Farmscape for July 21, 2023

The Executive Director of the Canadian Pork Council says the environmental record of Canada's pork sector is something to be proud of and should be considered as Bill C-234 moves through the Senate.
Bill C-234 seeks to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to extend the exemption for qualifying farming fuel to marketable natural gas and propane.
Organizations representing Canadian pork producers are urging the Senate to ratify Bill C-234, a private members bill that would exempt farmers from the carbon tax on natural gas used for heating barns and drying grain.
Canadian Pork Council Executive Director Stephen Heckbert says pork producers have a great story to tell in terms of the environmental impact of Canada's pork sector.

Quote-Stephen Heckbert-Canadian Pork Council:
You're not really going to mitigate environmental impact just by making things more expensive.
What you really want to focus on is ensuring that we help and reward, particularly farmers, who have done I will say and I think pork producers can be very proud of the work they've done on trying to mitigate their environmental impact.
It's so vital for the government to look at the whole suite of environment.
Carbon is only one part of the issue.
Water usage is another part of the issue, ensuring proper land usage and making sure we're protecting farms.
From that perspective it's vital that we do what we can, as C-234 is going to mitigate some of the impact of the carbon tax.
But we really need a government policy that looks at the overall environmental impact of industry and making sure that Canadians understand what the true environment cost is.
One of the stories we're going to try and tell a little bit better in future is just how progressive pork producers of Canada have been on the environmental file.
I think that's something we haven't taken enough pride in.
We've been on the defensive and I don't think we needed to be.
I think we have a great story to tell in terms of environmental impact of Canada's pork industry.
We're going to work hard to try to get and tell more about that story and take some pride in the things that we've done from an environmental perspective in recent years and will continue to do.

Heckbert urges the Senate to move Bill C-234 forward as is and as quickly as possible.
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Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers