fee and some say the buyer should pay it, but eventually the buyer does pay it.

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If we just have two provinces, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in year one, then that $60,000 per province has to increase a little bit because you don't have the economy of scale that you would have if you had ten provinces.

If you want the maximum you take ten provinces multiplied by $60,000, so that's $600,000 a year per province. But that isn't what we're asking for. We're asking to have the dollars that we need for those provinces that buy in, as they buy in. So it would be much less than that.

Mr. Hermanson: Thank you very much.

Ms Zingle: That's a roundabout answer, but we'll revise our application anytime in terms of the dollar.

The Chairman: Okay. Thank you very much, Elwin and Marjorie. There are a couple of other members who wish to have a question or comment, but just on the way by, Marjorie, maybe some time before you finish your comments, you could make a comment.

I believe Agriculture Canada has made available, in trying to assist your organization, some upfront money that is repayable. I understand that for the large conference - and I forget the name of it, some world grassland summit, but maybe I have the name wrong - maybe you could touch on the importance of that to the industry and to Canada.

As well, in regard to Bill C-54, I guess I'm the only one sitting around the table here today who was present in the previous government when that went through. I must admit that I supported it because I think in principle it's the right idea.

Unfortunately, it's one of those situations. I'm making no excuses for it, but in reality it hasn't worked the way that all of us or many of us thought it could. So, as you say, it needs to be revisited.

You're not the only organization this might be helpful to. As we in government say, do your own thing, and we in government try to stay out of your face, but we do have a role to play in helping you have the tools in order to do that.

I won't ask you to comment on that because I have a strong feeling that you agree with what I say. I'll go over to Mr. Reed from the province of Ontario, Marjorie, to ask some questions and comments.

Mr. Reed (Halton - Peel): I was curious to know what bodies were involved in developing the description for certification. Were they involved across Canada or were they local?

Ms Zingle: They were across Canada. I'd be happy to send you the names from the Maritimes right to British Columbia, because it was important to make sure that it was a national program and that we could develop a description that would be good for starters, number one, and that we could build on at a later date.

As a matter of fact, the program has been pirated. There are companies now that are using it without a nod in our direction and using it successfully. So it's a very good system in terms of the national perspective.

Mr. Reed: I thank you for that. I was just curious in order to establish the obvious willingness of the various provinces to participate in this program when we all hope it comes to pass for you.

The other questions I had, Mr. Chairman, have been answered by and large, so I thank you very much.

The Chairman: Marjorie, Mr. Pickard, the parliamentary secretary for the Minister of Agriculture, whom you met with I believe when you were in Ottawa here two or three weeks ago for meetings, I must say fairly gently reminded me that he was here when Bill C-54 was passed in the previous government.

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He says I owe him something. We won't ask him to say out loud what he just said to me quietly, but when I made a note of that earlier to bring that up, Mr. Pickard hadn't come in the room yet. Just to give him a little return on his jab, everything was working well as far as the teleconference was concerned, Marjorie, until he came in the room, and then we lost Bill, so Gerry and Bill will have to settle that.

I will move on to Mr. Calder.

Mr. Calder (Wellington - Grey - Dufferin - Simcoe): Marjorie, I just want to go to a statement you made here. It was a about a national hay certification program, a method to describe the level of quality that the seller can use to sell his product. Basically, you're saying you need a guideline for forages for buyers and sellers, and that without this guideline we will be hindered internationally. Don't the registered forages that you're using right now tell what the yield is going to be, the protein level, the dry matter content and everything if you are going to sell? Doesn't that already cover what you're talking about? If not, the question is why? And finally, how are other countries, internationally, handling the problem? Do they not have the same problem as we do? Or if they don't, how have they corrected it?

Ms Zingle: I'll try not to miss any of your points.

The method of describing that you mentioned - the chemical analysis and the colour and so on - is what would be used for the certification program, and there are some companies that are using it or parts of it now. But, as Bill mentioned in his presentation, where's the credibility? If you're the seller, you just might give a little bit on your description. I don't know if you know of any - I certainly don't know - other Canadian commodity that doesn't have some kind of description or a grade they go by. That's needed in order for us to maintain something that Canada is very well known for, and that is the quality of its product, its honesty, and its self-policing when it goes into the international market.

The demand for good quality hay is increasing. Japan is the top example, but there are many other countries that are becoming more demanding in the type of quality hay they're purchasing. It just so happens that Canada has the best alfalfa and timothy there is, but oddly enough, if you look at.... I'll use Japan as an example just to show you the cubes and pellets. We have about 98% of the market to Japan. That particular market is saturated, but we only have about 2% of the baled hay. There are two reasons for this. One is that we don't have a phytosanitary program, which is one of the certification programs in our program, and the second is that we don't have good colour and chemical analysis. They are buying United States hay, which isn't as good as ours but they're able to identify it.

I'm going to give you another example, which I hope horrifies you because it horrifies me. In British Columbia, the dairy industry imports $14 million worth of hay from Washington every year, and the reason is because the dairymen in British Columbia are getting a consistent description of the hay they buy. They can't get it from Alberta or Saskatchewan. There's a good opportunity for certified hay to be transported from the Brooks area into British Columbia if we had a certification program. Did I answer all your questions?

Mr. Calder: Pretty close. I guess what you're calling for here is basically an ISO - which is the international standards of operation for industry - type of situation for hay, and from there we're probably either going to have to educate internationally that the colour of our hay is a little bit different from that of other countries and/or we're going to have to maybe educate the forage growers here in Canada how to grow their hay differently.

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Ms Zingle: Under the human resources department, we did a study of the forage training needs for the farmer. We would very much like to proceed with it, but again, we're unable to do so because we're unable to generate the income through check-offs to get that kind of a promotion program going.

We've been looking into ISO 9000, and we realize that is probably one of the future steps we're going to be taking.

Mr. Calder: Thank you very much, Marjorie.

The Chairman: Rose-Marie Ur, you have a couple of questions. When you're finished, we'll go to the next witness.

Mrs. Ur (Lambton - Middlesex): Actually, my colleague, Murray, has asked some of the questions. I thank you for your presentation. I'm certainly not knowledgeable on this particular matter, and I found your presentation very interesting and informative.

My question was what is acreage potential? You said there are great potential opportunities here for marketing hay abroad. What acreage do you think would be satisfactory? What numbers are you looking at? What is the demand for, and the make-up of, good-quality hay from non-hay producers?

Ms Zingle: I can't give you the answer about the acreage, but I could get it for you. Most of the farmers are using their acreage for grain, canola, corn or whatever. Those products take all the nutrients out of the earth. Forages in the form of alfalfa, timothy and bromegrass, etc., put nutrients back into the earth.

A lot of farmers will sometimes go into a year or two of forage production just to replenish the earth, but they consider those to be lost years because there's nobody out there marketing the forages for them and they're anxious to get back to whatever it is that will give them their real income.

The acreages that are used, or could be used, have a lot to do with the kind of marketing we would be able to do.

What was the other question?

Mrs. Ur: What is the make-up of good-quality hay?

Ms Zingle: The most important thing really is the protein content and what they call relative feed value, RFV. I'm not an agronomist; I'm a marketer, as you probably figured out.

As for the dairymen, for example, it's very important to them to know the level of protein in the forages because they have to come up with a certain balance in order to produce the quality milk they want. If a dairyman can get good-quality hay, his costs are brought down. The cost of forage is less and it takes less high-quality forage to supply the cow with the protein they need.

Mrs. Ur: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Marjorie. We are going to have to move on. We have other witnesses with us today from Soil Conservation Canada. I think they make a good team with the forage producers and the Canadian Forage Council to be before the committee today.

I do want to thank you. Again, our apologies for losing Bill and for the short time we gave you to prepare for today, but I have to reiterate what some of the other members of the committee have said, which is that I think you've done an excellent job of expressing your concerns and frustrations, and the impediments, to the committee.

If you have any information you would like circulated to the committee, please send that to the clerk of the committee, and we will get that around.

Again, thank you very much for being with us. Maybe we'll give you 15 seconds or 30 seconds for a closing remark.

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Ms Zingle: Actually, there are just two things, and they'll be very short.

The International Grassland Congress is an event that happens once every four years. Canada, for the first time in 72 years, will be hosting it. The congress will consist of some 1,500 to 2,000 forage research scientists from around the world, and it's a tremendous opportunity for Canada to show its stuff. The federal government did loan the IGC $100,000 to get it launched, for which we're grateful. It's coming along well, and it's going to take place in June 1997. I'm working really hard on that.

The other point I wanted to ask you was where do we go from here? Your committee has heard our concerns. What can we expect from you as a committee?

The Chairman: Marjorie, what we do after having witnesses before the committee is have the committee discuss that, and then pass on the concerns and views of the committee, sometimes as a report, and other times as a document that we refer to as ``what we heard of issues''.

With what you have brought very clearly, as far as the workability of Bill C-54, for example, to press the minister to have that reviewed so it's more workable and those types of things, I think you have the assurance of the committee that we will tell others there's more work that needs to be done.

Ms Zingle: Okay, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate your time.

The Chairman: Thank you, Marjorie.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will move on quickly. Our next witnesses today are from Soil Conservation Canada. Tom Sawyer, are you bringing anyone else to the table with you?

Mr. Tom Sawyer (President, Soil Conservation Canada): Yes, I'm bringing two able supporters.

The Chairman: I'm not so sure you need supporters, but I know you'll enjoy having them with you, and we'll enjoy having them at the table with you.

Our apologies, gentlemen, for the attendance at the committee today. The other members obviously had some other commitments. I don't want you to think that it's a lack of interest. It's just that, unfortunately, most of us cannot be in a whole bunch of places at one time.

I welcome you here, Mr. Sawyer. Please introduce your colleagues with you to the committee. You probably have a presentation to start with. It appears as though you've lost one of your cohorts.

Mr. Sawyer: Could I bring my friend Jamshed up here? He works for PFRA. He thinks he shouldn't sit in the front row, but he's very helpful in soil conservation, and gentlemen who work in soil conservation should sit in the front row.

The Chairman: No problem.

Mr. Sawyer: This is Jamshed Merchant, from PFRA, here in Ottawa, and he is a supporter of soil conservation. Roger Larson, of CFI, is also interested in soil conservation.

The Chairman: We have certainly met Mr. Larson before.

Mr. Sawyer: Mr. Chairman, the rules, as I understand them, are that I will talk for fifteen minutes, and then we'll get into some questions.

The Chairman: That's right. Go ahead.

Mr. Sawyer: On behalf of the board of directors of the Soil Conservation Council of Canada, I thank you for this opportunity to come to talk to you and discuss with you how important our soils are to the long-term future of Canada.

You people know better than I that if you go back and look at the numbers, you'll see we presently have 5.7 billion people in the world. Those people who study this say that we'll have 6 billion by 2000, 7 billion by 2012, and 8 billion by 2025.

All of us must think very carefully regarding the long-term needs of Canada in order to feed the future generations. Whether we feed our own or those of other countries, that's one of the things we must look at.

What is the Soil Conservation Council of Canada? There was a gentlemen by the name of Senator Herb Sparrow, who chaired a committee.... Copies of Soil at Risk have been spread around all over. They clearly showed us we were doing some things that were not sustainable.

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The Soil Conservation Council of Canada was started by Senator Sparrow. We're the face and voice of soil conservation in Canada. We're a national, non-government, independent organization, providing a non-partisan public forum to speak and act at the national level for soil conservation.

That doesn't say we're not biased. We're very heavily biased towards soil. In fact, I'm a lobbyist for soil conservation.

Another report was written this last year, called The Health of our Soils. If you're interested in the progress we've made, I would recommend you put it under your pillow. You won't read it all in one night, but it's good information and it was well done.

We had a national meeting in Saskatoon in November called Forum 2005. We had 116 people who were invited to come to this two-day workshop, with the focus on conservation and enrichment of Canadian soils and related resources for the benefit of present and future generations. We had 70 farmers we had selected from across Canada to come and participate in this particular workshop.

The report is available to you in both French and English. Out of it seven guiding principles have been laid down, and seven recommendations. I would suggest you turn to page 12. We'll deal with the seven recommendations.

The first recommendation that came out of this workshop was that a new long-term national strategy for agriculture resource management must be developed and implemented immediately following the conclusion of the green plan in 1997.

Those of us who have worked in agriculture for a long time.... In the last five to fifteen years Agriculture Canada has signed various agreements and accords and PFRA with the provinces to research and demonstrate and implement practical soil conservation systems on farms in Canada. These programs have made a significant contribution to the new sustainable agricultural systems that have been put in place.

I'll be honest. Initially when we put these into place we did it for environmental reasons. We just knew less phosphate was going off into the water, less of the pesticides was going off into the water. We wanted to keep our soils at home to grow crops. But once we started to get at it, we realized this was an economic game we were in. The consensus at this time is that there's a $10 to $20 net return to the grower who adopts these new sustainable tillage systems. If you start to work out the mathematics, $10 an acre on 10 million acres is $100 million. I would argue with you that the return on the investment by Agriculture Canada has been paid back many, many times over.

The second recommendation is that a national network of soil and water conservation organizations should be established and it should consist of producer-driven organizations that are active in each region or province.

The producers have been very important in this conservation area, in delivering the programs and administration and in the implementation. It's quite clear they have made these things work. I've worked in business all my life, and although farmers listen to us, they learn from each other. It's quite clear that if you want a farmer to adopt something, have him talk to his neighbour and he'll very quickly learn how to improve things.

The third recommendation is that a strong coalition of stakeholders should be formed to establish a funding strategy so a long-term national soil and water conservation plan can be developed.

The preservation and enhancement of our soils is so important to the long-term food production capacity of Canada that all food sectors should have an opportunity to contribute financially. This is one of the things the farmers really hit us with at this workshop. I thought ten years was a long time, but they said this must be a vision of thirty to fifty years.

The other thing, when you look at this, is that our soils have a competitive edge over the Americans'. If we continue to develop our soils and treat them well, we can beat the Americans at producing food. This really is our advantage and we should continue to look at that.

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Recommendation number four is that a national public education strategy should be developed to ensure that all of society is well informed on issues relating to managing agricultural resources. Again, because our soils are a national resource it's only fair that the people in cities who pay our salary should know about soils and how important they are to feeding our grandchildren in the future.

Recommendation number five is that there must be a conscious effort to carry out applied research on a field scale to provide new information on management practices. I know all of you have a thick veneer in agriculture because that's part of why you are on this committee, but primary agriculture is a mix of business, science and art and it's largely done when exposed to the benefits and liabilities of mother nature. This unique mixture of all of these compounds must be perfected on a field scale in order to allow soil conservation systems to be adapted and adopted as quickly as possible.

In the area of soil conservation we learned that the brain power of the farmer who is dedicated to the enhancement of these soils has been a very important part of moving this program ahead in the adaptation of soil conservation.

Recommendation number six is that an evaluation framework must be developed for any new national agricultural resource management strategy. It must be based on science. Our agriculture been built based on sound science and these systematic evaluations must be part of the developmental process. The benchmarks that are set by science allow positive progress to be measured and improved upon.

Our researchers at Agriculture Canada, PFRA, universities and provincial government levels are an integral part of this system. It seems as if cooperation is excellent in the production of food and the management of soils.

Recommendation number seven is that a national forum should be held triennially to provide an update on progress being made and to identify new initiatives that should be incorporated into a national strategy.

There clearly needs to be a national meeting to focus on and discuss the progress made to date and to review the proposed plans for the future. You people live in a world where you have an election every four or five years. That seems to provide a focus on certain things. We think we need to have a meeting here every three years just to kind of bring you back to what the grass roots are and what we're working at. Forum 2005, with these 116 people, clearly showed how much people care about this national resource.

What does the Soil Conservation Council of Canada - and I'm not sure, Mr. Chairman, what word I should choose - ``require'' or ``request'' from the members of your committee? Number one is a clear understanding of the importance of soil conservation to the economics of Canada. Farm cash receipts are $27 billion but the gross national product is $786 billion. That $27 billion allows other people to create $760 billion worth of wealth. I submit to you that the farmers and food producers serve society very well in Canada.

Number two: We'd like the support of the seven principles and recommendations as put together by these 70 farmers and 56 government and industry reps. Of course, Lyle, you always have the right to improve on these recommendations as you go along because that's part of the process.

Number three: We'd like a commitment from you to build a long-term strategy for soil conservation that would ensure that our Canadian soils will produce adequate food for future generations. Just think of how it would be to talk about how you as parliamentarians contributed to the food production system that we will have in 2025 and 2030 and 2040.

Number four: We'd like an agreement and commitment to work closely with the soil conservation council of Canada to support programs that facilitate the preservation and enhancement of Canadian soils consistent with our strategic plan.

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On behalf of the directors of the Soil Conservation Council of Canada, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your interest in this important subject. I rest my case. I know you've all eaten two meals today and you're probably going to eat one more. They come from the soil.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Sawyer, for a very clear and concise presentation to the committee. I think we all probably agree with you that we take soils and a number of other things in our lives for granted because they've always been there.

Before l go to Mr. Calder, could I ask you for a response to this question? As far as soil conservation in Canada, are we holding our own, going backwards, or gaining, in reference to the concerns in Senator Sparrow's book? How are we doing? He so clearly pointed out his concerns to all of us as well as the realities of where we were and where we were going. Did we listen? Did we pay heed? Are we gaining or what?

Mr. Sawyer: Yes, we listened, we heard, and we're gaining. Again, although the provinces have been an integral part of the gaining, the funding that came from Agriculture Canada was the stability that we needed to drive these programs ahead.

In Ontario we had a SWEEP program, a soil and water environmental enhancement program. It was the first time research had been moved to the farm level and that was almost a terrible thing. The researchers all thought the world was going to stop, but it didn't. It brought the research to the farm level and then the Green Plan came along and allowed us to correct some more things and move it along. Basically we're going in the right direction, but one of the fundamental reasons I'm here is that we still have a long piece to go.

The Chairman: Okay. Mr. Calder.

Mr. Calder: Tom and gentlemen, I enjoyed your presentation. I had the chance last year to be at Vision 2020 in Washington, so I know what you're talking about.

I've used this analogy in some of my speeches. An apple represents the world. I carve up the apple until I come up with a 32nd slice and I carve the skin off it and that represents class one and class two land as it is represented in the world today. Our cities are built in the centre of it.

I'm very interested in points three and four. In fact, I feel they should be further up on the list here. Education is going to be a major thing for us because right now less than 3% of the population farms. That means that any of today's television shows that deal with agriculture have a very small viewing audience and I'm very concerned when I see those programs basically being thinned out all the time.

First, I would like to know on the water conservation plan, what about.... And I just read in the paper too that we've cut a deal now where Clearly Canadian is going to be shipping mineral water to other countries. I wondered what you discussed on a water conservation plan as we start seeing some of these water companies pulling water out and shipping it outside the country. That's a concern for me.

Actually, the national soil conservation plan you're talking about here too that.... We had a chance a few days ago to meet with the organics people. By the year 2020 I know we're going to be dealing with percentage of protein per acre instead of tonnes per acre. That's an issue, and I would like to know what your opinion is, for instance, on the organic people's opinions on soil conservation.

Mr. Sawyer: Mr. Calder, you have four questions. Do you want me to comment about the small number of people on the education -

Mr. Calder: Yes.

Mr. Sawyer: - the water, the protein and organics? I'm really not that smart. I've already told you more than I know.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

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Mr. Sawyer: I think we need to do some really basic research on what goes on inside the heads of this small number of people. You have grey hair like myself, and when I was a boy the big thing at Christmas was when we saw oranges. Today when I go to the food store, I am just mesmerized at all the racks of all the foods I see with apples and oranges and bananas and all the things we have.

I don't believe society has a problem with our food production system. I've worked in this business for 30 years and I've never known anyone who has died from a lack of food or from poor food quality. I think the food issue is partly in our head. I think we need to do some work with sociologists and psychologists and small focus groups to try to build our way through this.

I can't believe that anything as successful as we've been at producing food can be a hang-up in the minds of consumers. There are some things we don't understand, Mr. Calder, no doubt about it, but I know that when things have been that successful it's not going to fall off the rails tomorrow. That's a tough one. Many people are working at that, but we need a little bit of money and a maximum of brainpower to start to work at that one.

Mr. Calder: This leads in exactly to what I was talking about, the education point and the fact that the cities are built right in the centre of prime I and prime II land.

What do I say to a construction company that wants to build a subdivision of houses and pave over another 100, 200 or 300 acres? What do you do with that? How do you develop a plan to compensate for that?

Mr. Sawyer: Mr. Calder, probably one of the toughest things is land use planning. I had decided some years ago that I was not of enough courage to handle that one. After the farmers got through with us in that workshop, they said we have to address the land use planning issue, so we're prepared to go back at that one.

My experience is that agriculture cannot compete with houses or industry. We just can't. There are too many dollars there. There are too many things against us. I think all we need to do is make sure that people know that what they're giving up, they're giving up for a long time.

There are some things we can do. This is a little bit sacrilegious, but the soil off that land should be put into a soil cemetery. We can take a bulldozer and push buildings off, but for us to rebuild soil that took 15,000 years to build would take a long time. We could take out the cement and the iron and all that stuff. We could move that off and do whatever. Then we would put the soils back on. That's one of the things we could do.

There are some things we can do in this area. Today corn is $5.50 a bushel, while three years ago it was around $2.50. I can't look at my farm friends and say you shouldn't sell that lot off because that's your retirement. So that's a tough one there.

Water is a resource that we really should manage and learn more about. I wasn't a great scholar; about all I learned about water was that when you play football you sweat and you drink more.

What's interesting is that the fellows who are involved in PFRA and in the prairie soils know a lot about water. We're learning about water in this reduced tillage area. I know now that if I keep an inch of water from running off a side hill, that's seven or eight bushels of corn. Today, that's $35 or $40. My neighbour never gave me a cent for that water.

We're learning to manage water very well. We're going to learn to use it more and more. In fact, water is going to be one of the limiting factors in increasing food production in the U.S. and China and India, because a lot of the irrigation deep well work that was done isn't sustainable.

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Fortunately, we manage water relatively well in Canada. In fact, one of the reasons why food production has gone up is that our dads used to work all week to plant ten acres. Now we'll plant 100 acres in a day and be in for supper at six o'clock to watch the news. It's our management of water that is so important.

Again, I think it's a national resource, and we should not give it away unless we are getting well paid for it and know it's being replaced.

With regard to protein, my professors told me, Mr. Calder, in the late 1950s and 1960s that in my lifetime we would not eat meat. We would eat protein from white beans and this type of thing. I don't think it's true. I think history will say that we like livestock, that we like meat products, that we like our protein from that source.

Again, in China today they like pork. The Japanese have made it. I think we still will get our protein from meat products, and 22% of our soils that we can use for agriculture we can't utilize in crop production unless we put it through livestock. So I think protein is still going to be there.

Your last question was on the organic area. Organic matter is the stamina of soil. One of the important things we get with our new tillage systems is the retention and the building of organic matter. Whether you do it through organic farming or through conventional farming, I think it's a capitalist system, and as long as you're making a living you can do it either way. I don't feel strongly one way or another about organic farming versus commercial, although it's quite clear that if you expect us to feed the world, we can't feed it with organic farming.

Mr. Calder: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Reed.

Mr. Reed: One thing jumped out at me very vividly in this list of recommendations. I'll probably be underlining one of Mr. Calder's statements, if you like, and that is the necessity for education.

We're now two or three generations away from the farm, by and large, in this country. There aren't very many of us left on the land, percentage-wise. You talked about the abundance of food on supermarket shelves. It may very well be that abundance that causes the majority of the population of a country to take that food for granted so that there is no consciousness that this abundance is as a result of that top six inches of the land mass. It's there in combination with the arts and sciences and so on that you describe that really causes that wealth. So I do believe we have an incredible task to make our urban friends aware of just what is at stake here.

My wife taught primary school for many years. The school she taught in was an urban school within a concession and a half of farm land. The youngsters she was teaching had no idea that milk did not come from a rectangular container in the refrigerator. Such is the level of ignorance, if you like, that's there now.

I know out in the riding I serve, some very small and genuine efforts are being made by concerned citizens who are now establishing tents and so on at fall fairs, with livestock that produce food and something to demonstrate to school children just where all this richness comes from. It is an incredible task, but it's a task we have to accomplish. We're still wasting resources.

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I appreciate the fact that you say we're gaining, that we have made some gains and we're getting places. But there are still things, in our urban structure particularly, that work very much against us. One is the taking for granted of the top six inches of the soil and another one is taking for granted the water supply.

There hasn't been anything done in any subdivision development plans that I know of to approve the use of reduced water flows for toilets nor the separating of sewage water and grey water and the use of grey water on a recycled basis somewhere else. The consciousness just isn't there.

I think we need your help to deal with these very major issues.

Mr. Sawyer: Well said, Mr. Reed. I apologize, I should know, but what riding do you represent?

Mr. Reed: It's called Halton - Peel and it skirts the northwest corner of the greater Toronto area. It's a mixture of agriculture and urban.

Mr. Sawyer: I know it well.

Education certainly is a challenge, but again there is a tremendous commitment by many people. I know there's agriculture in the classrooms in most provinces. I find that they're doing an excellent job.

I'm going to have a bit of an editorial here. For the first time we got $5,000 out of my fertilizer industry to support agriculture in the classroom this particular year.

I don't think we're as badly off as we think. In the 1970s we grew food and we didn't care what they thought in the cities. Then when the city people started to be interested in food production, I think that was good.

The problems we had in the big urban areas with garbage, industrial waste and sewage waste actually have raised the level of concern in this whole area. I think it has opened the minds of people to realize that this whole thing is a little more complicated than we thought. I think that we've at least moved them closer towards the point that they realize that food production is important.

For instance, in Toronto they're beginning to realize now why the beaches get closed every summer. It's just one of those things. Sir Isaac Newton says water runs downhill when you flush the toilet. It's rather interesting how they flush the toilet within a half mile of the beach and the drinking water pipe is two miles out. We're understanding this.

One of the best examples I can give is that people get after me because we use a product called commercial fertilizer to grow food. In Ontario we use about 760,000 tonnes. But we have a resource called salt, and we use two million tonnes of salt on our roads every year.

I think it's a matter, Mr. Reed, of understanding this whole environmental area and not being afraid to go and talk about it. The profession of growing food has got to be about as honourable a profession as there is. We can go and talk about it, and this sort of thing.

I would enlist your help. We're going to put a proposal together and go and see if the CIBC will help us put together an urban program on food in this area. There is a lot of educating to do. We've made good headway in the rural areas and in some of the smaller cities, but we still haven't cracked the big one.

In what town did your wife teach?

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Mr. Reed: Brampton. It will give you an idea.

Mr. Sawyer: Yes, and there you've got a new cultural area that's developed in Brampton too that is foreign to me.

I think we can crack the food industry issue and education as long as we get a little bit of money and get people who are prepared to put the brain power to it.

The Chairman: Mr. Collins.

Mr. Collins: I must commend you for the document you provided us with. So many times when we have people who present things, there are 33 pages of foofaraw and about two pages of common sense, then incense and whatever else is left over.

I like what you've done in terms of having met and the recommendations. I looked at the 170 you have on your list who attended. Strangely enough, there is not one farmer from the area I come from. From the area that's north of me, I don't see one farmer. I look there and I see a lot of bureaucrats, a lot of educators, some bankers, but what I am concerned about is where the farmers are.

Let me just say something about what you're doing. I think you're right. I think we've missed the fact that we're not talking to sociologists and saying to look at the city of Regina, that we keep moving up, whether we should go up or whether we should do some other things. We've got a lot of bedroom communities, but we're driving everybody into the cities. At all government levels we're closing down things faster than we can at the rural level. So we'll all be sitting in either Regina or Saskatoon, and that's not my choice.

Because of what you said on the water thing, let me say that with Rafferty and Alameda, if you know those two dam projects, when the floods would come passing through Estevan, every three seconds we could fill an elevator full of water during the peak flooding. Today we're now holding those in a 40-mile length of water in that Alameda and Rafferty system.

I am sure we would be flooding all the way down into the United States. Minot used to get three and four feet of water right into the city. But somebody had to wisdom to say that it was a commodity and if we don't look after it, it won't be around. We abuse more water than we ever use. You turn on the tap and you let it go freely.

We use our waste water in the city of Estevan as a cooling agent in through our boundary dam generating station. Before we can do it, we have to put it into holding ponds. So somebody has used a little wisdom. Yes, it's expensive, but the end result will be very fortunate for all of us.

In farming in northeast Saskatchewan, I used to see the people up near the park knocking down every tree to get acres of land. They were just bloody ridiculous. If you go on No. 10 north, light soil blows away faster than you can plow it up. If we were farming, we'd do better to farm the ditches. Nobody thought of putting a tree in.

What we're seeing here, and I really say you've hit upon something, is a combination not only of water, but it's the soil and the water and the environment. If we don't hurry up and get our heads together, we're going to be in some deep trouble.

We reclaim land now on our spill pass that we never did before. So we're moving from coal back to agriculture, rather than coal to spill pass.

From your results here, I wonder where you see us going. How do we collectively with you get to the end results that you want to see - and I commend you for it, plus the people with you - so we don't continue to make the mistakes? Murray touched on one: we've got concrete piles that we're not going to get rid of.

Mr. Sawyer: I appreciate your comments and I'll go back to the people responsible for putting together this good document.

The numbers listed there, one through seven, aren't listed by priority; they're just strictly listed. That's how they came out, because they're all important and in different places we would use them.

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Alan Ransom, from just across from you in Boissevain, was at that meeting. Gerry Willerth was there from Indian Head. In fact, Gerry Willerth is the president of the Soil Conservation Council of Canada at this time. So the farmers were the driving force in that particular area.

The Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association will have 3,000 or 4,000 farmers out in June at their field days. That's why it's so important for us to continue to work at the grassroots level: because they're going to drive this. As I said before, although we started off for environmental reasons, now it's becoming economic. If they don't get in and start to use it economically, then they will not survive in the long term.

If someone's older and has the farm paid for, then probably he can farm it in any way he likes.

I think we now know how to do it. It's just a matter of continuing to work and push at it, as we've learned in the last ten years. Again, the brainpower of the farmer is a tremendous resource.

Mr. Collins: I have to go only 14 miles to see the CRP program among my neighbours to the south of me. Of course, they pay them. The CRP is the crop reduction program or crop retention program, or whatever. They put it back into grasslands. There is a conservation element.

From what you've seen, as we go through is there some merit in taking a look at that kind of a system, at least to take a look at some of the land we are now trying to farm? I wonder whether we might be well advised to do something else with it, even to let it rest.

Mr. Sawyer: There was a man named Palliser who discovered the Palliser triangle in your country. Basically, he said that this should not be inhabited or civilized - this sort of thing - but we've gone ahead and done it. In many ways we farm it relatively well, but in 1973, when the price of oil went up and the price of wheat went to $5 or $6 a bushel, we plowed up - I use that word - or disked up, many millions of acres in southern Saskatchewan that shouldn't have been disked up.

In the eighties, when things turned down, a lot of that got reseeded back to grassland, and it should stay there. Unfortunately, now that we have $6 or $7 wheat, or whatever it is, I can almost hear the tractors running. But we've learned some things. This time we will farm it with reduced tillage, which will be better.

I think it's part of the capitalist system, and all we can do is advise them that it's not something they should do, that the soils are their responsibility to look after. We won't make the same mistake every time.

I didn't answer that very well, sir.

The Chairman: Just as a point of clarification, Mr. Collins, I think CRP actually stands for Conservation Reserve Program in the United States - just so it gets on the record properly, so others reading the committee evidence or hearing it will know what it means. I didn't know it. That's what the research staff is for. They picked us up on that right away.

Mrs. Ur: I have a comment. It's a learning experience I had. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, because it will be going into the record.

I had occasion to go to Margarita Island while we were on the break, and this is so needed down there. That is an island that, when it was first discovered, had all kinds of vegetation, had trees, had water. There is not any water on the island. There is hardly a tree. People came in and cut all the trees down, even though they were warned that if they did that, there wouldn't be any water left.

We drink eight to ten glasses of water a day. We saw how important water was when you buy your water. It was a great learning experience. All there are down there are high-rise hotels and great sunshine. Their food has to be shipped in daily by ferry.

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It's so important that we educate ourselves here on how important water and soil are to everyone, not just agriculture but consumers. And we all are consumers.

Mr. Sawyer: Excellent comment. The fortunate thing is we still have time to do it here in Canada because we have the technology that was developed by the research stations and this sort of thing. One of the dilemmas we have in Africa is that there are 650 million people there, but we're taking about a million trees down every year. How can you be critical of a mother if that tree gives heat for the children or for her to cook food?

It really is a turmoil that we have in society with how we're going to answer this. Fortunately in Canada we're not so far along that we can't still do the right thing.

The Chairman: You mentioned Africa, Mr. Sawyer. To follow on Mrs. Ur's comments, I had the opportunity last summer.... I'm doing some trade work with the department in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I saw at first hand exactly what you're saying. You can't be critical that they're clearing the trees - they call them ``trees'', but we'd call them ``brush'' - farther and farther back for heat to cook the food. I saw rivers where the river beds were 300 feet wide and absolutely bone dry, and had been for many months.

However, when you saw what water could do.... I'll never forget being outside a government building in Harare where a water tap was dripping and the clover in a circle you could probably put your arms around was a foot high. As the moisture that dripped from the tap disappeared, there was no more growth there than there is on this carpet in front of us today. The fertility potential was absolutely incredible.

I saw an irrigation project where the local women were picking snow peas for export. In a distance of six inches from where the irrigation stopped the snow peas were the height of this desk. Having grown peas in the past, I must tell you I'd never seen a crop of peas as good as that in my life. Then it just stopped like a wall where the water ran out. The fertility is just incredible. They had the water for that, and we take it for granted.

I do wish to thank you very much for coming. I congratulate you and all the people who keep pushing on this. Our support is there for you. I personally think you're gaining, as you say. I think a larger and larger percentage of our primary producers, or farmers, as we call them as well, are realizing the responsibility they have for the value of that resource, the soil they have, and we're gaining. But as you say, we're not done yet.

From personal experience, I can say it works in some soils better than others. Our son is no-till, with all of his crops. It's a change for Dad when he gets a day or two now and again to help. But the results of it are incredible, in more ways than one.

You may have some closing comments.

Mr. Sawyer: My first is a question. My colleagues wanted to know who was going to be the new deputy minister. That was one of the things they were interested in.

The Chairman: I'd like to put it on the record that we all would like to know.

Mr. Sawyer: They were hoping he would have a veneer of agriculture at least an inch thick.

Mr. Reed: The answer is none of us.

Mr. Sawyer: Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to thank you for the interesting and challenging questions. I have learned a great deal from the questions you've asked.

I would like to encourage you to work with the other parliamentarians and to talk to Minister Goodale about the importance of this area and tell him money should not be a reason not to go ahead. We must push ahead and ensure our soils are conserved so the generations that come after us will have food.

With that, I thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thanks to the committee members and to the witness.

The meeting is adjourned.

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