Agriculture Committee on May 7th, 2024

[Pascal Forest]

Absolutely.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

That's great. Thank you.

You mentioned the foreign workers issue earlier. You said you were still in the same situation year after year. That's also true of people in my region.

What changes should be made? Earlier we heard one of the witnesses discuss a potential amendment that the government is currently planning to the temporary foreign workers program. However, it appears that won't be done in a way that will improve the situation, which could even get worse.

What's your view on that subject? The timelines should be quite significantly shortened, shouldn't they?

[Pascal Forest]

The timelines were six weeks 20 years ago, and they're six months now 20 years later. I honestly think the existing technology should help us do better than that.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Do you think the major problem is that the system is unwieldy? Is the system's administration too cumbersome?

[Pascal Forest]

It's a waste of time.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

You say the timelines were six weeks 20 years ago. Now it takes a year. Technology should normally help reduce those timelines to three months, for example.

[Pascal Forest]

I think we've graduated from the era of the fax machine and the envelope. Matters should be resolved more quickly than that.

Honestly, you'd think today's long timelines are deliberate. I don't understand the principle, but maybe my level of education is preventing me from understanding.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Mr. Forest, I can assure you it isn't your education; I'm discouraged too.

[Pascal Forest]

In my case, some foreign workers that I had 20 years ago still work for our business today. So absolutely nothing has changed; it's all the same; it's all copy and paste. But they're conducting labour market impact studies all the same. They know perfectly well they're doing them for no reason, but they're operating a machine when they know they could be using it to do something more productive.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Forest. I think that's quite clear.

You mentioned standard reciprocity several times. You also discussed that with my colleagues. What could the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, do to improve this aspect in co-operation with the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA? We know that CBSA also has to be involved.

CFIA has a role to play, and PMRA has a job to do on approvals of various goods, but that process involves too much red tape. When goods arrive in Canada, how could CFIA improve the situation in co-operation with CBSA?

[Pascal Forest]

We would already see an improvement if both sides had the same standards. Consider the United States, for example. One could assume that we have virtually the same type of agriculture. We grow the same vegetables, although, of course, not in the same seasons. Americans eat our products for part of the year, and we eat theirs the rest of the year. I don't know the exact consumption ratio, but it may be 50-50. Harmonizing regulations would obviously improve the situation.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

The two administrations should have some major discussions. We should engage in talks with our American cousins soon. Since the border is 5,000 kilometres long, many goods cross it, from both sides, as you said.

[Pascal Forest]

Yes.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada should make an extra effort to communicate with its American counterpart to expedite approvals of certain goods that are used on the other side, but not here.

[Pascal Forest]

Yes, product approvals should be facilitated. The manufacturers of plant protection products should be able to put the same labels on their products in Canada and the United States. That's ultimately the problem.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

We understand why customs agents can't verify all shipments entering the country. Since you must have colleagues posted not far from the U.S. border, you see what's happening on the ground. In your view regarding standard reciprocity, are goods entering the country being checked often enough?

[Pascal Forest]

I'm not sure I can answer your question. I know that, when our semi-trailers cross the border, they undergo very serious checks in the United States. However, I don't know what checks are done on the Canadian side when U.S. or Mexican goods enter the country. I have some doubts about that, but I don't have any evidence.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to the honourable member for Malpeque for five minutes.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

I'm going to go to Mr. Vinall. That's an interesting company you've developed.

We're sitting around this table with a lot of growers, obviously, and there's one lowest common denominator, which is climate change. You have some solutions for that. I read some of your preamble and I wanted to ask you how small you can go as far as sectors or industries are concerned.

You talked about communities and provinces, like Nova Scotia and Alberta, etc., and that's great, but sometimes provinces are slow to react and governments are slow to react. I'm just wondering about industries or sectors.

Have there been any discussions with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, for example, or someone like that about Sustane Technologies and what they're doing?

[Peter Vinall]

In fact, we've been in discussions with a number of agricultural groups that would represent the collection of agricultural plastic that's used for growing agricultural products. We're working to find a way to bring that into either stand-alone conversion facilities or our larger systems where we take regular garbage. With our technology, we have the ability to take multiple streams, including dedicated waste streams from agriculture, for example.

Not all plastic types are chemically recyclable, which is what we do, but about 80% are. In fact, most agricultural waste plastics are polyethylene and polypropylene polymers, and those are the most recyclable in terms of chemical recycling, which is the approach we take.

The physical form of these plastics is often the challenge for mechanical recycling. They're films. They're thin. They're all different sizes and shapes. However, with our process, we have the ability to shrink them down, compact them and then put them into our depolymerization system to effectively 100% recycle them on an infinite basis. That's unlike mechanical recycling, in which you try to sort of melt the polymers and blend them, and you only get one or two chances to do that. With chemical recycling, it's infinite. We can do it over and over again.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Also, Mr. Vinall, I'm splitting my time today with the chair, Mr. Blois.

I want to ask if there have there been any discussions with your company or any thoughts on making those partnerships real and including some type of carbon credits for industry representatives.

[Peter Vinall]

Carbon is an interesting topic for us. From the get-go, we said that we needed to design a solution that doesn't need an incentive or a subsidy from the government, whether a carbon subsidy or other subsidy. Of course, when you're developing technologies, finding investment that's prepared to take the risk on the development of the technologies is a challenge, and this is a role that government can play. We've had some support from the federal government. We're appreciative of that. Obviously, as we scale, we will need more.

The solution we've developed can out-compete the landfill. We have a solution that doesn't require a subsidy at the landfill end. That means that we can say that we'll save you money as a municipality, and you send the garbage to us. You don't need to have the long-term liability of the landfill. Certainly, they're difficult to permit these days.

Our challenge is more the ability to scale our technology and get support from government for the financing required to scale and build larger and larger facilities.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. Vinall, one of the reasons I'm happy that you're before this committee is that we are having important conversations on the role of plastics in the horticultural sector. It's been raised by a number of members.

What I think is encouraging is that there is technology out there that can help separate the crucial question of how those plastics do not go into the environment because of the work that your company can do. Obviously, I think there's work to be done on the innovation on the packaging side. However, for those—to your point—that are an absolute necessity, then I think having better diversion programs so that they don't go into landfills is one of the key recommendations that can come from this committee.

I have been to your facility. I was impressed with it. However, one thing I want you to share in the 40 seconds you have left is how some of the agricultural fertilizers, the natural fertilizers from turning basically what otherwise would be food waste in a landfill into a frass type of fertilizer, are showing early promise. Can you quickly tell us about that?