AGRI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'AGRICULTURE ET DE L'AGROALIMENTAIRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Charles Hubbard (Miramichi, Lib.)): Good afternoon, everyone.

Pursuant again to Standing Order 108(2), looking at consideration of the plans and priorities of the government, we'd like to welcome today the Honourable Andy Mitchell, Secretary of State for Rural Development.

with that, Mr. Mitchell, we will open the floor for you and your Associate Deputy Minister, Ms. Vincent. It is my understanding you'll make the first presentation, and I'm not sure if Ms. Vincent has something as well. In any case, welcome to our committee. I know others will be joining us shortly, but don't feel slighted because our numbers are few. In any case, we're glad to see so many opposition members here.

The floor is yours.

Hon. Andy Mitchell (Secretary of State (Rural Development)): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I do appreciate the invitation from the committee to be here and to provide some testimony. I'd like to introduce Diane Vincent, the Associate Deputy Minister from Agriculture Canada and the senior official responsible for the rural file.

I welcome the opportunity to be here with members and to talk a little bit about my role as secretary of state and indeed about the rural development file. Obviously, and I think this is probably shared by all of the members around this table, we all believe rural Canada is an important part of this nation. The reality is that Canada depends upon both of its component parts, urban and rural. A weakness in either part diminishes the nation as a whole.

When you look at rural Canada you see very clearly and very quickly the important contributions to the nation that rural Canada makes. Obviously, it's 95% of our geography, it's roughly 30% of the population base, it generates about 15% of the GDP, and a similar amount, 14%, of the employment of Canada. Of particular importance is the fact that 40% of the nation's exports originate out of rural Canada, primarily from our natural resource-based industries.

Rural Canada, Mr. Chairman and committee members, in my view is an important part of the social fabric of Canada and it is the historical source of wealth upon which this nation has been built. Rural Canada is a distinct and a unique place. It has a unique set of traditions. It has a unique set of values—values of community, a spirit of neighbour helping neighbour, and the importance of our families.

The rural file has been one that has seized this government for some time, and it is committed as a government to ensuring the long-term sustainability of rural Canada. The process really, in terms of a very specific commitment by the government, goes back to the Speech from the Throne in 1996, when there was a very firm commitment made to work as a government towards the sustainability of rural Canada.

In 1997, in part as a response to the Speech from the Throne, I had the opportunity as chair of the natural resources committee, joined by both of our other official parties at that time, the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois, to hold hearings across Canada from which we produced the report called Think Rural!, which had a number of recommendations on how to address some of challenges facing rural Canada.

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The government in 1998 responded to the Think Rural! report formally in the House of Commons and also in 1998 identified Mr. Vanclief as the minister coordinating rural affairs. Also in 1998, the minister announced the Canadian Rural Partnership. The Canadian Rural Partnership is essentially the entity within government that funds the activities of the Rural Secretariat. There are other sources of funding as well that fund my operations as a secretary of state.

Following on the government's commitment to rural Canada, in 1998 the Prime Minister appointed, for the first time ever, a secretary of state responsible for rural development. That was the first time such a position was created within the federal government, and I was honoured when he asked me to fill that position. It's a little bit of a different portfolio in the sense that it is one that is horizontal in nature as opposed to being vertical in nature. In other words, traditionally what we see are government organizations that are vertical. If it's to deal with justice, everything goes through Justice; if it's to deal with industry, everything is with Industry; etc. In the Rural Secretariat we work across departmental lines. My job, in large part, is when we have identified actions we need to take, I broker that response right across the government and bring to the table as many different departments as may be required to deal with the issue.

In Budget 2000 we saw some very specific commitments to rural Canada, including new investments in the Community Futures Development Corporations. They were $90 million. It was at this time that the infrastructure program was announced as well as a number of other initiatives. And in the Speech from the Throne that opened this Parliament we also saw a firm commitment by the federal government to assist communities in ensuring their sustainability.

In dealing with this particular issue, Mr. Chairman, we've identified essentially four specific challenges rural Canadians face that are not necessarily faced by urban Canadians, and these challenges need to be addressed if we're going to address the concerns and the issues that affect rural Canada.

If you think about them, Mr. Chairman, they're fairly self-evident. First is the issue of geography. One of the realities is that in rural Canada we have a great deal of geography. In fact many people, perhaps some of us here, choose to live in Canada because of that very fact. But that reality of geography creates certain challenges for us. For instance, if you're trying to develop a process by which you deliver either public or private services, how you do that in large geographic areas can very often be different from how you're going to do that same type of delivery in a tight urban area.

Secondly, if you look at the issue of distance, when we're dealing either with our resource-based industries or the SMEs that tend to operate in rural Canada, we have to deal with our distance from market. This creates an additional set of pressures that may be different from businesses that are operating in some of our urban centres where the marketplaces are often right there, where the businesses are operating.

Thirdly, in terms of challenges, Mr. Chairman, is the whole issue of population density. We traditionally have low population densities in the rural parts of this country, and that brings up a set of challenges in and of itself. If you're trying to attract investment into a rural area, your ability to attract that investment can be very different from in an urban area. For instance, if you take the issue of telecommunications, a private sector telco may be very willing to make an investment in an urban area, where it has a market size that will give it a return on its investment all on its own. That same type of infrastructure, which is just as critical in rural areas, may not have the private sector do that on its own because the lack of population density doesn't allow it a return on its investment. That oftentimes calls for a solution that would see a partnership between the private and the public sector.

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Of course, Mr. Chairman, I know all the members of this committee are familiar with the fact that one of the challenges we have in rural Canada is that our economy, in large part, is a natural resource-based economy. That means it's cyclical in nature. The fact that it's cyclical oftentimes means our economies are very different from what you may find in an urban-based, diversified, manufacturing, technology-based economy.

When you have a cyclical economy it will oftentimes call for a different policy response from what you may have in an urban centre. In dealing with the rural file, much of what we try to do is to deal with those specific challenges when it comes to delivering public policy. We're not going to change those realities that exist in rural Canada. We're not going to change the geography. We're not going to change the cyclical nature of resource-based economies.

We do have to develop policies that take those challenges into account in a way that's going to assist the sustainability of the rural areas of this country. In doing that, we've essentially undertaken four specific approaches that I'd like to mention briefly to the committee.

The first one is what we call the “rural lens”. I spoke about it to this committee last year. Essentially, one of the items that I and my officials at the official level are mandated to ensure, as the government deals with public policy, as it formulates legislation, as it responds to the issues of the day, as it deals with regulatory matters, is that it does so in a way that makes sense for rural Canada.

Oftentimes, solutions that make a lot of sense for a Toronto, a Calgary, a Vancouver, or a Montreal may certainly not make sense in the way we deliver it in our rural areas. It's necessary to design policy in a way that also makes sense for rural Canada. That's a big part of what the rural lens is about, my dealing with colleagues in cabinet and Diane and her officials dealing with officials from departments, as these responses are formulated. So one of the approaches we take is that rural lens approach.

A second approach that I very firmly believe in, Mr. Chairman, as we deal with rural issues, is to deal with them from a bottom-up and not a top-down approach. I mean by this that as communities are dealing with the challenges I've talked about and the issue of sustainability, they need to decide on the best way to go about doing that. I think that reflects the fact that rural Canada is not a monolithic entity.

Mr. Chairman, you know Atlantic Canada is very different from the rural Canada that exists in the prairies, or that exists in my area, northern Ontario, or that exists in the interior of British Columbia. The challenges faced by an outport fishing community in Newfoundland can be very different from the challenges of a mining community in northern Ontario, a forestry community in British Columbia, or an agricultural community on the prairies. So it's absolutely essential that, as solutions are designed to meet the need to ensure sustainability, that communities have an opportunity to do it themselves from the bottom up. It's very difficult if you try to develop a solution that's going to fit everything or fit all communities. I'm a very firm believer in a bottom-up approach as opposed to a top-down approach.

The third approach we try to work on is the whole issue of community capacity-building. It's one thing to say that a community must develop the solutions to the challenges it faces. It's also important that communities have the capacity to be able to develop those solutions and the types of plans that need to be dealt with.

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I recall, Mr. Chairman, in a visit to Newfoundland one time, talking to some individuals who came from a very small community on the coast. They said, “You know, Andy, it's good that you want us to do it bottom up; we agree with that. But the challenge we have is that we don't have the capacity to do that as a community any more.” The human resources they used to depend on are simply gone.

For instance, they had a financial institution close. They told me it was one thing to lose the financial institution, which was bad enough, but they also lost the people who worked there—the volunteers, the people who worked on their economic development committee, the people who were part of their chambers of commerce and who helped on those types of things. They were gone as well. They were losing their capacity as a community.

So if they were going to have a bottom-up approach to deal with community capacity-building, doing things like a community, being able to determine its assets, being able to build a consensus within the community....

All of us as members of Parliament, and I suspect those in other elected positions, know beforehand how challenging it can be to develop a community consensus on where you want to go, to develop the actual plans to make sure you have the necessary human resources. There are lots of ways of building community capacity.

One of the other areas I'm responsible for, for instance, is the cooperative area. That's an example of building community capacity. Co-ops are an excellent structure, an excellent organization that allows for community members to come together in a bottom-up type of approach to work towards solutions.

One of the things I believe in, in one of the other hats I wear, is the importance of cooperatives, and the importance of supporting the development of cooperatives and ensuring that this is one of the tools we can use in moving towards community sustainability.

The fourth area we look at, Mr. Chairman, is the whole issue of tools. It's fine to say that communities need to work from a bottom-up type of approach, and it's fine to give communities capacity, but senior levels of government then need to provide communities with the tools they can use in order to pursue their particular plans for sustainability. Those tools come, in most part, from senior levels of government, be they provincial or be they federal, and the tools will be used by different communities in different ways. In some cases they may not be used at all.

Take the whole issue, again, of telecommunications infrastructure. Some communities may see the Community Access Program, for example, or the government's commitment to provide broadband Internet access, as a tool they want to use. It's an important part of how they're going to move forward. Another community may not find it as important, but the key is to have that set of tools there. If you think about it for a minute, there is a large number of those tools available.

The Community Futures Development Corporations, which provide a very good example of a bottom-up type of approach, provide financial assistance in the form of loans to small businesses that operate or are trying to be established in rural areas. In Budget 2000, as they mentioned, they received an incremental increase in their funding of some $90 million.

This is an organization that operates only in rural Canada. It is a program that works well, because although the funding is provided by the federal government, the boards themselves are operated by local boards of directors who make decisions based on local needs and local concerns.

The infrastructure program provides an opportunity to partner with communities and provincial governments to provide infrastructure in both rural and urban areas.

I know members are familiar with a number of other programs. The CAP program, which I mentioned; the CARC program, which is a program through the Rural Secretariat, funded out of CARD, that helps agricultural communities in transition seek alternative solutions. The pilot projects we operate, the Office of Rural Health, the $50 million community rural health fund, are examples of tools the federal government has to assist communities dealing with sustainability.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I should mention that we intend to validate our approach. We're on the right track through something called the “rural dialogue” process. We use the word “dialogue” as opposed to “consultation process”, because it isn't just going out there and asking individuals what they think at one point in time, and that's the end of it. It's an ongoing conversation where rural Canadians tell us what it is they believe we ought to be doing. We come back to them and talk to them about what we have done, and then the cycle repeats itself as they say how we've been doing so far and what new things we may want to do.

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Part of that rural dialogue process occurred last year in Magog, Quebec, where we had our national rural conference. Some 500 rural Canadians from across Canada attended. But it didn't end there. From that conference came an action plan, of which I have a copy and would be happy to provide to the committee today. That action plan represents the ideas that those participants said we ought to be working on as a government.

Shortly after the conference, I shared a draft of the plan with all of the participants to make sure the actions were in fact the ones people had brought to my attention. It's hard to believe, but sometimes some people do suggest that as politicians we may not hear exactly what was said. We therefore sent it back out to them, giving them the opportunity to validate that what we were committing ourselves to was in fact what they wanted us to commit ourselves to. Then we published this action plan so that we can be measured, as part of the rural dialogue, in terms of accomplishing what people indicated we ought to be doing.

Mr. Chairman, that's a little bit about the approach I'm taking and a little bit about what I'm doing as the Secretary of State for Rural Development. I would be pleased to answer questions from members of the committee. If I'm not able to give you an immediate answer, I will endeavour to get you an answer in the shortest time possible.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Minister. I'm sure we have a good number of questions. In fact, some of the points you made in your presentation were discussed here only yesterday.

With that, Howard, perhaps you would like to lead off the questions.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom (Selkirk—Interlake, Canadian Alliance): Yes. I'm sure we can have a discussion on this.

What's the total budget you get underneath, I guess, Agri-Food Canada, the dollar value?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: For the Rural Secretariat, for the various component parts of the secretariat, it's approximately $11 million, but that $11 million isn't, for the most part, program spending. My role, and the role of the people who work for me, is to broker across departmental lines the initiatives that will assist rural Canadians.

Let me just give you a quick example. I talked about the Community Futures program. That program is delivered by four different departments within government. The initiative to increase the funding for them came from the Rural Secretariat, but if you look through the estimates, you're not going to find the $90 million under the Rural Secretariat. Instead, you'll find it across the delivery departments that deliver the Community Futures program.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: To tell you the truth, Minister Mitchell, these programs, which are tied in with the agriculture programs and all the other programs of government, are so intertwined and so confusing that I defy anybody to give a real definition of what's going on. So maybe I can elicit from you.... I'm sure you're going to say that you do know what's going on and everything, but the dollar figure, we can't get that.

Now, as to the cooperative thing you mentioned, the national cooperative development partnership initiative, that's $32 million over five years, which is about $7 million a year. There are about 50 of these different names, and that's just one of them. It'd be nice to see some type of global figure at some point. Maybe you can give that to the committee sometime. There's no point in me asking how much of that is devoted to primary producer agriculture in rural areas, or primary forestry, because it's just a total community initiative.

What's your definition of sustainable? Is it the economic factors?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No, it's economic, environmental, and social. I think sustainable communities have to include all three components of that.

Mr. Hilstrom, perhaps I can answer your other question for a second, because I think you make an excellent point. One of the challenges is to identify, within the overall envelope of government, specifically the rural component parts. Back in 2000 we tabled a report in Parliament on the state of rural Canada, which gave all MPs from all parties an opportunity...and trying to do it very transparently.

I'm going to do that again in 2001. We're going to refine what we did in 2000. People of all parties have pointed out that it should contain even additional information. It's trying to address just the point you're making, that you want to be able to get a better handle on what's happening right across departmental lines. I think it's a fair point, and one that we need to work on.

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Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Has the Auditor General commented on your secretariat?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Yes, and very favourably.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Okay.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: He gave that as a good example of cross-departmental, horizontal initiative within government.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: In measuring the success of your programs and expenditures, you talk about rural dialogue. Is there anything more specific than people just talking back and forth? Give me one community—let's pick Manitoba or Saskatchewan, where I'm more familiar with the communities—that is more sustainable because of your programs.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: First of all, let me answer the first part of your question, as to whether there's some substance behind the rural dialogue. I spoke to that in my opening comments, and I think I provided this to all MPs, but I'll provide it again. There is an action plan, with very specific actions, that we've committed to rural citizens that we will undertake. As we proceed in the out months, we'll be measured against our ability to do that.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: What, population, money, increase in population...?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: There are different ways you can measure it. For instance, to go back to the Community Futures example, one of the issues laid out by members of rural Canada, by rural citizens, was that one of our challenges was to ensure that there's access to capital by small businesses, to ensure that they can borrow money and actually start up their businesses. Many of them expressed to us the frustration of trying to obtain that money from the private sector. There seems to be a lack of that type of capital in rural communities.

One of the responses to that is the increased funding through Community Futures. You can measure the number of loans being provided to the businesses that operate in rural areas and how many people work for those businesses. It is very measurable.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: But that comes under Western Diversification out west.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: No, it also goes into eastern Canada through ACOA—

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: No, no, I know it goes under the different regions and so on, but how are we as parliamentarians supposed to determine whether you're actually accomplishing anything as the Rural Secretariat when, really, all your money could quite easily be given to WD and the other regional development areas? I think there's an awful lot of crossover in this.

The other question concerns your Community Futures Development Corporations, which you mentioned a few times. When I look across Manitoba, I see an awful lot of very active Liberal supporters who have jobs and/or are receiving the moneys from these Community Futures Development Corporations, too.

So I really have a problem trying to identify where the money goes. In your total budget it isn't identifiable. It's just like a nest of bees. It's hard to pick one thing out of it.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I can appreciate your expressing that, but I would beg to differ a little bit. What you're really speaking to is the fact that we are a horizontal as opposed to a vertical line department. What government has traditionally done in the past is organize itself vertically. Somebody would come to me and say “This is a rural problem”, and if it didn't happen to fall in my ministry, I would send him off to see somebody else.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Do you know what would help us the best in a lot of the rural communities? Come out and give us good roads, good water, good sewer, good transportation, and good Internet. Now, you're giving us good Internet, but a lot of this other stuff doesn't seem to be.... There are only limited resources, but if you provided those things as a government—and I'm talking globally—then we would develop these communities and be quite sustainable.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: That's exactly the approach we take. That's why we have an infrastructure program that's providing it. That's why there was money provided for grading roads. That's why there have been initiatives in terms of the Internet.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: But I'm concerned that there's too much money going to other than pure infrastructure. That's what my concern is, how much money is dribbling away that should be going into basic infrastructure to provide the basis for sustainable communities. Obviously there's not enough going into infrastructure right now, because every community across this country will tell you they don't have enough money. They don't have the taxing power, as municipalities, to do it.

That's why I wanted that global figure, to determine whether the money...how big it was, and if it wouldn't be better to put that money into infrastructure.

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I suspect my time is getting close, so if you want to make any comments on that, go ahead.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Just on that point, if you take the infrastructure program, it's $2.1 billion approximately. About 22% of that will go into rural Canada. I don't know what the number on that would work out to times three, because there are partners on that. If you look at my budget of $11 million, if you look at the cost of operating our secretariat, which is a facilitator and an enabler, and you compare it with the actual delivery, you'll see there's a far greater amount being spent on something actually being delivered on the ground than there is into what you would think of as the soft costs.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Madame Tremblay.

Oh, we have a special guest. Welcome, bienvenue.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold (Jonquière, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister, I am very pleased to have heard you speak. The Bloc Québécois has assigned regional and rural development to me. I am therefore very pleased to have come to listen to you.

In your presentation, you did not talk about the next generation of farmers. You know that in Canada, there are 280,000 farmers currently farming and that 125,000 of them will retire in the next decade. So half of the primary farm operators will retire.

I would like to know what the government of Canada is going to do to make sure someone takes over those farms and to attract young people. There is a shortage in both Quebec and Canada. Young people do not want to take over the farms because it is very expensive. We are talking about millions of dollars of initial investments. I would like to know what your action plan provides for in this respect, today or this year. Do you have an outline yet of what you are going to do to remedy this situation?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Let me answer it specifically in agriculture, and then I'll answer it a little bit in a broader sense.

During the Speech from the Throne, the government made a commitment to deal with long-term issues in terms of agriculture. Obviously the issue of the aging of the agricultural population is one of them. I believe June 27, 28, and 29, Minister Vanclief and his counterparts from the provinces and territories are going to be meeting in Whitehorse in the Yukon. One of the main topics of conversation is dealing with this long-term strategic approach to agriculture. It's something that, yes, the government has a responsibility for, but it's one that it shares with the provinces. I think it's appropriate that as we move towards that long-term vision, it's being done in cooperation with its partners.

To be a little bit broader on the issues of youth, when our rural citizens came together, they identified a number of priorities. Youth was one of them. For instance, HRDC has a program specifically to deal with issues of youth. There are other programs within the government that deal with it.

I'll give you an example of one. FedNor is the regional development agency that operates in northern Ontario. It has a youth internship program. Its work really accomplishes two goals. It provides an opportunity for students who are coming out of post-secondary education to get some practical experience, so that when they're looking for a permanent job, they have both an academic and a practical career to show to an employer.

But even more importantly, from a rural perspective, what's happening is these young people who go away and get educated in large urban centres are getting their first jobs back in the rural areas. What we're finding is when they come back and get that first job in the rural areas, they tend to stay in the rural areas, as opposed to when they get their first job near where they may have been educated in an urban centre. There have been over 300 young people on this program and the vast majority of them have gone on to permanent employment, and more importantly, permanent employment in northern Ontario as opposed to somewhere else.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: You say you did a pilot project in rural Ontario to enable young people to go into farming. Does that pilot project exist throughout Canada or just in Ontario? In the future, will you cooperate with the provinces, and are you going to extend this pilot project across the country?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: It's an excellent question because it gives me an opportunity to actually talk a little about Mr. Hilstrom's concern. It isn't a pilot project. It's a program that's undertaken by that particular ministry within the government.

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My role, as Secretary of State for Rural Development, is to be able to identify that a particular part of the government is doing something that works well, and then to convince my colleagues who are responsible in other parts of the government that, hey, this is something that works; it's something we should be adopting right across the board in all parts of Canada. That's the whole idea of having a horizontal ministry as opposed to a vertical ministry. That's part of what I'm charged to do.

Now, it's a little bit different in the sense that I'm dealing with colleagues to whom I need to show the merit of the particular program, but oftentimes we're very successful in doing that.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: When will your pilot project end? [English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Again, it's not a pilot project. It's a standing program within that particular department. They intend to go on. It would be as if CED had a specific program they carried out, and then were trying to get somebody to use it from a different agency.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Okay, I understand. In your April 2001 action plan, you talk a lot about rural Internet connection. When I was environment critic for the Bloc Québécois, I received complaints from communities that did not even have telephone service. There were two or three customers on the same telephone line. They also said that it was all very well and good to have programs, but that telephone service was exorbitantly expensive in rural areas.

Your policy aim is to connect them, but what are you going to do to solve the underlying problems before telling them they can have access to certain things that will help them to develop their farming expertise?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Well, you're absolutely right about that, because my own personal riding has the same situation of party lines.

One of the positive things was the CRTC ruling in 1999 where it defined what basic telephone service is—namely, a single party line with Touch-Tone service and local access to an Internet server. I think that's what it is.

The telcos across Canada were required then to file a plan to talk about how they were actually going to achieve those objectives. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Bell Canada filed its plan in March of this year. I haven't looked at it in detail, but I know that large parts of Quebec are covered by Bell Canada and they are moving towards that. So that's going to deal with part of the issue.

As a government, we've made a commitment, and there's a broadband task force that is dealing very extensively with the Rural Secretariat. Again, that's another example of how we work on a horizontal basis. We're working with that task force, even though it comes out of Industry Canada, to explain and to explore with them options on how we're going to achieve that objective in rural areas. It's an essential piece of infrastructure, I believe, in the 21st century.

I say that because it is important. For some communities it isn't the be-all and end-all of things. Simply to have Internet access isn't in and of itself going to solve our problems, but it is a piece of the puzzle and we need to work hard to ensure that rural Canadians have an opportunity to access that piece of infrastructure every bit as much as urban Canadians do.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.

Dick, are you ready?

Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP): Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

We had the census done last month. I guess we'll get the numbers in the not-too-distant future, but does the Rural Secretariat have any trend lines on what's happening? My sense just anecdotally is that many people seem to be moving out of the rural prairies and into larger centres. I'm sure it will be reflected eventually in the census. In the meantime, is that something you're sensing as well?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: What we tend to be seeing is that the population overall in rural Canada is growing, but it is not growing proportionately to what's happening in the urban areas. I think there are two provinces where there is actually a net decrease in rural population. I believe Saskatchewan and Newfoundland are the two provinces where that's occurring. Diane just pointed out to me Alberta's rural population is actually increasing faster than its urban population.

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The thing is, though, you need to go under those figures, as I'm sure you know, because a lot of that rural growth is in what you would call urban-adjacent areas, and that can sometimes mask what's happening in the more remote areas. So we are watching those trends. They're important.

What's going to address the issue is to make sure that individuals, whether it's a young person coming into the workforce for the first time or somebody living in an urban centre who's looking at moving to rural Canada, firmly believe that while living in rural Canada they will have an equivalent opportunity to access the wealth of the nation. If you're a young person, that's one of the questions you're going to ask yourself, and we have to be able to demonstrate that is the case. We have to demonstrate that as a government we're committed to ensuring that takes place.

Mr. Dick Proctor: Just on that point, Mr. Minister, when the prairie agriculture ministers were here yesterday, along with some farmers and others, we talked a lot about value added. It's recognized generally that in order to have value added you have to have decent infrastructure. You have to have good roads, bridges, rail lines, and all the rest of it. I think there's a perception that one of the reasons we're having the problem in some parts of the country of not being able to attract that value added is the lack of good infrastructure. I know Mr. Hilstrom was kind of on the periphery of this, but I'd just like to give you the opportunity to elaborate a little bit on what you're doing and what your concerns are in that area.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: I think you're absolutely right that one of the approaches we have to take in our resource-based industries, whether that's agriculture, forestry, mining, or fisheries, is to encourage and work toward the value-adding opportunities.

I'll just give you a quick example. In my own riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka we used to ship lumber to Japan. They would turn it into hardwood flooring and then send it back to us. Now we have a hardwood flooring plant in Huntsville employing people—I forget the exact number—in good jobs for our area.

In order for that to happen, some of it has to do with infrastructure, and that's why those investments we talked about have been made. Some of it has to do with the types of organizations you have. We talked earlier about the cooperative movement. Cooperatives provide an organizational structure that would lend itself, I think, to helping with value adding. So that would be another component of it.

The attraction of capital is important. If you're going to create a value-added type of entity, in order to get a start-up they're oftentimes going to need to access capital. Co-ops can be part of that. But there's also a need to ensure that either debt or equity capital is available to allow that to happen.

The infrastructure is important, but a number of ingredients are needed to make it happen.

We talked about the community capacity part so that communities can have an opportunity to examine what their assets are. Some communities may lend themselves to something like this, and other communities may not. I'll give you an example. Some members may know that I spent some time in Elliot Lake in northern Ontario. It was a mining community. When the mining ended, they had to look around and ask, what's our asset? It wasn't too hard to see it. It was row after row of empty homes. They used that as an asset to turn themselves into something different. That's not available to every community, obviously, but that's what I mean when I say taking a look at your assets and trying to capitalize on them. Value adding for some communities is going to make sense.

Mr. Dick Proctor: I have one quick question on the Internet. As we expand the Internet into rural Canada, are you satisfied that all families are able to participate in a somewhat equitable way, or are you finding there are some families that do not have access for financial reasons?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: You're right, there's the challenge of finances. There's also the challenge that some of the basic infrastructure isn't there yet. We talked about the telcos and their meaning to do that.

In terms of delivering government services, doing it online has to be a supplement. It has to be part of the way you deliver service. You can't simply eliminate the human factor. One of the things the people at the Magog conference said to us was, yes, we want to use technology, and it's important, but you can't simply eliminate the human factor. We want to be able to talk to a human being. That's why the service—

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The Chair: Sorry, Dick, but we'll have to move on.

For the committee's information, word has come here that there will be a vote just shortly after 5 p.m. I'm prepared as chair to sit here until midnight, but I have to get some direction from the committee as to whether they want to go to vote or whether they want to continue—

Mr. Dick Proctor: Is the vote at 5:30 p.m. or 5 p.m.?

The Chair: They say shortly after 5 o'clock.

An hon. member: The bells aren't ringing.

The Chair: Order. Could I have some direction from the committee?

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: I think we should give Rick his five minutes and then we should shut down.

The Chair: Okay, Rick.

Larry is trying to make a point of order.

Larry, I'm going to let you be mad at me for a while, and I'll go to Rick.

Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC): I always get Larry mad at me.

I have lots of questions, but I know the minister is always accessible and we can get to him any time.

Define “rural”, please, in 25 words or less, because I don't have a lot of time.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: There are a number of different definitions. Some of them are based on the economy, some of them are based on population, some of them are based on density. Roughly speaking, we generally accept that around 30% of Canada is rural.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: And by the way, if the minister doesn't know the definition, then we're all in trouble.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: If you go to the Think Rural! report you'll see there are four separate definitions of what “rural” is. One of our challenges was trying to come to a consensus, and we accepted that different people have different perspectives.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Have you ever gone to other jurisdictions? This is not a made-in-Canada problem, either. There are other jurisdictions that suffer the same fate with respect to rural communities, Australia being one and France being another. Have you looked at perhaps not reinventing the wheel? Are there other programs or other incentives out there that you could perhaps learn from?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: You're right, there are other programs. The LEADER program in Europe would probably be an example of an approach. There are some approaches in the United States. I'm looking forward to the new administration. It's the assistant secretary of agriculture, I think, who has specific rural responsibilities. When that individual is appointed I hope to meet with them.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Have we ever thought outside the box? I've heard some good things....

By the way, I, unlike others here, believe Community Futures and those types of initiatives are positive initiatives. The amount of money you have, though, is tokenism. The $25 million over five years is tokenism for your whole department. So I would like to see more money instead of less, like others.

Out of the box, have you ever thought of rural allowances, like northern allowances used to be? Have you ever thought of that? If you're serious about getting people to go back into rural Canada, what about a rural allowance? Our biggest problem in rural Canada is health care professionals, trying to keep them there and get them there.

Come up with some taxation programs that will now encourage health care professionals to stay there. You talked about seniors' housing. Perhaps an energy rebate of some sort, or a taxation incentive on energy to have seniors retire to rural areas....

That's outside the box here, Andy. Have you thought about anything like that?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Absolutely we have.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Then where is it?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Let me give you one very concrete example.

One of the issues, and you brought it up, is attracting health care professionals, particularly doctors, to rural areas. One of the suggestions that was made goes back to what I was saying before. We need to train people to be doctors and to train them in rural areas and with specific curricula.

FedNor, which is one of the regional development agencies, funded a study in northern Ontario to prepare a proposal to the Government of Ontario, which announced four weeks ago that they are in fact going to establish a remote and rural school of medicine in northern Ontario.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: The Canadian Cooperative Association put a proposal together for $32 million. We all like cooperatives. The proposal is on your table. What's the status of that?

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Mr. Andy Mitchell: We're working on it. I'm trying, along with my colleagues, to respond to that issue. I should mention that since then we've had two pilot projects, one that's been funded out of CARD and another that's been funded out of HRDC, to assist with the development of cooperatives. One was a labour cooperative out of HRDC and then we've done some work out of the CARD program.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: But nothing on the status of this?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: It's an issue that we are working on. It's an active file. I'm very supportive of cooperatives because they are one of those structures that will allow for the bottom-up process that will allow us and help us to sustain rural communities.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: There's lots of work—

The Chair: Thank you, Rick.

Now, we've been told it would be at least 5:15 p.m. before—

Mr. Rick Borotsik: You've cut me short of my time, then.

The Chair: No, you have half a minute, if you want.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: I get more time, then? Great.

The Chair: And then I'm going to go to Larry.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: You had mentioned the rural health fund, and we talked about the health care professionals and all the rest, Can you expand a little bit on the rural health fund? That's the first I've heard of it. What is it? You said there is $50 million.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: The rural and community health fund, established in I think the 1999 budget, with $50 million, was to work with the provinces, because obviously health care is a provincial issue, in coming up with innovative solutions to delivering health care. It's funded a number of pilot projects. For instance, in Ontario it's funded a program to deliver a rural curriculum for nurse practitioners to assist them in dealing with the types of challenges they're going to face in being a primary health care deliverer in a rural context. And what they learn from that they'll be able to use across the country. That's an example.

Mr. Rick Borotsik: Do the provinces know how to access this?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Yes. In fact, we didn't move on any of the pilot projects where the province didn't agree to have us go there. So we worked in conjunction with them and that's for all the provinces.

The Chair: Mr. Minister, we have a short time. We have to be in our seats at 5:15 p.m., so we have to leave here by 5:10.

I'd like to divide a bit of time then between Mr. McCormick and Madame Tremblay, if she has some questions.

Larry.

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

I have a few comments, because I heard people here today talk about WD and so on. But first of all, Andy, congratulations on your dialogue and the Magog conference. There were 500 people there. I was fortunate to be there. There were people there from just about every riding in Canada, from all parts of Canada. We're not talking about government ridings, we're talking about everybody being there. It was great.

When I arrived here in 1993...and in 1994 I kept hearing about ACOA. I love Atlantic Canada, and I'm happy that all the money's going down there. I'm happy about FedNor. I'm happy about WD, Western Diversification. But in many parts of Ontario and in many parts of Quebec we did not have this access to programs.

Through your work we now have Community Futures, or a similar type of access to some of the programs for all of Ontario, and we're filling in the blanks in Quebec, and that's good. But before you were even chair of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources—and I think of the report you worked so hard on, Think Rural!—you chaired a committee on access to capital. In fact, I remember sitting in on a couple of the sessions.

Rick mentioned something very important about the broadband, because we have CAP sites in communities of much fewer than 400 not just because of jobs but because of health care. And that's one way we can deliver better access for health care in the rural Canada, when we have this broadband. But when we first made this commitment on CAP sites for every community of 400 or more people, some people in Industry Canada started shuddering, saying it couldn't be done. Well, we got lucky or whatever, and we did it. We'll claim all our great work. But can we deliver broadband in the next four years? Is it possible?

As well, if you have another few seconds, what's the next step for access to capital? Because we're still the poor quarter of the country, in rural Canada, and your ministry is the most important one we have for every individual citizen, urban or rural.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Andy Mitchell: In terms of your first question, we certainly are going to work towards achieving that objective in 2004. The task force has been meeting and working hard to come up with the particular types of solutions that will allow us to do this, and as they complete the work we'll be ensuring it gets implemented.

In terms of access to capital, I agree with you, it's important. It's important in terms of providing debt capital to businesses and it's also important in terms of providing equity. This is one of the cleavages that exists, I believe, between urban and rural Canada, the availability of capital to our small businesses.

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For a number of reasons there are rural areas where the private sector is not as active as we would probably like to see them. I think the Community Futures program is good one. Part of that $90 million was to make sure we had universal rural coverages in all of the provinces, and it provides an alternative means for small businesses to access capital.

These are commercial transactions. They're collateralized for the most part. They're on a repayable basis, and they have interest rates that are oftentimes generally higher than you would pay in the private sector. But what it does is provide access to capital in areas where it wouldn't otherwise be available.

[Translation]

The Chair: Madame Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski-Neigette-et-la-Mitis, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am going to ask a short question since we do not have much time left. Is your secretariat currently concerned that farmers are increasingly recognized as huge polluters? The government of Quebec is preparing to issue agriculture-specific standards to reduce pollution in the countryside. Are you working on this issue? Are you concerned about that?

[English]

Mr. Andy Mitchell: Obviously, as the Secretary of State for Rural Development, I think it is an issue. One of the ways that's going to be dealt with, the primary way, is that Mr. Vanclief, the Minister of Agriculture, has said he will be meeting with his counterparts, and when they're looking towards a long-term plan the environmental issues will be part of the plan. He will also be discussing that with his Quebec counterpart and his counterparts in the other provinces.

Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay: And the next meeting is...?

Mr. Andy Mitchell: In the Yukon in June.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Tremblay.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for coming. The time has been short today because of the House. We certainly appreciate your coming, and I know you would be available if we have further questions. So thank you for coming.

For members of the committee—I've spoken individually with some, but I didn't get a chance with everyone—I would like to see us table as the committee a brief report, probably a page or two, in the House next week to show what we've done in the last three or four months.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: We have asked the researchers to work on it and we'll try to circulate that if we can tomorrow and hopefully meet to approve it next week. We'd like to have more or less a working lunch some evening, perhaps Monday night.

Would Monday be okay with you, Howard?

Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Tuesday would be better. Monday night, I think I'm flying in.

Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay: But we have lots of votes on Tuesday, something like 180.

The Chair: We will try to provide a light lunch and try to get that report finalized, if everyone should agree.

With that, we'll adjourn our meeting until tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock.