Instead, the Bloc Quebecois amendments to the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, which asks for supply management to be off the table in future trade negotiations, awaits Royal Assent. Parliament has recessed for the summer and returns in mid-September and the final step is required before the bill can be put in force.

This comes after two similar bills were extensively studied by the Commons and the Senate agriculture committees in previous sessions without either of them making it this far.

‘Flawed piece of legislation’

The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance said the bill is “a flawed piece of legislation that sets a troubling precedent.”

The organization representing exporters said it undermines the country’s commitment to rules-based international trading and sends the wrong message to trading partners.

CAFTA and others urged Ottawa to now focus on its accelerated trade diversification agenda.

“This includes continuing to open new markets, invest in and support the priorities of the export-oriented agriculture sector, address non-tariff barriers impacting existing trade agreements and remove regulatory barriers that are unnecessarily restricting the sector’s growth and competitiveness,” it said.

Grain Growers of Canada also called on the government to address issues that are affecting international trade, including critical infrastructure investments at the Port of Vancouver, returning public plant breeding research funding to pre-2013 levels and boosting the work of the Market Access Secretariat.

Executive director Kyle Larkin said there are now serious risks for Canada’s 70,000 grain farmers, who export more than 70 per cent of what they grow.

He said the government promised to expand the economy and expand international trade yet this was the first bill it passed.

“This legislation received unanimous consent from Members of Parliament without consulting with the Canadians it impacts the most, forcing the Senate to fast-track a flawed bill,” Larkin said.

Bill’s precedent questioned

The Senate vote was not unanimous.

The debate over previous iterations of the bill pit supply managed farmers against exporters. GGC acting chair Scott Hepworth said the government has now prioritized one group of farmers over another.

In the Senate, Alberta Senator Paula Simons said she felt uneasy at the speed with which C-202 went through both houses and put the concerns of several farmers who had contacted her on the record.

“My friends, with protectionism running rampant, when tariff and non-tariff trade barriers are popping up everywhere, Canada should not be giving in to populous protectionism. We should set an example as world leaders by taking down barriers, not building them higher,” she said.

Simons also said she worries about national unity.

“It does seem strange to allow a separatist party to set Canada’s national trade policy to such an extent and at the expenses of Western Canadian producers and agricultural exporters,” she said.

Canadian Cattle Association president Tyler Fulton said C-202 is bad trade policy.

“Trade is not a political game and C-202 was never about supply management,” he said.

Numerous witnesses spoke both for and against the bill during committee studies in the last few years. Sen. Amina Gerba, who had sponsored C-282 in the previous go-round, said everything has changed since Donald Trump became president and said he would go after Canada’s supply management system.

She said Prime Minister Mark Carney promised during the election campaign to protect supply management and he did.

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Three new independent senators were announced Feb. 7, and Todd Lewis, who farms at Gray, Sask., is among them.

He is a fourth-generation farmer, most recently serving as the first vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. His appointment follows that of former CFA president Mary Robinson from Prince Edward Island, who was named to the upper chamber in January 2024.

Lewis said he was encouraged to apply by the increasing role the Senate has had in the parliamentary process the last few years, particularly since the minority government was elected in 2021.

“Ag in general, especially western Canadian ag, has been under-represented in the chamber,” he said.

Lewis was APAS president for five years and is also a rural municipal councillor in Lajord, where he is deputy reeve. He served on numerous committees, including the federal Crop Logistics Working Group, the board of the Western Grains Research Foundation and the Canadian National Railway’s agricultural advisory council, among others.

Locally, he has volunteered since 1975 at the Gray Cooperative Centre and Gray Cooperative Hall. He was a school board trustee and president of the rink board. He is a volunteer firefighter and on the board of the Riceton Volunteer Fire Department.

Robinson applauded Lewis’s appointment, calling it spectacular news.

“A senator who understands the challenges and opportunities western grain producers face,” she posted on X.

The CFA said in a statement that Lewis is an incredible leader and advocate for agriculture.

The six senators currently representing Saskatchewan include Lewis and David Arnot in the Independent Senators Group, Pamela Wallin in the Canadian Senators Group, Conservative Denise Batters and Marty Klyne and Tracy Muggli in the Progressive Senators Group.

—Updated Feb. 13

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“The amendment will make sure that everybody that is on a farm and enters a building or an enclosed place will have to take the same behaviour and the owners of the farm will have to make sure that everybody is complying,” said Senator Pierre Dalphond, who proposed the amendment.

Bill C-275 is a private members bill that would amend the Health of Animals Act to increase fines for those who unlawfully enter livestock barns and processing facilities and act in a manner that might expose animals to disease.

Dalphond’s amendment, which passed with seven yes votes and six votes no, removes any reference to being on the premises without authorization.

He cited concerns about constitutionality—that the bill may be more about trespassing concerns than biosecurity. Trespassing falls under provincial jurisdiction. He also said that, according to expert witnesses, the risk of farm workers spreading disease was far greater than that of trespassers.

Senator Don Plett called the amendment “unnecessary and, in fact, very harmful.”

“At this point, producers still do not have the tools necessary to ensure compliance with these protocols,” Plett said. “They can enforce the protocols with their employees, family members and visitors, but they are helpless in one key area and one area only, individuals who come onto the farm without authorization.”

He took issue with the Senate amending a bill passed by the House of Commons with support from multiple parties. He accused opponents of the bill of attempting to delay the bill so it would die on the order paper—particularly if an election is called.

An bill amended in the Senate must return to the House of Commons to be debated again.

Animal advocacy group Animal Justice, in an emailed newsletter, celebrated the amendment as a “giant nail in the coffin of this dangerous proposed law.”

The organization said a similar bill (Bill C-205) died out after a similar amendment in 2021.

“When the bill was amended to focus on poor biosecurity practices on the farm owners and operators, it lost popularity and died when an election was called,” wrote Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk.

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Bill C-275 would amend the Health of Animals Act and make it illegal for anyone to unlawfully enter a barn or building where livestock are kept.

The private member’s bill was sponsored by Conservative agriculture critic John Barlow and passed in the House of Commons last fall with support from both opposition and government members.

Since the Senate committee began its study earlier this year, it has heard repeatedly that the bill should apply to everyone.

Last week, legal and scientific experts said the bill is entirely about trespassers.

Jodi Lazare, associate professor and associate dean at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law, said courts look at what a law actually does.

“It’s quite clear that this bill is about shutting down activism and trespass, about protecting animal agriculture. In fact, it has been explicitly stated a few times now that this bill is about the protection of private property,” she said during testimony.

The bill doesn’t actually target the most likely sources of risk, which are the people who are lawfully entitled to be in the barn, she said.

University of Toronto law professor Angela Fernandez agreed.

“The legally present people are the problem in terms of biosecurity,” she said, adding there is a real risk that this bill, if passed, would be challenged.

Lazare added courts will look behind the name or function of a law to examine why it was passed and its practical effects. Laws have been found invalid on that basis, she said.

However, senator Don Plett said there would have been lawyers among the MPs who supported the bill. He suggested it could be improved.

Lazare said applying it to everyone would make it about biosecurity.

Amy Greer, associate professor in the department of population medicine at the University of Guelph, said she was sympathetic to the mental stress and anguish experienced by farmers who have found activists or trespassers in their barns.

However, she too said the biosecurity risk is low. The actual risk of a pathogen being introduced is the combination of the probability of transmission given an effective contact and the frequency that effective contact occurs.

“Even for easily transmitted pathogens, the current frequency of these trespass occurrences at a national scale, to me, would be incredibly low compared to the frequency of the occurrence of farm contacts for lawful reasons,” she told the committee. “As a result, the biosecurity risk associated with these trespass events is very low.”

Jan Hajek, clinical assistant professor and infectious disease specialist at the University of British Columbia, said he is among the 20 specialists who last year sent a letter expressing their concern about Bill C-275.

“The doctors were concerned that the way this bill was promoted misrepresented infectious disease risk and misused people’s genuine concern about biosecurity to pass additional anti-trespass legislation,” he said.

“In stating the need for this bill, some individuals repeatedly made unfounded claims that trespassers introduced infectious diseases on farm and pointed to devastating impact of diseases like BSE, or mad cow disease, a disease whose introduction had nothing to do with trespass.”

Hajek said the bill is unlikely to improve the health of animals but added trespass must remain illegal.

Government officials from Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency noted that trespass is largely a provincial jurisdiction. Dr. Mary Jane Ireland, chief veterinary officer, said six provinces have passed enhanced legislation to prohibit trespassing where animals are kept.

Senators heard that biosecurity standards are voluntary and depend on species and individual producers. The CFIA does not track this information.

“We all agree biosecurity on farms is important, which is why I’m disquieted to hear you say that our standards are voluntary and that you’re not tracking the data,” said Alberta senator Paula Simons.

“So we don’t actually know how big the problems are. It would seem to be common sense that the bigger source of contamination might be from farmers not observing any standards than from protesters who have never been shown to track disease onto farms.”

Plett disagreed that trespassers have never caused a problem, citing the appearance of rotavirus for the first time in 40 years after protesters appeared on a Quebec hog farm and distemper at a mink farm in Ontario.

—Updated Oct. 6.

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Chief among them are requests that the federal government designate soil as a strategic national asset and that the country have a national soil advocate, similar to Australia.

Critical Ground: Why Soil is Essential to Canada’s Economic, Environmental, Human and Social Health comes after two years of hearings and study.

It notes that since 1984, when Saskatchewan senator Herb Sparrow led the groundbreaking Soil At Risk report, soil management has improved and crop yield has increased with the widespread adoption of no-till farming.

However, “these gains have also masked the effect of continued soil degradation and loss of agricultural land in every region of Canada.”

It said climate change and extreme weather events, urbanization, and misread outcomes of soil management practices are contributing to those concerns.

“We do not have another 40 years to protect and conserve soil. We must act now.”

The report said Canada requires an overarching strategy to collect better data. It says a national soils institute database that shares information with provinces, academics and producers should be established.

Other recommendations include the creation of a viable carbon market for producers and a crop insurance program that incentivizes ecological goods and services provided by producers.

More to come.

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“Anything that makes capital more expensive right now, what with where interest rates are, where prime is, is a concern for farmers,” said Dave Carey, ACA co-chair.

Carey appeared before the Senate committee for banking, commerce and the economy alongside Cathy Jo Noble, vice president of policy and government relations with National Cattle Feeders Association, one of the ACA’s member organizations.

They asked senators to not support Bill S-243, a private member’s bill introduced by Senator Rosa Galvez in early 2022. The bill proposes to “align the financial sector with climate commitments through various measures,” says a legislative summary of the bill.

This includes reporting requirements, enforcement of commitments to climate targets, additional “capital adequacy” requirements for banks, appointment of someone with “climate expertise” to boards of reporting entities, and “establishment of climate alignment as a superseding duty for directors, officers or administrators of reporting entities.”

Neither senators nor the ACA representatives were able to articulate precisely how the bill would affect farms. However, since the bill makes mention of emissions from land use, and as agriculture is considered an emissions-intense industry, Carey said they were concerned about “unintended consequences.”

“Our concern… is that it may undermine the access to loans that are essential for the growth and sustainability of Canadian agriculture,” Noble said.

ACA is particularly concerned about ballooning red tape. Many business risk management programs funded through the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership (S-CAP) already have environmental strings attached. Farm Credit Canada has also been rolling out sustainability incentive programs, Carey said.

Noble said the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board is already working on sustainability disclosure standards, which will be aligned with global standards but tailored to Canadian needs. ACA is involved in the consultation process.

They don’t want the bill to move forward in a silo, Noble added.

“It’s the amount of changes happening in the sector at the same time, and the different pieces don’t seem to be in any way harmonized,” Carey said.

Some programs that incentivize farmers’ adoption of more sustainable practices are so cumbersome that farmers must hire accountants or consultants to even apply, Carey said.

“This is just one more thing on the pile that is starting to reach a limit for Canadian farmers,” Noble said.

Senator Galvez, who sponsored the bill, said the bill was actually attempting to harmonize things, not create more confusion.

—Updated April 25, corrects Cathy Jo Noble’s title

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“Senators have explained how they felt threatened and intimidated in the performance of their duties, here where we should model the best behaviour for our fellow citizens,” said speaker Raymonde Gagné in her decision yesterday.

The question of privilege, raised by Senator Raymond Saint-Germain on Nov. 21, relates to incidents on Nov. 9 when, after debate over an amendment to Bill C-234 was abruptly adjourned, Saint-Germain alleged that Conservative Senator Don Plett confronted her and Senator Bernadette Clement. Bill C-234 proposed to exempt farm fuels for grain drying, barn and greenhouse heating from the carbon price.

“After violently throwing his earpiece, (Plett) stood before Senator Clement and me as we sat at our desks, yelling and berating us for proposing this routine motion that would see debate resume the following week, when we returned,” Saint-Germain said.

Plett later acknowledged he had lost his temper and tearfully apologized before the Senate.

Saint-Germain also said, “at least two” Conservative senators retweeted a post on social media platform X “that not only spread misinformation about the proceedings but encouraged members of the public to call and harass” Clement and Senator Chantal Petitclerc, adding that it “elicited high volumes of threatening phone calls and emails to these independent senators.”

In her decision, which she read in the Senate, Gagné added that some Senators were threatened with other penalties if they did not “give way and concede to a particular outcome.” This included threats of blocking work in committee or the chamber.

“All these events can be understood as attempts to intimidate colleagues and to unduly constrain, or even extract retribution against them in the performance of their duties,” Gagné said.

Following the decision, Gagné read a motion, tabled by Senator Raymonde Saint-Germain, for the question of privilege to be referred to the Senate’s ethics committee. The motion went to debate, which adjourned before a vote.

On Nov. 21, following Saint-Germain’s question of privilege, Conservative Senator David Wells then put forward a separate question of privilege stemming from the same Nov. 9 sitting, saying Moncion had “walked over from her seat and accused me of bullying” after the session was suspended.

Moncion replied that she was not threatening in her approach but apologized to Wells and the chamber. Wells said he considered the issue closed.

Yesterday, the Senate voted by a narrow margin to amend Bill C-234 to remove barn and greenhouse heating from the bill. Fuels for grain drying remain exempted in the bill.

The bill was then put up for debate ahead of a third reading. Debate adjourned before it could go to a vote, and will likely resume today.

Farm groups and Senators aligned with the bill have said they fear an amendment, which will likely send the bill back to the House of Commons for further debate, will essentially kill the bill.

–Geralyn Wichers is associate digital editor of AGCanada.com. She writes from southeastern Manitoba.

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