Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald announced $75 million will be on offer over five years to small and medium-sized food and fisheries businesses to seek new export markets.
The money goes to two programs announced in 2023 when $125 million was offered.
MacDonald made the announcement at an annual policy breakfast hosted by Food and Beverage Canada on the national Agriculture Day.
MacDonald said commodities affected by trade barriers will get priority: canola, pulses, pork, fish and seafoods.
The two programs are the AgriMarketing and Market Diversification for National Industry and the Market Diversification for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.
He defended closing 17 research facilities.
Closing the facilities was a matter of aligning and co-ordinating the federal food strategy, he said.
A number of the centres were operating with overhead and maintenance costs of 50 to 60 per cent, he said, and others were conducting research no longer in line with Ottawa’s vision for Canadian agriculture, such as deforestation.
“I’ll put it bluntly,” he said. “The mandate we ran on was spend less and invest more. This is spending less on infrastructure and more in science and research.”
