Minister MacDonald responded to a committee report on the issue
The federal government will continue with its plan to shutter seven research farms across the country despite a committee report recommending against the closures.
“Closure of the Research and Development Centres will be phased and carefully managed,” Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Heath MacDonald wrote in a Sept. 16 response to Michael Coteau, chair of the House ag committee.
MacDonald’s response is to a bipartisan report the committee released in May regarding the proposed closures.
The report, Science in Canadian Agriculture and the Closure of Research Centres, provided the federal government with 20 recommendations on the issue.
The suggestions include reconsidering site closures, treating agriculture as a national security issue, and developing a plan to ensure research at the affected sites can continue elsewhere.
But even with the closures moving ahead, AAFC will be at the forefront of ag research, the minister said.
“AAFC will remain Canada’s largest agricultural research organization, with 17 research centres and associated farmland across the country,” he wrote in his response. “Every province will continue to have at least one AAFC research centre, maintaining a strong national footprint and regional coverage, while continuing to leverage expertise in other locations and within the broader ecosystem.”
Industry stakeholders and opposition MPs are unsatisfied with the government’s plan.
Multiple Conservative MPs have taken aim at the Liberals since MacDonald provided the government’s response.
On Sept. 24, Blaine Calkins, the MP for Ponoka-Didsbury, said the Liberals are out of touch with Canadians.
“While Liberals spend billions on consultants, travel, and failed government programs, they are closing research centres that have made important contributions to Canadian agriculture, innovation and food security,” he said in a statement.
John Barlow and Jacques Gourde, the party’s ag critics, assert these closures will have adverse effects on ag and Canadians.
“The Liberals are destroying the scientific infrastructure required to keep food affordable and safe for Canadians,” they said in a Sept. 23 statement. “This decision will destroy decades of innovation and research which led to breakthroughs like minimal till, canola and precision agriculture.”
And in a joint Sept. 22 statement, the Agriculture Union, which represents about 7,000 AAFC and CFIA employees, along with the National Farmers Union, urged the government to reconsider.
The government is “moving on from hundreds of good jobs in farming communities. And they’re turning their backs on 3 million Canadians who suffer from food allergies and who depend on the work of the CFIA lab in Longueuil,” Milton Dyck, president of the Agriculture Union, said in the statement. “Sadly, the research technicians working there, our members, have moved on to other jobs. But the facilities still exist. The farms and the equipment are still there. In the case of the Nappan and Lacombe research farms, the livestock are still there. We urge the government to act on the recommendations of this report and to reopen these crucial research farms.”
In May, NDP Agriculture Critic Gord Johns said these cuts are risky seeing as ag science and innovation helps Canada domestically and abroad.
It was in January that the federal government announced it would close seven research sites across the country and eliminate 665 positions as a way of supporting the prime minister’s goal of reducing overall spending by 15 per cent over three years.
In July, the federal government and Saskatchewan signed an MOU to transition Indian Head and Scott Research Farms to provincial control.