AGRI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'AGRICULTURE ET DE L'AGROALIMENTAIRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 9, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Harvard (Charleswood St. James—Assiniboia, Lib.)): Members, I think we can start. We have a quorum for witnesses.

We have the pleasure today of having with us our colleague, Andy Mitchell, as the witness. Of course, you all know that Andy is the Secretary of State for Rural Development.

I trust that we will have all kinds of questions about rural development—not so much agriculture specifically, but rural development, which goes well beyond one particular aspect of rural life.

I understand from Mr. Mitchell that he will be speaking for roughly 10 minutes. Then we'll be able to get to the first round of questions.

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Mitchell. We've been looking forward to your visit for some weeks.

Hon. Andy Mitchell (Secretary of State (Rural Development) (Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario)): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to report on ways that the federal government is fulfilling its commitment to rural Canada.

As rural MPs—and most of us in this room are, in fact, rural MPs—we know first-hand that rural and remote areas face circumstances quite different from those facing urban areas. There are differences like geography, distance from market, population density, employment, and income, as well as the cyclical nature of rural Canada's resource-based industries.

All these factors create economic and social challenges for rural Canadians. That's why, in the past three throne speeches and in the recent budget, the government has articulated a clear commitment to work with rural Canadians to overcome those challenges and to build and maintain strong rural and remote communities.

Mr. Chairman, the very fact that I am here today as the first Secretary of State for Rural Development speaks very clearly to the importance the government attaches to the issues facing rural Canada and rural Canadians. I'm honoured to have been given this opportunity, having a long involvement and deep personal interest in rural Canada.

I had the opportunity in 1997, as chair of the House of Commons natural resources committee, to produce the Think Rural! report that reflected what rural Canadians told us the government ought to do to address the issues of rural Canada. I may add that this report was accepted unanimously by all parties represented on that committee.

One of those recommendations was that the government should appoint a representative at the cabinet table to work with rural Canadians to improve the quality of life in their communities. That position was created last year, specifically to bolster and reinforce the government's focus on rural and remote communities.

The Prime Minister, in making the appointment, gave me a very clear mandate: to undertake measures to improve the quality of life for rural Canadians, and second, to undertake my responsibilities horizontally, on an across-government basis.

The results of our efforts in this regard are highlighted very clearly in the first annual report to Parliament, entitled Working Together in Rural Canada, which I presented May 4. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this progress report with you today.

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First, let me outline some background on the federal government's approach to rural Canada. Since my appointment last summer, we've been focusing on three key priorities. The first is the use of the rural lens. The second is an ironclad commitment to talk and listen to rural Canadians. The third is what I call the deliverables: policy and programs across the government that produce benefits for rural Canadians.

You're probably already aware of how the rural lens works. It's a way of making sure that when we formulate policies and programs, legislation, and regulations, we do it in a way that recognizes the particular realities and unique challenges of rural Canada, the circumstances I identified a few minutes ago. It's a constant reminder to ourselves as policy-makers that one size does not fit all.

Take the issue of airline restructuring. With airline consolidation, rural Canadians are justifiably concerned about the possibility of losing air service to their communities. So when he devised his recent airline legislation, the Minister of Transport, David Collenette, ensured it specified that an airline must guarantee service to smaller and remote communities, for a fair price and for a set period of time.

Rural Canada was specifically mentioned in the recent Speech from the Throne and in Paul Martin's budget speech. Most importantly, several budget initiatives directly address the challenges faced by rural Canadians. The budget reaffirmed additional funding to bolster farm family income, which will bring the federal commitment for safety nets to $1.1 billion a year for the next two years, and possibly beyond that.

Also, $160 million has been committed to providing government services on-line, a service that will be of particular benefit to citizens in rural and remote areas. Over the next three years, there will be $54 million dollars to expand the Community Futures program. There will also be the renewal of our federal-provincial infrastructure program, with an investment of $2.6 billion dollars.

This, Mr. Chairman, is the rural lens at work, but the rural lens cannot be applied in a vacuum. That's why we've been listening to rural Canadians, which brings me to my second priority, that is, to redefine communication in the rural portfolio.

Two years ago, close to 7,000 Canadians took part in the rural dialogue, where they told us what their priorities were and how government could help them to achieve them. In late 1998, a group of these people came to Belleville to draw up what would later become the federal framework for action in rural Canada, clearly outlining 11 priority areas for government action.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to take the rural dialogue on the road, travelling from coast to coast and meeting with as many rural Canadians as possible. Then, last month, we continued the dialogue with the first national rural conference in the Magog-Orford area in Quebec, where over 500 citizens with an interest and a stake in rural development came together to highlight both what the government has done in response to the rural dialogue and showcase rural community success stories. We listened to what rural citizens had to say at the conference and heard about their ideas for actions we can take, ideas that we will be working on as we move forward with an action plan.

We know that for rural development to be effective it must be driven from the bottom up at the local level, by rural Canadians themselves who understand what their priorities are and how to address them. The government can support these efforts by providing the tools for communities and rural organizations to use in a way that makes sense for them.

Our Canadian Rural Partnership pilot projects initiative is a good example of this bottom-up approach. The federal government is sharing the cost of new and innovative approaches to rural development that can then be duplicated in other locales. So far, over this year and last, we have funded some 140 projects across the country.

I would be remiss in not mentioning the role of the Internet in our approach to rural Canada. Early in our mandate, we launched the Connecting Canadians agenda, which has helped hook up to the information highway all the rural schools and libraries that wanted to be connected. We've also set up close to 4,500 rural communities with Internet sites through the Community Access program, making Canada the most connected country in the world. In all our efforts, as I said, we are making a conscientious effort to work effectively by cutting across departmental and agency lines.

The rural file is not just the agriculture department, although that's a part of it. It's not just the health department, although that's also a part of it as, too, are transport, fisheries, heritage, HRDC, Indian Affairs, and all the rest. Officials of 29 departments and agencies are working together on the rural file through an interdepartmental working group.

Coordination goes all the way to the local level as well. Every province and territory has a rural team made up of representatives from federal departments and agencies as well as, in some cases, representatives from provincial and territorial governments and non-government organizations.

In tossing out the traditional silos and taking a holistic approach to rural issues, we are, in fact, breaking new ground. The annual report, Working Together in Rural Canada, is in fact a report card on the federal government. It speaks to not only our commitment to be accountable and transparent in our efforts but to our achievements as well.

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In closing, I'd like to simply say that I think we all, regardless of our political stripe, share a similar vision for rural Canada. We all want strong rural communities where people have choices about their future, their livelihoods, and their institutions and social structures.

The rural way of life must not be just a precious part of our past, but an important element of our future. I believe we can help to diversify rural economies without sacrificing the traditions and values that have shaped rural Canada.

Rural Canada is a special place to me and, I think, to all of us here. It's where I've spent a good part of my life and where I've had an opportunity to raise my family. And it is, in fact, a place where I want my children to have an opportunity to have their future.

Seventy per cent of Canadians live in urban centres, and roughly seventy per cent of the members of Parliament are from urban Canada. As rural MPs, we have a job to do to make sure that the issues of rural Canada are front and centre within Parliament as a whole and in our individual caucuses. The challenges we face as rural Canadians and as rural members of Parliament are real. We need to work with our urban colleagues to understand those challenges, and we need to work together to formulate the solutions and how we address those specific challenges.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd be quite pleased to answer questions from committee members.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. We'll do exactly that.

Seven minutes for Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for appearing before the committee.

As you know, as opposition members, we put in place a series of seventy different meetings and travelled around the western provinces and Ontario consulting with farmers and asking them what to do. I was also on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food, which held nine meetings around the prairies. I cannot recall one person requesting that we put in place an Internet service for farmers. You're saying you're listening to rural residents, and this really makes me wonder, when they are going broke, how that is going to help them. So I guess the obvious question is this: how is Internet access going to keep on the land farmers who are seeing red?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: In dealing with the rural file, Mr. Breitkreuz, there is a whole series of components to it. Agriculture is obviously one of them; it's an important one. The government has addressed that in a number of ways. It has a basic safety net package in which it shares funding with the provinces. It provided emergency assistance in 1998-99. It has made a commitment to do that again in 2000-01. It has committed additional assistance, to be provided in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The federal government has worked diligently in dealing with the agricultural situation.

But although agriculture is important, Mr. Breitkreuz, the rural file is far broader than that. It includes economies that are dependent on other natural resource industries and on primary industries, communities that depend on mining, communities that depend on forestry, communities that depend on fisheries, and communities like my own, which, although a rural community, depends on a different cyclical industry—primarily tourism.

One of the issues in maintaining strong and sustainable rural communities is to give them an opportunity to diversify and to compete in a world marketplace.

One of the tools—and it's only a tool, it isn't a panacea.... As for anybody who wants to suggest that if you get the Internet all of your economic problems are solved, I don't think they're connected with reality, but it is a tool, an important tool, for rural Canada and rural Canadians, and I think it is an appropriate one for government to work on putting in place.

But you bring up a point that's very important, that is, one solution doesn't fit all. What works well in a particular part of rural Canada is not going to be the priority in another part of rural Canada—and you can speak just to that. That's why it's essential that as a government we provide a range of tools and then allow the individual communities themselves to decide what their priorities are and what specific tools they want to use.

I suspect that agricultural communities in western rural Canada will use, as one of their tools, the government's safety net program, as well as the government's assistance for emergency aid, through what was—

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Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Mr. Chairman, can—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: —and will be something for the year 2000-01.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'd like to interrupt here, because I'm only allowed seven minutes—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I'm sorry.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: —and I've heard all of this before.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: It's good stuff. It's the truth.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I wish.

You've learned your job well: you can stretch out an answer to cover the seven minutes.

The concern I have is that in the three prairie provinces, rural businesses don't exist unless there is a strong farm economy. In this past week, I've talked to businessmen who are going under, and they blame the federal government, by and large, for the difficult times. A lot of the tax burdens that the federal government puts on all the businesses and corporations end up being paid by the farmer when he has to buy all his inputs to put in his crop.

That brings me to another problem facing western farmers, that is, because the AIDA program has not worked—and by the government's own admission, they've been tinkering with it, to try to get it to work, I suppose.... By their own admission, they are saying that it isn't working. Do you have a plan for farmers to exit agriculture? What thought have you given to that?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Let me answer that question as quickly as I can. I accept the fact that it is incumbent upon the government to deliver its emergency assistance in the most effective way possible. I think the minister made it clear in 1998-99 that he would like to have the successor program designed so that it would be more effective. That's not to say that it did not provide significant assistance to producers in western Canada—it did. Could we produce its successor program so that it does even more? Yes, and the minister has made a commitment to do that. I think that's important.

As Lyle clearly said when he provided testimony to this committee a couple of weeks ago, in terms of dealing with producers and in terms of trying to assist them in making future decisions, this was something that he thought needed to be looked at. He said he hadn't given any specific direction to it or moved on it in any particular way; that was essentially his answer.

From my perspective, I think our priority has to be to assist people to maintain the family farm. I think that's our first priority. Secondly, we have to give people the options to make decisions—if they so choose to make those decisions. I've said clearly in public statements that whatever we do has to be done in conjunction with the people themselves who are going to be impacted. We have to go out there and talk to the individuals and see exactly what it is that they want and how they want to have something designed.

Finally, from my perspective as an individual responsible for rural development, it has to be designed as a program that keeps people in rural Canada, that keeps people part of sustaining rural communities.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Do I gather from your answer, then, that you haven't given any thought to an exit program—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No—

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: —that you haven't addressed that?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: —that's not what I answered. I said clearly—

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: But you haven't talked about that.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Obviously if I say that we have to consult with rural Canadians to design a program, we've obviously given some thought to it—

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Okay.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: —or we wouldn't be in a position of saying that if we're going to design something, we're going to have rural Canadians themselves assist with it. I'm not prepared—

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Okay. My final question—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No, I'm going to finish.

I'm not prepared—and I know Minister Vanclief is not prepared—to impose something from the top down. When we develop strategies, they're going to include the input of rural Canadians.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Okay. The—

The Chair: We're out of time. Sorry. That was seven minutes.

Mr. Desrochers, seven minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière, BQ): Good day, Mr. Mitchell. I am pleased to have the floor in this briefing session.

As you know, I represent a very rural area, the riding of Lotbinière. It has 54 municipalities the largest of which has a population of 6,000. I am in a position to see the dialogue between the various stakeholders of the farming communities and rural communities. Often, we make no difference between farming communities and rural communities. In actual fact, those two communities are starting to be quite different.

Mr. Mitchell, you say that you consulted your colleagues. What efforts have you made to harmonize your policy with those of your provincial partners?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: To speak specifically in regard to the Province of Quebec, I've met with the minister responsible, Minister Jolivet, on two occasions. Essentially, on the rural file what we've basically said is that there's a holistic rural file and, within it, there are components that are the responsibility of the provincial government and components that are the responsibility of the federal government.

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We feel it's important that we don't cross over onto each other's turf, so to speak, but we've also said it's important that we move that ball forward even though it may contain provincial and federal components, that we move the overall rural strategy forward in a coordinated fashion so that we work together to make sure we're accomplishing the same things.

Certainly, in my discussions with Minister Jolivet, he shares some of the same concerns I have. He certainly shares the same objective, which is to improve the quality of life for rural citizens. We've made a commitment and our officials are carrying on those discussions to make sure we operate in a coordinated way.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Are those discussions taking you towards more decentralization and the granting of more power for rural communities?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I haven't had a lengthy conversation with Mr. Jolivet about his particular view on that.

I've made it clear from my perspective that I believe rural development has to be a process that is driven from the bottom up, not from the top down, that communities themselves are best equipped to determine what their priorities are and how they want to meet those priorities. I see the role of the federal government as that of providing a set of tools that communities can use in the context of the particular challenges they face.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Mr. Mitchell, you referred to the infrastructure program. You know that your colleague Mrs. Robillard is presently negotiating with various provincial partners. You said that your are sure that that program will directly benefit rural communities. Have you got the assurance that the bulk of the money that will be allocated to that infrastructure program won=t go to urban centres?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: You're absolutely right. One of my jobs is to ensure that as we roll out a national infrastructure program it gets rolled out in a way that is appropriate for rural Canada.

I was pleased that both the Speech from the Throne and the budget speech mentioned rural Canada in respect of the infrastructure program. I think there's a recognition.

I think we need to make sure that happens in a couple of ways. I am pressing that point upon my colleagues. First of all, the program needs to contain criteria that make sense in rural Canada. For instance, if you set a criteria that all infrastructure programs have to go to mass transit—that's a ridiculous example—then you wouldn't say that it can't go into rural Canada; you would set up a criteria that would preclude rural Canadians. You need criteria that make sense for rural Canada.

Secondly, I think you have to respect the fact that there needs to be a certain critical mass of money to go into a particular area in order to undertake certain projects. I think that's important. In your riding, which is a little bit similar to mine, where you have very small municipalities, I think you have to take into consideration that they may not have the assessment base in a one-third and one-third program. You need to have some allowance for how they're going to come up with their local share.

So that's a good example of the rural lens. It's a national program, but it has to be delivered in a way that makes sense and with criteria that make sense for rural Canada.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Mr. Mitchell, could you give us a percentage? You mentioned earlier 70 per cent and 30 per cent or 30 per cent and 70 per cent. Do you have an idea of the percentage that could be given to rural communities under the infrastructure program?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: In fairness, the discussions with the provinces are not complete, and the process within the federal government is not complete. From my perspective, I want to make sure that an appropriate amount goes into rural Canada. I will work hard with my colleagues to ensure that the appropriate amount is put on the table.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Mr. Mitchell, I was there during the last speech you addressed the Magog conference. You opened the door to the possibility of a different taxation regime for rural communities, but you said that you wanted to discuss it first with your colleague the Finance Minister.

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Has this idea got further in the meantime or shall we have to wait some more time before we get concrete action?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: There are two parts to that process. Eight or nine days ago, in Magog, I talked about those two parts.

One is that I made a request to the 500-plus people there—and I've made this request to others and, by extension, to those 500 people when they go back to their communities—to hear their perspectives on the types of changes to the tax code that they think would make some sense for rural Canada, for the people who live in rural Canada and the businesses that operate in rural Canada. Then what I said was that from there we would need to prioritize which are the most important ones, where we'd want to see the changes first. Then I was prepared to make the case to the Minister of Finance that these are the types of changes that make sense.

So the stage we're at right now is this request to hear from rural Canadians.

I've heard from a lot of them. I was out at the SARM conference in Saskatchewan about eight or nine weeks ago, where a number of producers came up to me and talked specifically about the tax structure. I talked to others, and there were a number of people who saw me one-on-one in Magog. I look forward to hearing the input. A number of farm women's organizations have also talked to me about taxation. It's an important piece, which we need to work on.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Desrochers.

Mr. Steckle, seven minutes.

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): Mr. Minister, I first of all want to thank you for being here today. I sincerely believe your heart is in this particular issue that you've taken upon yourself to try to put together and coordinate, but I would hope that you would respond to my concerns in the context of a number of issues.

As a rural person, as someone who has lived in rural Canada all my life and probably knows agriculture as well as anyone around this table, I can assure you that there are a number of issues that deeply concern me.

One, of course, is the fact that we're losing our young people in rural Canada to the urban areas. What are we doing to attract them? You talk on page 11 about the expansion of our economic development in rural areas. How do you plan on doing that, given that we have a number of things that deeply concern me?

Economies of scale become very much a factor when we start talking about cost delivery in the rural areas. To give you an example, I know of a company that produces a certain product—I'm not at liberty to give the name of that company or the product they produce—a food product. Last week, Sobey's made a presentation to them and said that unless they were prepared to pay 6% of their gross sales to Sobey's in a year, Sobey's was no longer prepared to handle their products or to give them the service they had been giving them.

So we have the big boys. We have three of them in Canada: A&P, Loblaws, and Sobey's control the food in this country. We have the petro-industry, which is controlled by four major parties. The little guy no longer matters very much in the whole scheme of things, and to deliver a service.... We talk about the Internet. We just recently, in the last two years, had the decision by the CRTC in which the independent telephone companies.... And I represent a riding that has more of those than anyone else in Canada; I have eight or nine of them in my riding. The cost delivery of telephone services to those people, which also allow them to have Internet service, is much greater per capita than it is for the urban areas.

So we have costs, and I have a company that wants to move into my area, but because of the arguments put forward by the urban areas, it really puts me at a disadvantage. How am I going to attract industry to my area? I can tell them about my clean air and the good water we have and all the wonderful things that make rural living a pleasurable experience, but I have to attract those people with whatever.... I'm not sure what that is and I'd like you to tell us. We have rural delivery services, mail courier services, that are at a disadvantage. We have all kinds of.... In rural health, there are shortages of doctors in rural communities.

I mean, we seem to be at a disadvantage, Mr. Minister. I don't want to be a pessimist, but let's face it: these are the issues that touch everyday rural Canadians. How do I go back and address that for my people?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I'll take a stab at trying to answer that, because I think you speak to a very important point, and it's the reason my position and my ministry exist, that is, it is a reality, a fact, that the challenges that face rural Canada are real and are different from those that face urban Canada.

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You enunciated them. They are things like geography, like population density and what that does for attracting investment, like distance from the market and the extra cost that can be added on to the goods we produce, whether they be primary or value-added products. There is also the fact that for a good part of rural Canada, our economies are cyclical in nature and tend not to be diversified, which means that the impacts on those economies are very different from what you would find in an urban-based, diversified manufacturing or technology-based economy.

Those are real. One of the things we cannot do is change those facts. We can't change our geography. We can't change our distance from the marketplace. For the most part, we're going to continue to have our primary resource industries as the mainstay of our economies, although we can do work about diversifying it.

The key comes with government working to address some of those challenges. Therefore, it's important, and I've spoken to this on many occasions.... Something that may be able to be done in an urban context strictly by the private sector is going to require a public-private partnership to make it work in a rural context. Therefore, one of the key policy positions of this federal government is that it is important for the federal government to have a role in working with communities and with the private sector to try to address some of those challenges. I think that's a critical issue and I think that's a position that has been staked out by this government.

Then, once you agree to that, you start to take your specific programs that can help mitigate some of those particular areas. For instance, when we're talking about transportation, that's why the infrastructure program is particularly critical for rural communities: because we need to upgrade our transportation infrastructure. I was pleased to see that commitment there.

When we talk about the competitiveness of the businesses that operate in rural areas—and they do sometimes work at a disadvantage to our urban counterparts—that's why it's important for us to create a technological infrastructure for using telecommunications. That's why it's important that we try to get a public-private partnership, so that not only do we create it, but we create it with a cost structure that at least allows us to be competitive. It's why we have a program like the Community Futures program, which can provide the assistance directly to businesses operating in rural areas so that they can deal with some of these disadvantages.

That's the way we need to approach it. We need to recognize that there are different challenges and then design programming that works in partnership with the private sector and with communities in order to try to address them. The basic key is that we recognize that the reality faced by rural Canada is different from the reality faced by urban Canada, and governments need to develop policies that reflect those differences.

The Chair: Thirty seconds.

Mr. Paul Steckle: I appreciate the comment you just made about respecting us as being different. I agree.

Would you then agree, Mr. Minister, that the policy of firearms control should have been treating rural communities differently from urban communities? This is an example. And I don't want to go down that road, as I have too many allies around this table—

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Paul Steckle: —but I think it's important to point out that we cannot treat rural communities in the same way we treat urban communities. That's the reason for me saying that. I can only say that I think it's a case in point, where we erred in judgment in terms of how we treated the rural communities versus the urban communities.

The Chair: I could rescue you, Andy. There's no more time in this round.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I appreciate the life preserver, but I would be doing the committee a disservice if I didn't address this.

The Chair: Make it short.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Okay.

Simply put, you're absolutely right. When you have an overall objective that I think all Canadians agreed to—as I believe all Canadians do—that is, trying to control violence in Canadian society.... I think everybody buys into that.

Then you begin to design the strategies to do it. I think it was absolutely essential to design the strategy in a way that reflected that rural Canadians—and urban Canadians, for that matter—do in fact use firearms for legitimate purposes. They use them in recreation. They work with them. There are collectors. There is a whole series of legitimate activities, so you have to design the regime so that it works towards the overall objective but does it in a way that respects those legitimate uses.

I believe that compromise was found. It's not a perfect compromise—no compromise ever is—but we have a regime in place that will help control violence in society and do it in a way that allows individuals to continue to use firearms in the legitimate ways they have in the past, for hunting and for work on the farm or whatever.

The Chair: Mr. Proctor, five minutes.

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Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP): Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here, Mr. Minister.

On page 5 of your document, you say,

The Government of Canada is working to make sure that rural Canada has a strong and vibrant future.

Certainly I think you said that, or there were similar remarks in your paper.

I want to juxtapose that with the specific example of the alfalfa dehy industry. This is an industry that's in trouble, and the warnings have been around for some time, with this committee and in other places. It's not in trouble because of anything of its own doing. It's in trouble because of foreign subsidies. This is an industry that has been around for the best part of a quarter of a century in Canada. It was progressing nicely. All of a sudden, foreign subsidies are really eating into it, aided and abetted by transportation costs—and of course it's not eligible for income disaster assistance.

The industry has all of the buzzwords the government likes to use. It has economic diversification. It has value added. It has sustainable agriculture. And it employs people, particularly in remote and rural parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

One of the largest ones has now closed its doors permanently, in Tisdale, because they can no longer compete. This isn't something that's going to require $1 billion to fix—it's not that big an industry—but it does require some government intervention, some government leadership. Given your emphasis on protecting rural and remote parts of Canada, given everything you've said, what is the government going to do about this specific industry?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I'll be very blunt with you. I've been approached by the dehydrators. I've listened very carefully to their arguments. They've made the arguments that you have, that they are the type of industry that value-adds and that adds jobs and networks in rural Canada. I've made the case to my colleagues to revisit that and to take a look at it. I don't know what the result will be.

From what I understand, the provincial governments seem to have made the same decision. The dehydrators also got excluded from the specific programming that was developed in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There seems to be something there, that the individuals responsible seem to be coming away with it.... I've met with them, both in Magog and then subsequent to Magog, here in Ottawa, with one of the representatives who is well known to some of the members of this committee. I have made that case to the relevant minister in asking him to revisit it. That's part of what I do in the rural affairs secretariat.

Mr. Dick Proctor: So that initiative is underway, then, this revisiting of the—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: What I can do is ask somebody to revisit it.

Mr. Dick Proctor: Right.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: It's up to them if they wish to.

Mr. Dick Proctor: I have another question. I'm sure that you work very closely with provincial counterparts. In Saskatchewan—and I'm sure it's the case across the country—we have what we call regional economic development authorities. I had the opportunity to be in the northwest part of Saskatchewan recently. They're diversifying, doing, again, what this government and others are insisting that they have to do in order to be competitive. They have elk and they have bison. One of the things there has been a lot of talk about is the need for a packing plant for bison. Is this something that your organization gets involved in? Does it work with the local regional economic agencies to push it?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: There are three regional agencies and FedNor, which is a sort of regional agency but is still under the direct auspices of Industry Canada, that have diversification in the development of value adding as part of their mandate. I truly believe that we can increase that part of regional development's mandate.

I think there are additional opportunities to create value-added jobs in our rural areas. I'll give you a good example from my own riding, where lumber is important, particularly in the northern part of my riding. For years we used to harvest the wood and away it went; I would suspect that we even got sold back the finished products at some point, after the value adding was done. We had a major investment to make a hardwood flooring plant in the riding, thereby employing a large number of people at good wages for my area.

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I think that's the kind of strategy we need to look at to encourage value adding, and the regional development agencies are one of delivery tools we can use to do that. I would be very supportive of an initiative that saw the regional development agencies working to encourage value adding—again, doing it in partnership with private sector, because you can't create something when there isn't something there in order for it to happen. It has to be done with the private sector, but I think we can help provide some of the tools for that.

The Chair: Okay. We're out of time.

Mr. Proctor, you mentioned Canadian Dehydrators. I want to recognize Bryan Davidson from the dehydrators, who is in the room today. You know that already.

Of course, when you mentioned the issue around the dehydrators, if there was ever an example of how ruinous subsidies can be, this is the perfect example. This industry has been almost slain by subsidies, and they've lost markets because of those subsidies.

Mr. Dick Proctor: So we need to fix it.

The Chair: Mr. McCormick, five minutes.

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Just before I welcome the minister—

The Chair: Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Borotsik.

Sorry, Larry.

Mr. Larry McCormick: I thought you'd crossed the floor, Rick.

Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC): Hey!

Mr. Larry McCormick: Sorry. Go ahead.

The Chair: It must be the Joe Clark factor or something. I don't know what it is.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Hey! I'm after Proctor.

The Chair: I'm sorry, Joe—I mean Rick. You have five minutes.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: We'll try to do something that has some substance before we go to McCormick.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Rick Borotsik: My turn, Mr. Chairman...?

The Chair: Go ahead, for five minutes.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Thank you, and I also get the time that was left over from Mr. Desrochers' time.

Andy, Mr. Minister, I honestly, sincerely believe that you have a real desire to assist rural Canada. I'll put that on the table first before I get into some of the shortcomings that I believe are there in your department. I do believe that you do have your heart in the right place.

In saying that, I would like to have a better understanding as to how you or your department sees working with other departments within government. You said that all you can do with respect to the dehy is to ask the Minister of Agriculture to revisit the issue.

I have a couple of issues that deal specifically with or have some terrible ramifications with respect to rural Canada, particularly in my riding. I'd like to know if you should be proactive in those issues or if you simply sit back until you see something negative happening and then try to ask them to revisit. There's a whole different mindset there, Andy, as to how proactive we're going to get here in rural Canada.

I'll give you an example. One of them is CFB Shilo, which is very important. It's a Canadian Forces base that's located in Manitoba in a rural area as opposed to a major urban area. I have a real distinct problem in that—and the chairman knows—in Manitoba we have a huge urban centre and we have the rest of Manitoba, which is rural. We have the perfect dichotomy or the perfect conflict between rural and urban there.

Mr. Minister, with respect to DND, there's a move afoot now to strengthen the urban component and reduce the rural component. Should you be there now looking at the ramifications for rural Canada, or do you wait and sit back until something happens?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No. I should be in it now—absolutely.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Are you in it now, then?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: On that particular one, no, I'm not.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Well, Mr. Minister, you and I—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I'm not familiar with the issue.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: —will chat very soon, because you should be. Unfortunately, we're way down the road with this one. Should you be there now?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I look forward to having that discussion with you.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: I like the commitment you just made.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Rick Borotsik: I would like to deal with something that Mr. Desrochers said—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I've been to Brandon, so—

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Well, you'll be back. Don't worry.

As Mr. Desrochers said, as I see it, with rural Canada in particular, there are a number of areas that I think we can be proactive in. Mr. Desrochers talked about taxation, whether it be taxation incentives, whether it be a rural living incentive similar to a northern living allowance and things of that nature. Perhaps we should be looking at these types of incentives through your department.

One of the problems we have now, which was mentioned, is in regard to health care professionals. There are solutions to this, but it's going to take somebody with a little bit of political will, Mr. Minister, to be able to put into place solutions to the health care professional problem that we have in rural Canada. That can be done. It can be done with policy development in your department.

Have you looked at any of that type of policy development that would bring health care professionals into rural Canada? Because in fact, Mr. Minister, this is one of the keystone problems we have. Without health care we lose our population base; it goes into the urban areas to get the health care. Do you have any policy developed on that?

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Mr. Andy Mitchell: You're absolutely right, Rick, in terms of health care being an important rural component. I guess there are a number of issues we have to look at. Just remembering the context, the delivery at the end of the day is going to be primarily a provincial matter, but the federal government does have a role to play. I think there are a number of places where we should play.

As you know, in the 1999 budget there was a community and rural health fund of $50 million that was announced, which will flow out over the next several months, to try to work with communities to develop innovative approaches for delivering health care. So I think there's a very concrete thing that will be done in that respect.

As well, I think we need to look at some of the training aspects. In this day and age, what tends to happen is that when you practise in an urban centre you're surrounded by a whole infrastructure, a set of professionals, a set of equipment, etc. It has really come to the point, I've been told by practising physicians, that you actually need to train people differently if they're going to practise in rural areas, because they're going to be faced with things that are very different from what they may face in an urban centre.

That's one of the things that I think we need to work on. We need to work on encouraging the medical schools themselves to have curricula that address specifically the types of challenges practising physicians and other health care professionals are going to see in a rural context, because they are going to be different from those in an urban context.

I think the idea of promoting the actual training of health care professionals in a rural context is important, because one of the things is that if we can train our doctors and our nurses in rural Canada, there's a greater chance that they're going to practise and stay in rural Canada. I think that trying to promote the creation of a training facility in rural Canada would be another way of addressing it.

There's the whole issue of—I forget the right name for it—having replacement doctors in a rural context. That's not as much of a challenge when you have fifty doctors on staff in a hospital, but if you have eight or seven and somebody just wants to get a break from it, or if you work in a cyclical thing, like in my area where you double your population in the summertime, where we're servicing a population twice what we were designed to serve....

There are those kinds of things, and yes, we've spent a goodly amount of time working on that. I know that my caucus members, many of whom are here, have worked on developing a rural health strategy.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Mr. Chair, I know I'm out of time, but I would—

The Chair: You've already had an extra minute. What is it?

Mr. Rick Borotsik: —just like to confirm that I will be asking for a meeting in the very near future, probably today, Mr. Minister, so we can deal with this.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: It will be today, but you'll receive—

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I'd be happy—

The Chair: Thank you, thank you—my presence is required at another meeting, so I'll ask Mr. Calder to take the chair.

While he comes forward, I'll ask Mr. McCormick to begin his five-minute round.

Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, congratulations, Mr. Minister, on being the first-ever minister responsible for development in rural Canada.

Also, hats off to you for the conference you hosted in Magog, Quebec. There were 500 people in attendance, several of whom are here in this room. There were people there from four out of five political parties, so I think you achieved a lot.

I talked with a lot of these people during the discussions outside and afterwards, and I've run into a couple of them since then. Many of these people were the elite of rural Canada, people who don't always come to us for money, people who are continuing to work to make their communities vibrant.

But there are two things, Mr. Minister. One is that these people somehow or other heard that there might not be another conference at some time in the future for them to come together with.

First of all, some people.... Maybe we didn't listen well enough to you or whatever, but after all this happened in Magog, Quebec, after developing these priorities, where do we go from here? What happens next, Mr. Minister?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, there are two parts of that. First of all, what I said at the closing of the conference—and we have to work this through—is that having a national conference is something that might make sense every second year, and we made that commitment—

Mr. Larry McCormick: Right.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: —but on the off year, so to speak, there could be a series of regional conferences. There seemed to be, from my discussions with a good many of the delegates, a desire for...that there's some value to having regional conferences as well and to having the smaller groups. The concept we're exploring is regional conferences one year, followed by a national conference the next year, and then we would rotate them that way.

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In terms of follow-up actions from Magog, the commitment that I made to all 500 delegates there was that I would produce an action plan based on what I heard. We're in the process of preparing that. I also said that before finalizing it I would share it with all of the participants before it becomes the final action plan. If there are things I've missed or things there that somebody says they have no idea about where that came from and that's us trying to slip in our own perspective on things, they'll have an opportunity to say that before we finalize it.

We hope to get that out to them within the next four to six weeks, I would think, and then, by the middle of the summer, to have this as the final action plan. It will be very specific. It will talk about what was done at Belleville. It will talk about what was said in Magog. It will talk about further actions. It'll define responsibility, whether it's directly for me or whether I'll be seeking assistance from another ministry. Hopefully it'll have a timeframe in which the people can expect to be able to give them an update and a progress report on the area. That's what we're planning to do to follow up from Magog.

Mr. Larry McCormick: It certainly sounds like a very ambitious plan, so perhaps you might even allow yourself a couple of extra weeks there somewhere, Andy.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: My associate deputy just cringes every time I talk about timelines.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Mr. Chair, I think there's probably enough money in most ministries to do things from a rural angle, and perhaps to invest in rural Canada, but it just doesn't seem to happen. We talked about the dehydrators. It's the old story of one size does not fit all, but in rural Canada there's a difference between Halifax.... Halifax and Calgary might be different cities, but the difference between, say, Drumheller, Alberta, and Peggy's Cove...it's a completely different world. So here we have, with these dehydrators, and I mean.... You get so frustrated. Why can't we just change some of the guidelines?

But here's my question to the minister. I would hope that in the future we can spend more time and have more input, even from the government side, on policy being developed so that we have rural Canada in mind as we develop the policy, not as an afterthought, which perhaps might fall in line with Mr. Steckle's concerns—or for many other parts of legislation that are on the books today.

I know you are responsible, Mr. Minister, for the previous plan, Think Rural!, and I know we have a rural lens, but I just want to give you an opportunity to put forth any ideas on how we can ensure that we don't have as many of these hurdles in the future.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Let me take a moment to answer that, Larry. It speaks a little to what Rick was asking me about as well.

Here's what the rural lens tries to do. At the beginning of the process, at the upfront part when you're formulating policy, part of what my responsibilities are is to ensure that my colleagues understand, in the development of that policy or in developing regulations, how that's going to play in rural Canada and what the specific challenges in rural Canada are that need to be put into the design, whether it's an infrastructure program that you have to design so that it has criteria that make sense in rural Canada or whether it's airline policy that has to take into account some of the needs of rural Canada.

Take the airline policy. If you live in Vancouver or Montreal or Toronto and go to the airports, you can be pretty certain there's going to be a plane there. You may not know what logo is on it or who the people would be working for, but you can be pretty certain there's going to be a plane. Well, if you come from rural Canada, we have a whole different issue, and that is one of access.

Those are the kinds of things I need to deal with upfront, with my colleagues. That's what the rural lens is all about. To make the rural lens as effective as possible, Larry, we need to have a rural dialogue, so that it's not just me sitting there saying, “This would be a good idea for rural Canada.” I need to have the input of my rural parliamentarians, of parliamentarians in general, of rural Canadians, and of Canadians in general.

And I'll be honest with you: I don't win all the battles. I just don't win them all. I'm in there, and I think we've moved a long way in getting a better sensitivity in policies that reflect rural Canada, but if you asked me whether I'm successful every time out, the answer would be no.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.)): Thank you very much, Mr. McCormick.

You'll be happy to know, too, that we're putting the finishing touches on Bill C-26 for the airline industry. That should be done this afternoon.

Mr. Ritz, five minutes.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: With the appropriate components, I hope, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Minister, I understand your dilemma, if you will, in breaking new ground by being the first minister of rural Canada.

You talk about viewing issues through a rural lens, but I look at your report and there seems to be not much realty or substance in there. I mean, the federal government did a big study on child poverty in the late eighties, and of course it just got worse. I see the same type of thing in this direction. You talk about a timeframe, but is it going to be just in the nick of too late?

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Let's talk about what's not covered in your report when you talk about a rural lens. There's no mention in here of the impact of genetically modified crops. There's nothing in here about organic farming as a growth industry. The dehy industry and gun control have already been mentioned. On pesticides and insecticides, as you know, gopher poisoning was an issue that has been bandied about, and Agriculture Canada did some different things there.

Also not covered are: the Kyoto accord; branch line abandonment; elevator closures; Bill C-17, cruelty to animals; endangered species and the impact that's going to have on rural Canada; freight rates; RCMP funding cutbacks in rural Canada—a major problem; government red tape—mostly intrusive and counterproductive is what we were told when we had our meetings; fuel taxes, with only 5% going back into infrastructure; trade distortions; and problems due to the failure of the farm safety net program.

You'll have to forgive me if most of this is related to agriculture, but this is the agriculture committee.

So I guess I have to ask what your definition of rural is. Is it more studies, more programs, more government? Is that your answer?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No, that isn't the answer. But I will say that in terms of conducting a rural dialogue and listening to what rural Canadians themselves have to say, I think, by the very nature of what you've undertaken as a caucus, you recognize the importance of that. You feel the responsibility—I think, an appropriate one—to talk to your constituents and others in the west. I have that responsibility from a governmental standpoint.

Having an opportunity to talk to rural Canadians, to listen to them, and to present the views and where we've been...that's what that report is. It's not there to say everything is perfect and hunky-dory; it's there to say that's what happening right now. I want to hear your comments on what additional things we should emphasize. You've given me some suggestions there. I take those to heart. We need to deal with it.

But you asked, and it may have been almost a rhetorical question, if there should be more government. I just want to go back to the point that I made with Mr. Steckle. It's a point that I think that your party is going to need to address and talk about, that is, some of those challenges that face rural Canadians require, I believe, that government play a role in creating an environment within which rural communities, rural businesses, and rural citizens can be successful.

Sometimes it's creating the environment, whether that be through infrastructure or through the type of trade negotiations that a government may undertake. Sometimes it may be having a private sector-public sector partnership in terms of developing something like telecommunications infrastructure.

I believe that role for government is important and critical to the success of rural Canada. If you want to characterize that simply as “big government and therefore it's bad”, I guess that's a particular perspective you can take, but I don't think that perspective is in the best interests of rural Canada and rural Canadians.

Mr. Gerry Ritz: Is there not a trade-off, though, in lower taxation, which allows rural Canada to make some of its own decisions, with government getting out of their faces so that they have some marketing options and different things like that? Is there not a role to play there as well?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, obviously having a competitive tax regime and having lower taxes.... I haven't found any Canadians yet who haven't thought that paying less taxes is a good idea.

But if you don't have a business, if you don't have businesses making money, and if you don't have a community that's able to attract business, tax cuts in and of themselves are not of great assistance. They certainly are going to be important in the overall scheme of things, and that's why we talked about it at Magog. Mr. Desrochers mentioned looking at the tax structure, but there's more to it than simply that.

If you were to go into rural communities and simply say that you'll cut taxes by 15% and that therefore they will have a strong rural economy.... I think you can say that if we have a lower tax regime it would assist, sustain, certain parts, but I truly believe that the federal government has a role to play in helping to create that environment and in helping, in certain instances, to partner with the private sector in order to attract the kinds of investments in rural Canada that population density won't allow to happen on their own.

Mr. Gerry Ritz: If you want to see a real comparison between a government that recognizes tax incentives to create industry and a government that goes the other way and closes the door to that, you can look at the comparison between Saskatchewan and Alberta, and even between B.C. and Alberta now, with the way B.C. has gone.

Again, I come back to the fundamental philosophy of business: there's no sense in me setting up in Saskatchewan or B.C., because I'm going to be taxed to death, so I'm going to Alberta. We're seeing that constantly. I live right on the border, in Lloydminster. I see all of the industry and the retail and everything built on the Alberta side, while some of the folks live on Saskatchewan side. That tells me that government definitely has a major role to play in getting the proper tax system so that they can allow that growth to happen. It will.

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Mr. Andy Mitchell: But I think the debate we're having is not that one is good and one is bad. What I'm saying is that it's not an either/or situation. To simply say that government doesn't have any role to play in rural development other than lowering taxes is an inappropriate position, I say.

Mr. Gerry Ritz: No, I'm not saying that either.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Okay.

Mr. Gerry Ritz: I'm saying it's a key component.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: But would you agree that there is a role for government to play in helping to create the environment within which individuals, communities, and businesses can be successful? And would you agree that there's a role for government to play in partnering with the private sector to attract investment, that due to the circumstances we have in rural areas, it wouldn't occur without that?

Mr. Gerry Ritz: Government has to create a level playing field. They cannot pick the winners and losers.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): That's the end.

Mrs. Ur.

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, Lib.): Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I apologize. I had another meeting to go to before coming here so I was late.

Mr. Minister, I too had feedback on the Magog conference from some people who attended from my riding and from adjacent ridings. They felt it was probably one of the best-ever programs put together, where several hundred people came together, and they felt that they went away gaining some good experience and hoping that this was the first of many to come.

The only constructive criticism—and that's the way they expressed it to me—was that they felt it was a good session but they were hoping that it would at least go by provincial breakdown so that the diversity of each province could be addressed, then collected—and, if at all possible, regional. They knew they were reaching for maybe a little too much, but they felt that if they could go regionally and have another collective get-together on that, it would be most productive. They couldn't say enough about it and felt that once some of the earlier parameters were worked out, it was a positive conference.

Here this morning I hear that governments have a major role to play—in whatever example came forward—but on the other hand, when something does not work out, it comes back to us as “government interference”. How are you separating the two? At one time, we hear, yes, the government has a major role to play, but when it doesn't turn out....

And I'll just add an agriculture note to that. When I was farming earlier, we were into the asparagus business because there were dollars allocated to diversify from tobacco, so you got into the program. We were one of the first ones to get into asparagus. We made money at the beginning, but as more and more people came on, it wasn't quite as lucrative. The people who joined towards the end and got in at the tail end of the game certainly didn't have the same experience as those who started earlier. Well, there it's “government interference”, so in one respect, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

So I'll throw that back at you, Mr. Minister: how are we going to do this differently?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I think that's a good point and an important one for rural development. I don't believe that I, sitting here in Ottawa, or a provincial politician, or for that matter, officials at either level, can go to any particular community and say, “You must do this in order to develop.”

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: Exactly.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: It's not going to work that way. Those kinds of decisions cannot be made a thousand or three thousand miles away. That's why I always speak in terms of providing a tool box that allows communities to choose what it is that they think is going to be best for them. That's what I mean by a process that is driven from the bottom up.

In terms of trying to sustain itself, a rural community in southwestern Ontario will choose, I suspect, a very different strategy than a coastal community in Atlantic Canada or a prairie community in Saskatchewan or a lumber community in the interior of British Columbia. The role of government is to provide a set of tools that those communities can choose from to meet their particular objective.

That's how I try to balance those two types of things, not to be proscriptive, not with government saying that this is the only strategy they can use, this is the flavour of the month, and this is the one they'll use, even though it may make no sense where they are—but it's the flavour of the month.

That's not where we want to go. I think perhaps there are some examples of where governments have gone that way in the past. I don't believe in that model. The model I believe in is a model driven from the bottom up, where individual communities decide on their particular strategies, their priorities, and we're there as a government to provide them with the tools.

For instance, the infrastructure program is a tool. How the infrastructure program is used in a southwestern Ontario community will probably be very different from how it is used in an Atlantic Canada community, but the point is, we have the tool and they use it in a way that works best for their particular strategies.

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On the conference itself, thank you for those comments. That is one of the things we're seriously looking at, that regional breakdown in the off years. A little bit of that was done in Magog. I heard clearly that there wasn't enough of that. That's why we want to take a look at it.

One of the things I should say, which you put in the form of constructive criticism—and Rick touched on this a little bit before—is that in my portfolio we proactively reach out for criticism. We want rural Canadians to tell us what it is we need to do better and where we need to emphasize our efforts, because all of the knowledge is not resident here in Ottawa. It's resident out in rural Canada. Those are the folks who are going to tell us what it is that they need government to do.

So when I travel in the country, I meet with local municipal leaders, with organizations, and with rural citizens. We usually have round tables like this and I hear about what they think isn't working well. Occasionally they may say something nice, but that's not what we're there for. We're there to hear how they think we ought to be working and what we ought to be doing better.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Mr. Borotsik, five minutes.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Chairman.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: You've given him a title—

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Oh, there are a lot of things we call the deputy chairman, but that's as good as we get.

I want to go back to proactiveness within the department. Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems to me that the federal government sees the rural secretariat as a bit of tokenism, quite frankly. Your budget is not substantial; I think it was $20 million over five years, if memory serves me correctly. It sounds nice, and it's a warm fuzzy, but it doesn't seem to give you any real impact as to how we're going to deal with rural Canada.

I have two problems. Number one, you've said it yourself: seventy per cent of the elected officials we have right now in Canada—federal, provincial, and municipal—come from urban areas. Thirty per cent come from rural areas, and we always fight an uphill battle. It seems that we're always given short shrift, and I'm sorry, Mr. Minister, but you don't have a lot of influence, unfortunately.

Second, I talked about proactiveness. I would see that it would be much better if you, as the Secretary of State for Rural Development, said to other ministers that if anything is going on in their department that is going to have an impact on rural Canada, it should be vetted through your department so that you can do—and I'm not going to use the word “study”—an impact assessment of some sort as to how their decisions are going to affect rural Canada—and it can happen.

Let me give you an example: Canada Customs and Revenue has a simple little thing with automated border crossings. When you have an automated border crossing in a small rural area, the automation of that border crossing impacts that rural community substantially. Why should Canada Customs and Revenue not come to your department and ask you for your input, if nothing else, but more importantly, perhaps for an impact assessment? Can you not work that kind of political will or mindset into the whole process?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: We do have that process; it's not perfect yet.

I'll explain to you how it works. You're probably familiar with this. As policy decisions are made, they work their way up until eventually they get into cabinet. There's a process called interdepartmental meetings and my officials are represented at them. The issue is brought forth and we have a chance to examine it, both at the officials' level and at my level, the political level. They go to the meetings. They come back and they provide with that type of input, and then I make a representation in cabinet if it's not resolved at that level.

That's a big part of how the rural lens works. That doesn't capture 100%, because there are decisions that are taken solely within a department; that becomes a matter of educating. In fairness, some departments do a real good job. They do think that way.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: I'm going to have to wrap up.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Okay. Sorry.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: I have one question I want to get in, Andy, but I appreciate that there is at least an effort at trying to get other departments to understand the ramifications.

I have to put this on the record. I do every year and I'll do it again. It's your pilot projects with the Canadian Rural Partnership. In my opinion, this is total tokenism. What you're trying to achieve here is probably make-work projects in a whole bunch of areas, putting moneys into pilot projects that, in my opinion, do not fulfil what your mandate is with rural Canada. I have to put that on the record.

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By the way, I disagree with some of my colleagues from the other party: I do agree strongly that technology has a very major part to play in how we're going to develop rural Canada. I think fibre optics and Internet access are important. Don't let that go the way of the dodo bird, like some other people in other parties would like it to.

The reason I say this is that I just looked very quickly at your pilot projects. Let me give you an example in Manitoba. In “Images of Manitoba Communities”, we're going to take a video of main street communities, sites of interest, and interview local people. These are nice, warm, fuzzy, make-work projects, but this doesn't do anything to help rural Canada with the numerous problems we have right now. What do you see with the pilot projects? Do you see a continuation, with more money dumped into them? I'm not going to bring HRDC into it, but is that where it's going to develop—into this particular kind of project?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No, they're not designed to be make-work projects. What the pilot projects are designed to do—and what I want to make sure they do—is to test strategies. They can be used in other communities to help with development.

For instance, if you assist a community group in terms of forming a business using a co-operative structure in an area where it has never been used before, and you say, look, it worked here in this rural community, the idea behind it is that this can now be duplicated, replicated, in other places. That's what the pilot projects are designed to achieve: to try something out in a particular area, which can lead to it being duplicated in other areas. In some cases, that works very well. In other cases, in doing that, in saying that we're going to try some things that haven't been tried before, we're going to have some failures; they're not going to work as well as one would hope.

But there are some that have worked very well. At the Magog conference, some examples were shown that the 500 rural Canadians who were there took a look at. There was a lot of positive feedback from them. They were saying, “There's something we can try in our area. That's something that hasn't been done before in our area. We can use that.”

That's what it's designed to do. I'll work hard, as we go through the next round, to make sure that mandate, that perspective, is the one that is used in developing the pilot project program. It's not a great deal of money. If anybody wants to suggest we're going to save rural Canada on the backs of the pilot projects, it's not going to happen. It's a small piece in the big puzzle of trying to bring together all of the things to help in rural Canada.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Time's up.

Mr. McGuire, five minutes.

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.): Thank you, Deputy Chair.

Andy, you've mentioned the new infrastructure program that's being developed. You sort of implied that it would be different in different regions of the country. Now, if you're developing this national program that's going to be instituted beginning this fall, I think, and will run for the next three or four years.... I think you were already at some planning sessions on the infrastructure program...?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Yes, there have been some preliminary discussions taking place.

Mr. Joe McGuire: I'm just wondering how this would work in an area like Atlantic Canada, which has a small rural population and is still basically based on fisheries, agriculture, and small business. How would a national program fit in on a per capita basis as far as having an impact, say, in Manitoba or in Atlantic Canada, where, in a region, there's a relatively low population? How would that impact in those regions versus Ontario, which of course has a huge population?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Obviously that's one of the challenges that has to be worked out, that is, to make sure that in the rural areas there is a critical mass which would allow projects to move forward. That may be within the infrastructure program itself. It may be that there are partner programs working in a particular area that help make it work.

In terms of how you make a national program have local application, you may have an infrastructure program that has green infrastructure as one of the criteria. An Atlantic Canada community may decide that its priority is waste treatment and it may go that route. A prairie community may decide that water conservation is its priority. It's the same national program, with the same broad guideline, but it's being dealt with in two totally different ways, based on the particular needs.

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It's the same thing with telecommunications. You may have an area where they need to deal with just getting the basic wire in there. You may have another community that has it but needs an upgrading of the switching. So you have the same criteria, but again, the money could be spent in two different ways.

Mr. Joe McGuire: It's sort of like the set-up with the CARD program, where each region has their own...?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, how we actually do that at the end of the day is going to depend on the discussions that take place with the provinces. The idea is that it's an offer to the provinces to partner with us on this.

For myself, I like the program that was in place in 1993. It was a partnership, and the priorities were within the broad parameters of the program and were being made at the local level. I'm a firm believer in that kind of process.

Mr. Joe McGuire: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have just a very brief question. I've been carefully listening to everything you've been saying. We have an industry, Prairie Pasta Producers, that wants to set up. It's a value-added industry—I'm sure you've heard of it—and it does all of the things you've been describing to us here today, the things that should be done in rural Canada. The only thing that's preventing it from developing is government. So my question to you is this: what have you done to defend their right—the farmers' right—to process their own durum wheat and sell it without jumping through all the hoops and hurdles required by government and its agencies?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, you're bringing up a philosophical point about what the best way to handle—

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Excuse me. Prairie Pasta is a concrete company, not a philosophical entity.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, it's a concrete company, but the issue that you're talking about is dealing with how we market in this country. That's an issue that goes back and forth depending on your political stripe and your political philosophy.

How do you resolve that particular issue and what solution do you choose? I think you have to undertake it in a way such that you look at what other ramifications or impacts that may have in other areas and on other businesses.

What I don't accept, Garry—and you and I will differ on this—is that government, by definition, is a bad thing for rural Canadians. I don't believe it is. It can be used in an inappropriate way, but it can also be used in a very positive way. In rural Canada, I think that using government in a positive way to create that environment. I think that to partner with the private sector is an appropriate way in which government should act.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: But you see, you're doing the opposite of creating that environment in which they can develop. That should be obvious to anybody who examines the question. You're saying one thing but doing the opposite.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I don't believe that, but what I will do, Garry, is take a look at that particular business, and I will provide you a written response on that. I think that in fairness to you I should do that.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'm sharing my time, by the way, Mr. Chairman.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Okay.

Mr. Hoeppner.

Mr. Jake E. Hoeppner (Portage—Lisgar, Ind.): Thank you, Deputy Chair.

Honourable Mr. Mitchell, it's good to see you here. You have a portfolio that I think is one of the toughest to deal with, because you have seventy per cent of the political machinery against you. How do you deliver when that's the case?

I just want to comment on Shilo. I support Mr. Borotsik very much when he says that the base should stay where it is, because part of the territory is in my riding. We have the natural training grounds there. It would be foolish to dismantle it and move it to Winnipeg, for that simple reason. So keep that in mind.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I've heard that.

Mr. Jake Hoeppner: The other thing I wanted to bring to you, Mr. Minister, is that I have three problems in my riding and they are depopulating the rural area. One is access to a good quality of water. It's always the larger areas that seem to get the PFRA projects and other things. The rural farmsteads don't have the availability. That forces the larger animal husbandry projects to move to different locations, and they get concentrated and it's environmentally harmful.

The other thing is the natural gas. You always know that companies will try to locate near some larger centres. To access that natural gas in the smaller communities is very hard.

If those two things were happening, we would see rural development in smaller areas, and it would probably be spread out and save our rural communities.

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The other thing is that once this has happened, once all the facilities move to the larger areas, we have a policing problem in the rural areas. That is one of the big issues among municipalities in my area right now. How do we deliver proper policing to these backwoods areas? As you know, the RCMP have been cut to the bare bones.

Those are three things that I think you have to somehow deal with. I'll give you a lot of credit if you can just stop the process of depopulating more of these areas and bring some development into them. I think you will see the rural areas appreciating it and giving you credit for it if it does happen.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Thank you, Jake.

Just to answer very briefly on that, on the policing issue, as I travel, particularly in western Canada, municipal councillors, mayors, and reeves bring that up. I was pleased that in the budget there were some additional resources provided for that.

In terms of access to a good quality of water, let me talk to the folks at PFRA. I deal with them from time to time because they do, in essence, work on rural development in Manitoba.

On the natural gas issue, that's an interesting one, because it comes down to what I talked about earlier, to working in partnership.

You may have a large urban centre like Winnipeg, I guess, where you've put in a new subdivision, where there's going to be an immediate return to the gas company, all by itself, from the consumers that are going to be there. So boom—the ground's dug up, the line's put in, and the gas is provided. Go out into a rural area where you don't have that population density but the natural gas infrastructure is just as important. The question, then, from a public policy perspective, is this: is it appropriate, in that context, to have a private-public partnership to make sure that infrastructure is created?

That's the philosophical debate that I was having with the Alliance. There is a difference in population density in rural Canada. It has an impact on the type of investment you can attract for infrastructure. If you believe the infrastructure is as important in a rural area as it is in an urban area, then the way of delivering it is to have a suitable private sector-public sector partnership. That's one of the ways in which you can work to get that natural gas infrastructure. Then, if it's there, that provides a tool that will help the economic development of that area.

Mr. Jake Hoeppner: I worked very hard with Gladco, in the Gladstone area, to form a partnership. It's a kind of co-op, but they also get opposition from the huge conglomerates that don't like to see them being too successful. To be successful, you have to have a certain amount of consumers. That is where I think you could probably aid some of these partnerships—by some financing, by long-term guarantees of money. Because if that isn't there, the partnerships will not work.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I agree with you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Thank you very much, Mr. Hoeppner.

Minister, it has been a pleasure having you here. I think everybody who sits around this table is very concerned about rural Canada, because that's in fact where we come from. We know that with our insistence and pressure behind you, we'll get the best deal that we can for rural Canada.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I appreciate everybody's input. I'm happy to talk to members and to have them as allies as we move forward on these important issues. Thank you very much.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Murray Calder): Thank you.

The committee is adjourned.