Support strong for Canadian agriculture omnibus bill

Thursday, October 9, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Most of Canada’s farming community is giving the federal government’s agriculture modernizing legislation, bill C-18, a thumbs up during committee hearings this week, but one farm group wants part of the bill scrapped and the rest broken up into more manageable parts for better debate.

Farm groups started appearing before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in Ottawa this week and many were applauding the government’s bill C-18 (the agricultural growth bill), designed to modernize and strengthen federal agriculture legislation. Under the proposed bill, changes are being made to a number of acts the Canadian Food Inspection Agency uses to regulate the sector. They include:

• Plant Breeders’ Rights Act.
• Feeds Act.
• Fertilizers Act.
• Seeds Act.
• Health of Animals Act.
• Plant Protection Act.
• Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act.

The bill will also include amendments to legislation under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. They are the Agricultural Marketing Programs Act and the Farm Debt Mediation Act.

Committee clerk Jean Michel Roy says the hearings started Tuesday with a presentation by federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and continued during the week. There will be a break from hearings next week because the House of Commons is in recess but they will resume the week of Oct. 20 and continue until at least the end of the month and maybe longer. “I don’t know until when we’re going to hear witnesses,” he says, adding he also doesn’t know how many witnesses in total the committee will hear from. Once the hearings are done, the committee will do a clause-by-clause review of the bill.

Roy says the committee hasn’t decided when it will stop hearing witnesses or when it will begin the clause-by-clause review so he doesn’t know when the bill will go back to the House.

One section of the bill that’s generating a lot of discussion is the changes to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act. In its Oct. 7 press release, the federal government says changes in bill C-18 will enable Canada to adopt and implement measures from the 1991 International Union for the Protection of New Varieties Convention, known as UPOV 91. The bill will also enable the industry to use “efficient yet compliant approaches to preventing plants pests to make agricultural products safe for humans and the environment,” the release says. It will also provide farmers with greater access to new varieties, financial programs and trade opportunities.

But the National Farmers Union, which also appeared before the committee this week, says in its Oct. 8 news release proposed changes to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act will remove farmers’ control of seeds. It says the changes to plant breeders’ legislation should be turfed out while the rest of the bill should be broken up into manageable parts with each introduced separately so changes can be debated properly.

NFU says the bill “will result in increased costs for farmers, reduce farmers’ autonomy and compromise Canadian sovereignty.”

Ritz disagrees with NFU about the bill’s seed-saving provisions. “Contrary to ongoing false NFU claims, the Agricultural Growth Act explicitly includes a farmers right to save, use and clean their own seed,” he says by email.

The bill will encourage investment in plant breeding in Canada and give farmers access to more varieties of seeds developed in Canada and abroad, he says.

Greg Porozni, chair of Cereals Canada’s board of directors says in an Oct. 9 press release farmers, crop developers, processors and exporters support bill C-18 because the legislation will help improve the environment for investing in plant breeding in Canada.  “By conforming to UPOV 91 we will come into line with legislation and regulation around the world.  This will encourage plant breeders, both public and private, to invest in Canada.”

Patty Townsend, CEO of the Canadian Seed Trade Association, says the association “is very supportive of the changes to plant breeders’ rights proposed in bill C-18.” She adds the association also supports changes being made to the Seeds Act, including “accepting outside science.”

Amending the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act will “bring us into compliance with UPOV 91 and will put us on the same footing as most of the other countries in the world,” she says, noting Bill C-18 gives farmers more protection to save their own seeds. “The Act that we are operating under now, which is compliant with the UPOV convention of 1978, says nothing about farmers being able to save grain to use as seed on their farm. This legislation (bill C-18) puts it right into the legislation.”

For farmers interested in saving seed, the provisions in bill C-18 are stronger “than the act we’re currently operating under,” she explains.

Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett says they also support the bill.  About changes to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act, Bonnett agrees with Townsend that the bill contains more provisions for farmers than there is currently to save their own seeds. “But “regulations still have to be developed and we want to watch the regulations as they get developed,” he adds.

One of the proposed changes includes plans to streamline many of the application procedures under the Advance Payment Program, which provides farmers with up to 18 months of financing. Eligible farmers can receive up to $100,000 interest free and an additional $300,000 at the prime interest rate.

“That has been a fairly popular program for helping farmers get access to cash to cash flow their crop inputs,” Bonnett says, noting they’d like the federal government to look at increasing the interest-free portion. But “I think simplifying and streamlining it will be a real great thing.”

NFU disagrees, noting in its press release bill C-18 would change the eligibility rules for the program making it possible for farmland investment corporations with as little as one-third Canadian ownership to take advantage of the loan program. The provisions in bill C-18 will contribute to the inflation of farmland prices, NFU says.

But Bonnett says “we haven’t heard anything from any our members about that concern.” BF