CALGARY — Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay says he wants all the funding he can get to boost value-added processing in Canada.
That includes money from other departments and the private sector.
Farmers and provinces recently noted that $160 million promised during last fall’s election campaign to an Agri-Food Value Added Investment Fund to help food processors hasn’t materialized.
It wasn’t in the federal budget, even though it tops the priority list in MacAulay’s mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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MacAulay, who met with his provincial counterparts in Calgary last month, said he hasn’t forgotten about it.
“I want to get all the money I can in this area,” he told reporters.
“I can assure you that it was in our mandate and I certainly am quite quick and sure to remind the government and Treasury Board and the minister of finance and cabinet that it’s there and that we need it and we need more than that.”
But he also noted there are other departments that could contribute. Farmers know they have to use every means at their disposal, he said.
“Everything that’s in my budget is great, but there’s other budgets,” MacAulay said.
“We also want to make sure any private sector dollars that can be combined in the programs that we put together, that’s exactly what we want to do.”
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett said the topic was discussed at a roundtable the organization held with the ministers and other organizations.
Food processing is a priority for everyone, he said, but agriculture shouldn’t have to foot the bill through its policy framework funding. He said ministers were clear the agricultural policy framework could identify priorities or where investments should be made.
“I think there was an understanding that food processing likely should be on the policy side of the discussion of the APF because we all depend on that,” he said.
“As far as the funding side … then we’ve got to start reaching out to other departments like Industry Canada and other groups because there are some big bucks needed for that to make the investments required.”
Ontario Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal said food processing contributes $35 billion to the province’s GDP and the premier has tasked his ministry with creating 120,000 new jobs in the sector by 2020.
He said Ontario is particularly interested in investment in dairy processing under the supply-managed system.
“We’ve had very productive discussions,” he said.
“We see the agricultural sector as an area where future careers are going to be unlimited and the only way that can happen is continued investment.”
The ministers have directed their officials to examined processing capacity in Canada with a view to introducing new products and processes to improve competitiveness.
Meanwhile, trade was not as high on the agenda as it was last year when the Trans-Pacific Partnership was in the works and concerns about the future of supply management were significant.
Ministers did, however, renew their commitment to preserve the integrity of the supply-managed system.
