Agriculture Canada (AC) spent 27% of its science budget on reducing greenhouse gas emissions last fiscal year.
Despite spending $223 million more on science and innovation in the 2023-24 fiscal year compared to 2020-21, this funding did not support hiring new scientists, expanding research centers, or studying innovative technologies like gene-edited crops.
Instead, it focused on reducing agricultural emissions.
The Science and Innovation (SI) branch spent $829.6 million in 2023-24, with $223 million allocated to emissions reduction.
This amount was lower in 2022-23, at around $193 million.
"That represents 24.5% of the spending within Science and Innovation on average over the past two years," said an SI spokesperson.
AC operates 20 research centers across Canada with an annual operating and maintenance cost of $50 to $55 million, excluding employee salaries.
SI aims to increase the Canadian agriculture/agri-food knowledge base through research.
Farmers and farm organizations have expressed criticism of the federal government's focus on environmental and climate change issues in recent years.
Additionally, some AC scientists have expressed concerns about the shift in priorities, suggesting that the federal government has become disinterested in traditional agricultural research, particularly in plant breeding.
"If money is taken out of field-ready cultivar development, what happens is we start lagging behind the rest of the world and our farmers become less competitive," said Robert Graf, who works for AC.
"Part of sustainability is also the ability of farmers to … make some money … used to be talked about a lot more."
In 2020, the government announced a significant expense of $1.57 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture and promote sustainable farming practices.
Some of those programs include the On-Farm Climate Action Fund, Living Labs, Resilient Ag Landscape Program, and Agricultural Clean Technology (ACT) Program.
"The ACT program aims to create an enabling environment for the development and adoption of clean technology that will help drive the changes required to achieve a low-carbon economy and promote sustainable growth in Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector," said AC.
In May 2024, Canada's Auditor General released a detailed report on AC's climate change initiatives.
The Auditor General's report criticized the AC as having "no strategy to meet its expected contributions to reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."
Conservative Party's Agriculture Critic John Barlow expressed concern that the Auditor General's report revealed ineffective government spending on climate change initiatives.
"What are you showing for that extra $200 million?" said Barlow.
"You're just throwing money at something with no clear vision of what that's going to achieve … without any tangible metrics of what is successful and what's not."
Barlow showed a section of the 2023-24 AC budget, suggesting that the federal government is spending less on market development.
The budget for Domestic and International Markets has decreased from $884 million in the 2021-22 fiscal year to a projected budget of $811 million in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
"They really need better access to domestic and international markets, but that part of the budget has gone down," said Barlow.
"This is a very ideological government in every single department. It's showing with agriculture groups throwing up their hands and saying, 'we can't take this, we've had it, this is not where our priorities are.'"