Ottawa Commits $252-Million To Help Farmers And Food Processors
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $252 million of funding on Tuesday aimed at helping farmers and food processors during Covid-19.
The amount is far lower than the $2.6-billion that the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said was needed for an agriculture and agri-food emergency fund to help maintain food security.
But Trudeau said, “this is an initial investment, and if we need to add more, we will.”
The investment includes a $77.5-million Emergency Processing Fund that food processors can use to buy personal protective gear for workers, adapt to health protocols and support other social distancing measures.
“It’ll also help to expand or adapt our processing capacity to increase the amount of Canadian products we make domestically,” he said.
A $125-million national AgriRecovery program will be launched to help cattle and hog farmers and ranchers who have had to keep animals on the farm longer because of the temporary closures or reduced operations of food processing plants. This fund will also help beef and pork producers and processors adapt to the changing market.
Agriculture and Agri-food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in a separate press conference Tuesday that the AgriRecovery funding is normally shared between federal (60 percent), and provincial and territorial governments (40 percent). But the new program will be more flexible to allow the federal government to directly give its share to producers, even if provinces and territories can’t contribute.
Another $50-million will be used to start a Surplus Food Purchase Program to help producers who now have too much of items like milk, butter, potatoes and poultry because restaurants, hotels and other buyers have closed. The government will buy large quantities of those products that are at risk of going to waste and redistribute them to organizations addressing food insecurity.
“While much have been donated to food banks, we don’t have the capacity right now to redistribute such large quantities of food, and some producers have no choice but to throw out their product. It’s a waste of food and loss of revenue for the people who worked so hard to produce them,” Trudeau said.
Bibeau said the government plans to boost the Canadian Dairy Commission’s borrowing limit by $200-million to help them with the costs of temporarily storing cheese and butter to avoid food waste. Legislation needs to be changed for this to happen.
Moreover, some changes are being made to existing business risk management programs, for which the federal, provincial and territorial governments invest nearly $1.6 billion a year on average to help producers stay afloat during tough times.
One of those programs is AgriStability, which is aimed at supporting food producers who face significant revenue declines.
Governments are working to boost interim payments through AgriStability from 50 percent to 75 percent. Five provinces, including P.E.I., have already agreed to the change. The enrolment deadline for the program has also been extended to July 3.
In addition, governments are also looking into possibly expanding the AgriInsurance program to include labour shortages as an eligible risk for the horticulture sector. The change would ensure against lost production due to an insufficient workforce if producers can’t find enough workers to harvest.
“We invite the provinces that we include as an eligible risk the lack of access to workers if there are losses in the fields because people don’t have enough workers in the fall,” said Bibeau in French.
Bibeau said the government is working to deploy the funds as quickly as possible, and they will be administered mostly through the provinces. But she encouraged farmers to apply to AgriStability now and to take advantage of any existing programs.
Farmers across Canada are facing high uncertainties, rising costs and losses due to the difficulties and delays of temporary foreign workers entering the country. Some jurisdictions like New Brunswick banned them from entry to the dismay of farmers.
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The federal government had previously announced a $50-million fund to ensure farmers can safely welcome those workers.
Bibeau said in April, 11,200 of the 13,000 foreign workers expected to come to Canada have arrived.
“We are still working hard to make sure that we will have foreign temporary workers, as many as we can. Because even if we can bring many Canadians in the field right now, many of them will be back to their usual work or back to school in the fall, so this is definitely an issue that we are following closely and we’re doing everything we can to support the farmers,” she said.
Altogether, Bibeau said the measures are important for Canada’s food security.
“We want to avoid a reduced variety of our products or price increases.”