The future of Canada's Federal-Provincial-Territorial Relations agreement: strategic vision or status quo?

This July Canadian Agriculture Ministers will meet to reach an agreement on the next five-year policy framework. While some view the policy framework as simply a spending agreement, it has the potential to be much more. It is unclear how ambitious or transformative the Federal-Provincial-Territorial (FPT) agreement will be. However, the process and approach to getting to a deal raises important questions about the governance of agriculture and food policy in Canada and whether it is suited to mitigating the risks and seizing the opportunities facing Canadian agriculture and food.?

The FPT Guelph Statement, agreed to in November 2021, outlines the directions governments are moving. It sets out a lengthy vision for the next policy framework: “Canada is recognized as a world leader in sustainable agriculture and agri-food production and drives forward to 2028 from a solid foundation of regional strengths and diversity, as well as the strong leadership of the Provinces and Territories, in order to rise to the climate change challenge, to expand new markets and trade while meeting the expectations of consumers, and to feed Canadians and a growing global population.”?

Governments then agreed to a list of activities under 5 priorities: building sector capacity, growth and competitiveness, climate change and environment, science, research and innovation, market development and trade and resiliency and public trust.?

The priorities appear to reflect that to get an FPT agreement, everything must be a priority.

This dynamic is not a new one. In 2016 governments agreed to a similar vision, said with fewer words, “creating the most modern, sustainable and prosperous sector in the world.” While governments agreed to 6 rather than 5 priorities, they largely reflect the same themes as 5 years later.??

The Guelph Statement appears grounded in the status quo, maintaining high-level agreement on a continuing, common set of priorities. Rather than reflecting a strategic vision for the sector, it may more accurately reflect the need to make every government’s priority a priority to get an agreement.??

However, agreement at the high level may not reflect the disagreement on the many details that translate the priorities into policies and programs. It is below those high-level statements that the real decisions are made, and it is underneath the high-level political statements that there appears to be a growing divide between the federal and provincial governments.??

The federal government has been working to ensure its emissions reduction agenda is better reflected within the next policy framework. This includes trying to change business risk management programs to make them more environmentally friendly and requiring science and innovation programs to dedicate a specific amount of funding towards emissions reduction research.??

While those priorities reflect the mandate the federal government was elected on, they do not necessarily reflect a Canadian agriculture policy consensus.

The divide between levels of government and some stakeholders may also be exacerbated by the fact that the federal government is asking the policy framework to do more, without bringing new funding to the table.?

In parallel to the negotiations on the next policy framework, both levels of government are increasingly returning to the old, unilateral way of governing. Most provinces now have some form of province specific BRM programs. The Federal Government has made a significant commitment to on-farm environmental programming, traditionally an area of provincial leadership. The delays in making the On-farm Climate Action Fund available to farmers have highlighted the impacts of “going it alone” when existing provincial programs could likely have flowed the funds to farmers much more rapidly.?

While governments agree on high level statements, debates on the details of the next policy framework, a tendency towards the status quo, and increasing unilateral action highlight some of the challenges with the governance of agriculture and food policy in Canada.?

It also remains to be seen whether governments are able to shift priorities to reflect the changing global agriculture and food context. The Russian invasion and blockade of Ukrainian grain exports and the Western response, including limitations on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer, will have long-term consequences in Canada and around the world. The foundation of the global agriculture and food system has been shaken since the Guelph Statement was agreed to.?

My fellowship research will examine the adequacy of existing policy processes and governance models in Canada’s agriculture and food sector, provide an up-to-date account of existing Canadian agri-food governance models; compares them to those in another system of multi-level governance of agriculture, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy; and, on the basis of the comparative exercise, proposes alternate governance model(s) to overcome the identified limitations of current Canadian agri-food governance models.??

As negotiations on the next policy framework enter their final phase, some may want to conclude them and then move on. However, there is no better time to look back at the process that governments and stakeholders have just gone through and ask how it can be made better.

The world and the pressures on Canadian agriculture and food are changing, governance of agriculture and food policy may need to change too.?

-Grace Skogstad, CAPI Distinguished Fellow

Sponsored in part by the RBC Foundation and part of CAPI’s larger environmental initiative, Spearheading Sustainable Solutions: Helping Farmers Operate Better, Smarter and Environmentally Sustainably. This initiative aims to leverage public and private policies to aid in the rapid adoption of beneficial management practices, increase the implementation of new tools and technologies to maximize environmental and social outcomes.?