Canola crops at a farm in Saskatoon. Food products affected by trade barriers, including canola, will be prioritized for Ottawa's new funding aimed at supporting trade.Ed White/Reuters
Canadian agriculture will receive $75-million from the federal government over the next five years to help boost global competitiveness and diversify trade.
The funds will be available for agricultural associations and small to mid-sized manufacturers, such as seafood processors. Sectors affected by trade barriers – such as canola, pulses, pork, fish and seafood – will be prioritized.
Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Heath MacDonald announced the funding on Tuesday morning at the annual policy breakfast hosted by Food and Beverage Canada, a non-profit industry group.
“We’re diversifying our trade,” Mr. MacDonald told The Globe following the announcement. “We need it. It allows [enterprises] to be able to trade and scale up.”
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The money will be part of two new programming streams from Ottawa’s AgriMarketing Program: Market Diversification for National Industry and Market Diversification for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.
The funding builds on $129-million earmarked for agricultural industry associations in 2023. The new stream of funding is available to food manufacturers and therefore fits into Ottawa’s broader strategy to expand value-added processing – a sector that employs 320,000 Canadians and contributes $35.8-billion - or 1.6 per cent – to Canada’s GDP.
The announcement comes a few weeks after Mr. MacDonald’s department slashed funding for agricultural research.
The move was part of broad budget cuts across all federal departments and included the closing of seven research centres across the country. Industry advocates criticized the move at the the time, saying agricultural research and development is key to product and export diversification.
Mr. MacDonald said the closing of these facilities is in line with Ottawa’s goals to expand food trade and make a more resilient agricultural sector.
The federal government is still committed to funding science and research, he said, noting that 17 facilities remain open and every province will continue to have at least one. Last month, Agri-Food Canada also gave $9.7-million to the Saskatchewan government for research.
“Anybody who says were not investing in research, that’s absolutely wrong,” Mr. MacDonald said.
Closing the facilities was a matter of aligning and co-ordinating the federal food strategy, he said. A number of the centres were operating with overhead and maintenance costs of 50 to 60 per cent, he added, and others were conducting research no longer in line with Ottawa’s vision for Canadian agriculture, such as deforestation.
“I’ll put it bluntly,” he said. “The mandate we ran on was spend less and invest more. This is spending less on infrastructure and more in science and research.”