Policies or Program

• Carbon pricing OFA believes that agriculture is an industry that will not be able to recover the added costs of carbon pricing, that agriculture is known as a carbon sequesterer, and should be exempted from the carbon tax.
• Clean Fuels Standard. There are opportunities with the CFS, but OFA would like to ensure that the administrative burden is not complicated for farmers or elevators, that there is continued acknowledgement and compensation for the ecological goods and services that agriculture offers.
• Climate Change Action While some emissions are unavoidable on farms as we use energy to mitigate the effects of climate change and weather (examples such as heating and cooling barns and drying grain), there are other ways that farmers sequester carbon, and technologies that can be adopted on farm. Incentives would increase the uptake of these technologies and best management practices.
• Enbridge Line 5 and how its importance to farmers in Ontario and Quebec, who use the energy for heating and cooling barns and drying grain. OFA is asking the government to work with US administration to keep it open.
• Temporary Foreign Workers Program and the Seasonal Ag Workers Program are a valuable tool for an industry that has a shortfall of 60,000 workers each year (Canadian Agriculture Human Resources Council). Ensuring that the processes to have workers come to Canada are reasonable matters, as some crops cannot be harvested without this labour force. During this COVID time, farmers are concerned with the health and safety of both workers and all Canadians.