The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - When will farmers finally see some relief？

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:08.440 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps at the Lakes Brock with

00:00:11.840 new content for you every single Tuesday, even throughout the summer at 1.30pm Eastern

00:00:16.880 Time. We ask that you like, comment, subscribe and share this program. Definitely a message

00:00:21.340 you're not hearing on the mainstream media and it is an important one today. We're talking

00:00:25.240 about agriculture in Canada, something that this Liberal government does not seem to value

00:00:29.960 at all. To talk about this and much, much more, we are bringing on John Barlow, the Member

00:00:34.100 of Parliament for Foothills in Alberta, also the critic for agriculture. Thanks for coming

00:00:38.280 on. Thanks very much, Jamie. I appreciate the opportunity. Well, you're riding like mine,

00:00:43.160 tons of farmers, agriculture is the way of life, sports, the economy, but it doesn't seem like

00:00:49.180 this Liberal government actually understands at all how this industry works. Yeah, certainly

00:00:54.980 it's very clear with, you know, starts at the top with the choices they've made as agriculture

00:01:00.320 ministers under Justin Trudeau. The fact that I would say that policy that impacts agriculture

00:01:07.440 is being made by environment and climate change, not the Minister of Agriculture. And when big

00:01:12.400 decisions are announced, whether that's fertilizer tariffs or the capital gains inclusion rate change,

00:01:19.880 the Minister of Agriculture doesn't even know that these things are happening. So I think it's almost

00:01:24.980 beyond a disdain. It's not even an afterthought. Yeah, you know, we've said many times and you've

00:01:31.300 been doing a great job on this file. This is definitely something that you can tell in your heart. You

00:01:35.680 really do care and passionate about agriculture sector in this country. But one thing after another,

00:01:41.840 right? A lot of our farmers are getting older. It's tougher to attract new people into the business.

00:01:47.100 But of course, why would you want to break your back for 14 hours a day and barely eke out a living?

00:01:55.740 You know, we went to a mushroom farm in Carleton earlier this week and met with two brothers who

00:02:03.340 have kept on the family operation that are into their 40th year now. And that was exactly Fernando's

00:02:09.100 comment. He said, you know, I really question why we're doing this. They've invested, you know,

00:02:15.060 millions of dollars to improve their barns and their efficiency. And he said, all we're doing

00:02:19.780 is getting punished by higher carbon taxes. They paid $180,000 in carbon taxes last year

00:02:26.040 for one small business. That goes up to half a million in 2030 when they quadruple the carbon tax.

00:02:32.800 And he said, if it goes to that, they're done. And that's a common story we're hearing right across

00:02:38.000 this country where those family farm operations are teetering on whether or not they're economically

00:02:45.120 viable. And we just can't lose these farms across Canada. That puts our food security at risk,

00:02:53.020 but certainly our rural economy is at risk as well. There's not businesses that are stepping up

00:02:57.600 to replace that family farm.

00:02:59.080 But at the end of the day, we all have to eat, right? So this idea that the liberals have that

00:03:04.440 we can just live in utopia and we don't know where our food is. So we'll import it from other

00:03:10.200 jurisdictions. The quality might not be as good. Who knows about the price? Of course, if we can't

00:03:15.980 produce our own, they were at a severe disadvantage. But it's one thing after another, but it's this

00:03:23.840 mindset that we'll have a government program to fix that problem that we created, right? Like,

00:03:28.120 we'll just import food, right? Like people have just had enough.

00:03:31.580 Yeah. And I think people are seeing it. You know, maybe the bright side of this is that Canadians 1.00

00:03:36.320 are starting to finally question and want to understand where their food comes from because

00:03:41.140 they're seeing food prices at the grocery store continue to increase as a result of liberal-driven

00:03:45.940 inflation. And you're exactly right, Jamie. What will happen is we will have to start importing more

00:03:51.120 food from around the world, which has a much larger carbon footprint, has not done to the same

00:03:57.240 environmental standards and quality standards that we have right here in Canada. But the larger

00:04:02.940 threat of that is Canada is one of only five countries in the world that exports food to help

00:04:07.460 feed the world. So we're not only talking about Canadian food security, we're talking about global

00:04:11.540 food security. If Canada is no longer able to meet the global demand, there will be a food security

00:04:20.020 question or crisis around the world, especially with what's going on in Ukraine, in the Middle East.

00:04:26.500 Demand for Canadian products has never been higher. But because of liberal policy is becoming more and

00:04:33.400 more difficult for us to meet that demand and to meet that opportunity, which would be an incredible

00:04:38.800 growth opportunity for Canadian agriculture. Yeah. And it seems to emanate from these big government

00:04:44.300 thinking types, right, that think they have the better ideas. So it's the non-productive people

00:04:50.860 regulating the productive people, right? So probably people that have never stepped foot on a farm,

00:04:57.840 maybe don't even know anyone who drives a pickup truck, right? Like then telling them how to do

00:05:02.560 business. You've got to go organic doing this. Well, what if the conditions aren't right for it? Or

00:05:07.060 what if you put me out of business, right? Like how can this make any sense?

00:05:11.580 Well, and again, the science of organics, you know, and there's a place for all of these things.

00:05:16.840 There's a market for everything. For sure. If you want to be organic, that's your choice. The market

00:05:20.660 will dictate that if that's successful. But to go solely organic is actually worse for the soil.

00:05:26.380 We would have to cultivate 50% more land just to meet what we're doing now. So where's that land

00:05:34.100 going to come from? And that means you're going to be tilling up grasslands and wild fescue,

00:05:38.640 which is the most endangered ecosystem on the planet is our natural grasslands in Canada.

00:05:44.900 But the fact that I think to your point exactly is a lot of this is, comes from those folks like

00:05:51.940 our environment minister, Stephen Ebo, who's like, oh, you think you're going to do a 30%

00:05:57.460 fertilizer reduction? Oh, just wait and see what we're going to do. So when the European Union,

00:06:01.700 for example, at COP26 in Glasgow said, you know, we're going to reduce fertilizer emissions by

00:06:06.060 by 30%, he gets up on the stage and says, oh, we're going to reduce it by 50%. Like it's some

00:06:12.140 sort of challenge. It looks great on Twitter. Well, he feels good about himself. What he should have

00:06:16.280 done on that stage is say, well, you know what, European Union, that's a very laudable goal.

00:06:21.680 And Canada will show you how to get there because we're already there. We're 70% more efficient in

00:06:25.740 fertilizer use than any other country because of our zero till precision agriculture, the machinery

00:06:31.660 that we make right here in Canada, like air seeders and air sprayers. Like let's export our

00:06:38.700 technology and innovation around the world. We'll help you get there because we're already doing it.

00:06:42.700 That's what he should have said. But instead, he comes up with these arbitrary numbers that punish

00:06:48.340 Canadian farmers rather than rewarding them for the work that they're already doing.

00:06:52.320 All right. We have a couple of clips here. This is you in question period talking about an issue,

00:06:57.080 a few issues, but one in particular is the change in capital gains, which I think will hurt a lot of

00:07:03.840 retirement plans for quite a few farmers across this country. So let's play cup one.

00:07:09.460 Liberals increase in the capital gains inclusion rate from 50 to 60% is a direct attack on Canadian farm

00:07:16.000 families. Will the prime minister end his attack on family farms who are just trying to put food on our

00:07:21.760 table? It's important to note that when he and his government were in power, they slashed a half a

00:07:27.140 billion dollars at agriculture and agri-food Canada. They slashed $200 million out of the

00:07:33.000 business risk management program. Still not reassuring that the agriculture minister still

00:07:37.280 doesn't know that there's going to be a capital gains inclusion rate change that's going to impact

00:07:40.920 Canadian farmers. And the only thing that this tax change is going to do is feed an obese 0.92

00:07:45.320 liberal government. I think that hits every point. It's very true, right? Like this is their measurement

00:07:51.080 of success, how much money goes into government. Right. Right. This is the liberals. Whether or not

00:07:55.920 it's working, it doesn't really matter. We're actually getting worse results because we keep

00:07:59.660 chasing farmers out because the government is getting so obese. Yeah. Our average age of a

00:08:05.040 farmer now in Canada is 57 and it's getting older. So we need to have programs in place that 0.62

00:08:09.820 incentivize that succession planning to the younger farmer, which we did through Larry Maguire's

00:08:14.180 private members, Bill 208 of last parliament, which helps the capital gains, makes it much

00:08:19.780 more difficult to increase that inclusion rate from 50 to 67%. That is a 30% tax increase on that

00:08:27.340 young farmer who is wanting to take over the family farm. The worst part of this, Jamie, is part of

00:08:32.980 that clip was we had the minister at the Agriculture Committee the week before that. And we asked myself

00:08:38.920 and my colleague Warren Steinle, did you consult with farmers on this inclusion rate change before

00:08:44.700 you include it in the budget? The worst part was, is we asked him, did you know this capital gains

00:08:50.720 inclusion rate change was in the budget? And he said, no. So one of the key pillars of the liberal budget,

00:08:57.060 the agriculture minister didn't even know it was in the budget. So either he is asleep at the cabinet

00:09:02.020 table, no one bothered to tell him. And it's probably like to your very first point,

00:09:06.760 they don't care about Canadian agriculture or the impact that their policies will have

00:09:11.220 on Canadian farm families. And what this will do is you will start losing the family farms,

00:09:17.280 big international industrial companies will come in and buy up these farms, and then we will have

00:09:22.860 these large industrial multinational farms, which the liberals profess every single day that they

00:09:27.560 don't want. They seem to put their policies encouraging all of it. Exactly. So we can have

00:09:32.200 a agriculture industry, like our telecommunication industry, like our grocery industry, like our

00:09:36.980 airline industry, and the list goes on. So no competition, worse service, worse products,

00:09:41.480 and worse prices. 100%. Because you can't go anywhere else. The government has

00:09:45.660 inviscerated competition, or the ability for a small person to, or a person, an average person,

00:09:51.800 anybody to start up a business, a small business. Yeah, you'll have higher prices, fewer choices,

00:09:56.600 you will not have the same standards we have right now, you'll not have the same innovation

00:10:00.000 that we have now. And plus, the impact on our rural communities would be catastrophic.

00:10:04.680 Devastating. The economy would fall apart there. For sure. Plus the input costs, we have carbon tax

00:10:08.960 still punishing. Do you want to talk, let's cue up cut two, where you actually, I'm sure it was tough to

00:10:17.540 talk about it. The constituent here, we'll play the clip, and then you could almost feel the emotion

00:10:23.380 in the author's writing, and as you delivered it. So let's play cut two.

00:10:28.180 I want to quote a letter I received the other day from a business owner in Bragg Creek, Alberta,

00:10:32.460 one of my constituents. As the owner of a heating company operating in rural Alberta,

00:10:36.900 I hear every day from my customers how the Prime Minister's carbon tax has forced them to make the

00:10:42.220 decision whether to heat or eat. And now with the hike on April 1st, it is only forcing them to go

00:10:48.120 deeper and deeper into poverty. The fact that anyone in this great country has to live impoverished

00:10:54.760 is already distasteful. The Liberal government seems to take pleasure in our suffering.

00:11:01.480 The same is true for businesses, especially rural businesses. We are barely staying above water as it is.

00:11:09.000 That's a tough one. Yeah, and I know I'm not the only one who's getting those types of calls and emails

00:11:14.600 and letters. And I phoned that business owner as soon as we received the letter and, you know,

00:11:19.560 had a lengthy conversation with him. And he, you know, these business owners are out there talking to

00:11:24.920 Canadians and their neighbours every single day. And certainly he was feeling the stress of his customers.

00:11:30.920 And, you know, this is from a homeowner to other small business owners to farmers who are his customers.

00:11:37.560 And he is certainly seeing the impact that the carbon tax is having on everyday Canadians.

00:11:42.760 That, for some reason, our Liberal government believes that their 300 economists have it nailed,

00:11:49.000 where 40 million Canadians just have no idea. They've just never had it better.

00:11:53.240 They must be experiencing it differently.

00:11:54.360 They must be experiencing it differently. Yeah, exactly.

00:11:55.960 So where are we with the Senate? Sorry, our private member's bill is our friend and colleague,

00:12:00.440 Scott Davidson, that had Bill C-234 to take the carbon tax off fuel being used on the farm.

00:12:08.120 Where are we in that? It's in the Senate somewhere.

00:12:09.800 Yeah, it's Ben Loeb's bill, actually. Ben Loeb, sorry.

00:12:13.000 So yeah, Ben Loeb put forward Bill C-234. We've got it through the Senate, but the Senate,

00:12:19.480 Liberal appointed senators amended it. And that's where

00:12:22.520 this letter from that constituent is so poignant is that the amendment from the Senate

00:12:28.920 removes the exemption or the carve out for heating and cooling of barns, mushroom farms,

00:12:34.440 greenhouses would no longer get an exemption on propane and natural gas.

00:12:38.360 Many of these farmers and these small business owners in rural Alberta,

00:12:41.640 and I'm sure it's the same in many other parts of Ontario where you're from, Jamie,

00:12:44.280 are paying more in the carbon tax than they are for the actual natural gas that they're using

00:12:48.520 or the propane they're using. Like that is unfathomable when you are paying the carbon tax,

00:12:54.200 the GST on top of that carbon tax, and it's costing you more than the actual energy you're

00:12:58.680 using to heat and cool your barns or grow food in a greenhouse. So right now, I think we've got one

00:13:04.840 more chance to try and get it through in this parliament. We'll bring it up as soon as we can

00:13:09.320 this fall. This will save farmers a billion dollars by 2030. This is a billion dollars back in the

00:13:15.960 pockets of farmers. This will help reduce food costs at the grocery store shelf. But right now,

00:13:21.000 we don't have the support of the block and we don't have the support of the Liberals.

00:13:24.600 We need to try and find a way to get the block back on side to get 234 passed in its original form,

00:13:30.200 unamended. So every farmer and every family farm gets the same exemption, same carve out in propane

00:13:36.600 and natural gas that every other farmer would. Right now, drying your grain would be included.

00:13:42.040 And certainly, as we've seen in Eastern Ontario, that it's been a pretty wet year thus far. So

00:13:48.200 there's going to be certainly if you dry your grain and corn every year. So we don't want to ignore

00:13:53.000 that, that maybe we can give farmers a break on that side. But we'd certainly like to include

00:13:57.000 everyone as we had originally. Yeah, it's really tough for some of these farmers because they don't

00:14:02.280 always have the ability to pass that on to the consumers. And it's not really fair to keep

00:14:06.120 jacking up the price for people when they can barely afford food as it is.

00:14:09.880 Yeah, and this carbon tax, and I think where farmers are maybe a bit unique, is they pay the

00:14:16.360 carbon tax over and over and over again when they buy fertilizer, when they buy seed, when they buy

00:14:22.520 fuel, when they're hauling grain, when they are moving cattle, when they're moving their product

00:14:29.080 through rail. In Alberta last year, it was $20 million just to move their grain by rail. It was more

00:14:34.680 than that in Saskatchewan. So farmers are paying this carbon tax all along the supply chain.

00:14:39.880 So when the Liberals try and argue that the carbon tax is not having an input on food prices,

00:14:45.400 like how can you possibly with a straight face say that when you are the farmers paying the carbon tax,

00:14:51.480 the trucker and the trains are charging the carbon tax, the manufacturer who's processing the food is

00:14:56.520 paying the carbon tax, and the retailer who's selling the food is paying the carbon tax. So everywhere

00:15:01.480 along that chain, everyone is paying it. So of course, at the end of the line, when the customer

00:15:07.000 goes to buy the groceries or the groceries are selling, they are not only paying the carbon tax

00:15:10.840 once, they are paying it multiple times that is driving up the price of that product. So our food

00:15:16.360 prices are absolutely impacted by the carbon tax over and over and over again.

00:15:21.240 All right, John Barlow, thank you very much for your time. As you know, the guests get the last word.

00:15:25.480 The floor is yours. Well, thanks very much, Jamie. And you know, our biggest challenge

00:15:31.160 with this and what the impact of this is having on our farm families across Canada is

00:15:36.120 we need consumers to also understand that this is impacting them. This just isn't an issue for

00:15:42.840 rural Canada and our farm families. This is an issue for every single Canadian,

00:15:46.920 as we said, who is paying higher prices on the grocery store shelf, who is having to make that very

00:15:52.360 difficult choice between eating, heating their homes, paying for a summer vacation or, you know,

00:15:59.480 just trying to put food on the table, right? Get through life. Just to get through life. Yeah,

00:16:03.160 this is impacting every single one of them. But certainly our farm families across the country

00:16:08.120 are the ones who are at their wits end by doing everything right. And that's what we're hearing all

00:16:14.840 the time is we're doing everything right. And yet we can't get any further ahead because the Liberal

00:16:20.360 government continues to punish us with higher carbon taxes and more restrictive regulations.

00:16:26.760 And I don't see it getting any better. And it's up to the Conservative Party and our colleagues

00:16:32.840 like yourself that are working extremely hard to hold this government accountable,

00:16:36.520 but also raise the awareness with Canadians across the country.

00:16:40.600 Yeah, and we know farmers love what they're doing because after all this punishment they're

00:16:44.360 getting from this Liberal government, you know, I'm glad on them for keeping going.

00:16:49.720 Yeah.

00:16:50.200 And I appreciate their feedback and appreciate your time as well. Thank you very much.

00:16:53.960 Doing a great job on this file. John Barlow, the Member of Parliament for Foothills,

00:16:58.120 also the critic for agriculture. We thank him for his time. We thank you for yours. We'll have

00:17:03.000 new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time. Please like, comment, subscribe,

00:17:08.040 and share this program. Tell your friends. They can download it on platforms like CastBox,

00:17:11.640 iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out there. Until next week, remember,

00:17:16.360 low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the week.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - August 06, 2024

When will farmers finally see some relief？

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