OTTAWA – Government bureaucrats trying to collect fees and food industry officials wanting to avoid paying squared off for three hours in a recent House of Commons agricultural Committee session.
Representatives of Canada’s farm and food sectors told MPs government emphasis on charging for more services is a burden that undermines their competitive advantage.
Robert Weaver of the Canadian Meat Council said: “We believe taxing exports, which the United States doesn’t do, is not the most brilliant way to encourage exports.”
He told a Commons agriculture committee that when new cost recovery fees take effect April 1, the total for the meat industry will be $13.25 million a year.
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“This represents a tax on industry earnings of 14 percent.”
Representatives for the Treasury Board, the auditor general’s office and Agriculture Canada said the cost recovery fees are reasonable and do not affect the ability of Canadian companies to compete in the U.S.
David Miller, assistant secretary at the Treasury Board, was cool to pleas from the food sector that government have a system to look at the total impact of user fees imposed by different departments. He said, “it almost certainly would involve a large bureaucracy, something I’m sure we all want to avoid.”
There have been many complaints from agriculture sector representatives hit by fees from agriculture, health, transport and other government departments.
At the end of the session, which at times featured some heated exchanges between the bureaucrats and industry representatives, agriculture committee chair Lyle Vanclief said MPs had heard two conflicting versions of the facts.
“Everybody cannot be correct,” he said. “They are on opposite ends of the spectrum as to the reality and effect of cost recovery.”
Agriculture Canada assistant deputy minister Art Olson said the government is falling far short of its goal of raising $56 million in user fees this year. The result will be fewer departmental staff and reduced service.
More funds needed
The auditor general’s office said more, not fewer, funds should be raised from the industry for the services the government provides.
Industry representatives argued the government’s multi million-dollar fee grab makes their product less competitive in the U.S. market, where there is not a similar cost-recovery regime.
Steve Whitney of the Canadian Horticultural Council joined others in arguing for more bureaucratic accountability and more political control over user fees.
Afterwards, Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Jack Wilkinson said all sectors of the food industry are affected. He said it is up to the politicians to exert more control, since bureaucrats seem to believe all is well.
“I get the feeling from the bureaucrats … that we can keep having these discussions and then motor on and at the end of the day, the opposition will die down or run out of energy.”
For Olson, it was a story of some parts of the food industry trying to shirk their responsibility to pay their fair share.
“What you have here today is the attitude ‘go take your cuts out of somebody else’s budget, not mine’, ” he said in an interview after the meeting. “That’s very difficult to counter. Everybody wants theirs protected while somebody else gets gored.”
