Bill 8 – Feeder Associations Guarantee Act
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak at second reading to Bill 8, the Feeder Associations Guarantee Act. I will admit that I’m subbing in for my colleague who is the critic for Agriculture and Rural Development, so I hope I don’t disappoint him.
I do have some questions and concerns around this act. I listened very carefully to what the sponsoring minister had to say, and the first question that comes to mind as I look at the act and I listen to what the minister says is: why did you repeal the previous act if all you were looking to do was sort of clarify and update a few things? That’s not the usual process that I see this government follow. We usually have an amending act that goes back and adjusts the existing one but not to repeal it flat out and then to bring in a new act. I think, in fact, they might even have exactly the same name. The Feeder Associations Guarantee Act of 2000 is repealed, according to section 12, and we have the Feeder Associations Guarantee Act. Okay. So they even have exactly the same name. Now, that’s interesting. I’m wondering what is the strategy behind that. That is an unusual process for the government to be involved in, and I’d like an answer to that, please.
I also note that what’s being covered here is only feeder livestock, not cow-calf operations. We’ve got a very specific piece of legislation that is about a loans program to a very specific sector and not even the entire sector, just a section of it. These are only cattle that are coming up through these feeder associations, as I said, feeder livestock, not cow-calf operations. That’s also one of my reasons for hesitation.
I think that what is most concerning me from what I’m seeing in this act is that, essentially, two major things are being accomplished, and the minister mentioned both of these. One, it’s essentially moving everything into regulations, and I’m seeing the same language and the same phrases that have become such a trademark of this government. It’s a trademark about moving accountability and transparency and a sort of open process behind closed doors, where regulations can be worked out by the minister and by an order in council and then they pop out the other end, and if you search really hard, you might be able to find out what they are. But it removes the process from the discussion in this Chamber, which also means that it makes it harder for members of the public or even members that are concerned in this particular sector to have any input on the debate and even to be able to track what’s going on.
The big difference I can see from repealing the previous act and putting this one in place is to be able to take everything that was in legislation and stuff it under regulation, and I am never going to support that. I am one of those who is now coming up to the end of my 12th year of service in this House, and I cannot say that I have seen very much benefit for the public and the citizens of Alberta from having a number of different programs and pieces of legislation which remove discussion in an open and public manner to behind closed doors by way of putting them into regulations. I do not believe that that has been a good move on behalf of this government, and they’ve done it over and over again and not to the benefit of citizens. So the first thing that I see happening with this legislation is moving it into regs.
The second major point – and, again, the minister raised it; he sees it as a plus, but I see it as a minus – is removing the five-year renewal. Again, that raises real issues for me because I think we’re talking eventually about tens of millions of dollars that are used to guarantee these loans. The government itself in its press release notes that these changes are to reflect current economic times, but I don’t know that removing the requirement for a five-year renewal is going to make anything more accountable. I think it makes it less so, and I think it weakens this program. I would like to know what the justification is for moving that other than to say that the minister thinks this is great. I want to know what the technical details are that would give me a good reason to support this because I don’t see it right now, and it’s certainly not in the information that I’ve been supplied with.
I have some additional questions that I would like to have answered when we get to committee on this bill. I’m wondering if the government is anticipating that loans are going to be guaranteed exclusively for processing and marketing livestock products. You would remember that previously this was only for purchasing livestock, and now we have language that talks about marketing, and there’s some other new language I heard the minister using. Basically, previously it was for purchasing livestock. Now I’m wondering if the government is looking at guaranteeing exclusively for the processing and marketing of the livestock and even separating that into different components, if you will.
I’d like also to have the minister give us some examples of specific cases where it would be necessary to extend the loan guarantee to processing and marketing of livestock products. I’ll come back to that when I get to the end.
If the minister could also provide us with information about the benefits that the members of the feeder associations are most likely to anticipate seeing. I mean, does this benefit a smaller operator? Is it mostly going to benefit a larger scale operation? What members of feeder associations will benefit most from these changes?
Finally, has the minister or the department done any studies at all to anticipate how these changes may increase the number of defaulted loans and the cost to government as a result of guaranteeing these loans?
As someone that represents an urban riding, I’m looking to see how I go back and justify this to my constituents. That’s why I’m asking the questions about . . . [interjection] Well, the minister looks confused. Don’t you expect that legislation would be justifiable to all citizens in Alberta or just to the special ones that somehow qualify under his determination? He should be able to make this legislation make sense to every single citizen in the province. That’s his job, and I’m looking forward to seeing him do it.
The major difference with this is that it seems to me there are two added components of this production line, if you want to call it, being added in and being made eligible for a loan. To me this starts to sound like an expansion of what we had before. Before it was about purchasing them, I think, and now we’re talking about marketing and processing. Those, to me, are two more components along an assembly line, if I may, if you’ll allow me to describe it that way. That starts me thinking that we’re actually starting to be funding these operators for additional parts of this that they weren’t funded for before, that they couldn’t get loans for before.
So if this is part of a larger scheme where we’re looking for value added and we’re trying to encourage more value-added processing, okay – fair enough – but I’d like to see the minister be able to lay this out. What it looks like to this city slicker is that we used to grant a loan for the purchasing of livestock and that now we’re talking about also granting loans for marketing of this livestock and also for processing of it, and those are very different things than the purchasing.
I also understand that these feeder associations are essentially co ops, and I tend to be supportive of the co op movement because it’s a group of people. Contrary to the way a number of people like to describe this province as though it was all these mavericks, these lone cowboys that showed up on their single horse and somehow, without working together, managed to produce this province, it’s simply not true. What it came from was groups of people that chose to work together to help each other to build things, and of course the ultimate example of that is a barn raising.
We have a long and very proud history of a co-op movement here in this province, and it strikes me that that’s, in fact, what these feeder associations are supposed to be. But once you start to get into loan guarantees and particularly loan guarantees where all of the criteria can be decided by the government behind closed doors, by a minister, and then executed through an order in council, it starts to cause me great concern.
I am not willing to support this bill at this point. I will look forward to hearing the rest of the information that is forthcoming from this minister, and if he is able to explain it in a way that the citizens of Edmonton-Centre can understand it, well, good on him. If he can’t, then perhaps there’s a problem with this bill.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to this bill in second reading. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Other Sections
Youth Voice
@ The Leg
Photo Blog