OFA, GFO at crossroads over Clean Fuel Standard

GUELPH — Two of Ontario’s largest farm organizations are singing different tunes about the controversial Clean Fuel Standard.

In a commentary published last month, Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice-president Drew Spoelstra said that the Clean Fuel Standard, a massive federal regulatory overhaul attempting to offer incentives to use more renewable fuels and punish the use of fossil fuels, “can result in better pricing opportunities for Ontario farmers by creating significant growth in the Ontario crop markets while working towards a healthier, more sustainable climate,” Spoelstra said.

While it’s not something the farming industry asked for, the “Clean Fuel Standard is a proposal ag can work with, in broad strokes,” said Spoelstra. And whether farmers like it or not, he noted, the federal government is moving ahead with it.

The CFS has been in the works since 2017 but made waves and headlines last year during public consultation. Grain Farmers of Ontario slammed the regulatory proposal, particularly for its onerous, back-dated requirements for setbacks from waterways and wetlands and restrictions on land clearing. The Land Use and Biodiversity requirements initially would’ve disqualified land within 30 m of waterways or that had been cleared since 2007 from supplying the biofuel industry.

The feds have since updated those requirements, dialing the restrictions way back. Now the feds will look at net national land use: basically, if Canada still has around the same amount of farmland as it used to, all Canadian producers are considered to meet the land use requirements.
Spoelstra said the new requirements are similar “to what’s out there from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” and so “things are at a much more level playing field.”

He added that while OFA needs to, and will continue to monitor the regulations as they move forward, “I think it’s fair to say OFA sees more upside than downside to this proposal.”

The Grain Farmers of Ontario, however, sees the new fuel rules as an obstacle. Essex County crop farmer and new chair Brendan Byrne (he took over from Markus Haerle last month) said that the GFO’s position largely hasn’t changed. While the GFO was pleased that the feds listened and changed the land use requirements, the Clean Fuel Standard as a whole is a difficulty the GFO is trying to mitigate, not an opportunity to be salvaged.
“It looks like more red tape and more costs for farmers with no way to mitigate them,” he said. “We try to look at the competitiveness of our products. When we look at CFS, we see it as impacting competitiveness.”
Byrne added: “We don’t see the opportunity for our membership other people are mentioning.”

The latest round of public comment for the regulations was to close March 4, with the government aiming to have its final regulations put together by late 2021 and for the Clean Fuel Standard come into force by Dec. 1, 2022.