Charles Félix-Ross: "Producers are good managers. They can manage risk, but they can't manage a war or an exceptional weather event," said Charles-Félix Ross, general manager of the Union des producteurs agricoles, adding that federal research cuts compound the lack of on-farm resilience tools.
Federal cuts to Agriculture Canada’s “living labs” threaten to choke off the on-farm research needed to survive a changing climate
OTTAWA — In the high-stakes battle against volatile global weather patterns, Canada’s agricultural sector is discovering that its most valuable laboratory isn’t lined with sterile glass beakers—it is paved with rich, working topsoil.
Yet, just as Canadian farmers face an unprecedented onslaught of severe droughts, unpredictable intense heat waves, and sudden flash floods, federal austerity is pulling the rug out from under the country’s most successful on-farm climate science experiment.
Appearing before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on Thursday, April 23, 2026, Charles-Félix Ross, the general manager of L’Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), delivered a sobering warning about recent cuts to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s research budgets. Ross, whose organization represents more than 42,000 agricultural producers across Quebec, argued that the federal government is being profoundly short-sighted by sacrificing long-term environmental prevention for short-term fiscal savings.
At the center of the policy storm is the federal “Living Laboratories” initiative. Unlike traditional academic research facilities, these living labs place scientists, agronomists, and commercial producers directly on active farms to co-design, test, and instantly deploy practical solutions tailored to localized regional ecologies.
“Initiatives such as the living laboratories initiative are particularly effective tools,” Ross testified to the committee. “They provide a way to test and implement concrete solutions directly on the farm, together with producers. However, these initiatives remain underfunded, especially since the recent cuts to Agriculture and Agri‑Food Canada’s research budgets.”
The financial retreat from agricultural science comes at a time when Canada already lags severely behind its international peers in backing its food producers. Ross reminded parliamentarians that while the international average for public agricultural support hovers around two percent of overall government spending, Canada allocates a meager sub-one percent of its public budget to the sector.
To bridge this alarming gap, the UPA is demanding that Ottawa commit to doubling its baseline agricultural investment to two percent of public spending, which would inject approximately $10 billion annually into farming stability, technology transfer, and climate adaptation.
The systemic dangers of these research rollbacks were brought to the forefront by Conservative MP Jacques Gourde, who represents the Quebec riding of Lévis—Lotbinière. Gourde noted that previous investments in domestic research facilities had successfully yielded advanced cultivars, such as highly resilient forages, capable of increasing overall farm profitability and boosting crop yields by 10 to 15 percent over a five-to-ten-year horizon.
Gurling into the logic of the government’s fiscal reductions, Gourde pressed the witness on the hidden economic back-end of these cuts. “If we invest less in research, risk management programs may need to pay more in compensation in five or ten years,” Gourde observed, before asking Ross point-blank: “Is prevention better than a cure?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Ross responded, validating the MP’s assessment. “Yes, we can work on risk management. We need good programs, but above all we need to work on prevention and adapt to what lies ahead. To do this, we need to invest in research.”
To illustrate the sheer scale of the looming global crisis, Ross cited a report published just the previous week by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The international data indicates that global warming will trigger catastrophic shifts that will cause the global agricultural economy to lose 500 billion hours of work every single year due to extreme heat events, directly translating into widespread crop failures and devastating yield losses.
According to Ross, the living laboratories program is the exact mechanism needed to cushion Canadian farmers against this economic wreckage. By working directly on the land, the initiative allows producers to develop advanced soil management techniques, diversify their production portfolios, and engineer localized innovations in water conservation and irrigation systems.
“Quality soils are more resistant soils,” Ross explained, emphasizing that a healthy farm ecosystem naturally buffers against extreme weather shocks. “We need to think of new approaches. Living laboratories are really a tool to help us adapt to the new reality. I would say that prevention is better than a cure.”
The tragedy of choking off research funding, agricultural leaders say, is that it forces federal safety nets like AgriStability, AgriRecovery, and AgriInsurance into a permanent, expensive cycle of crisis management. Ross noted that while producers are excellent managers, they are fundamentally incapable of personally managing global conflicts, geopolitical supply chain disruptions, or catastrophic weather patterns on their own dime.
Without the proactive technological shields generated by programs like the living labs, the federal government will inevitably spend billions more in reactive disaster payouts to keep bankrupt farms afloat. Ross concluded his remarks by reminding the committee that food production is no longer a simple commercial concern.
“The agricultural sector is a strategic pillar of our economy, our food security and even our national security,” Ross warned. “It deserves tools commensurate with the risks that it faces.”
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