Evidence of meeting #73 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Briefly, do you think it's a bit of a mixed message when the government is asking on the one hand for farmers to reduce their emissions from the use of fertilizer, but on the other hand is asking for increased production to meet global food security?
12:50 p.m.
President, Keystone Agricultural Producers
Certainly, the efficiency on that end is a mixed message. It's telling us to reduce on one hand, and then increase production in the case of food security.
Going forward, I think the one thing that is missed is the efficiency of farming operations currently and that we are doing a good job. There are a lot of farmers who have made changes in their operations. Simply, we're not being acknowledged for those changes and the efficiency we have currently. In asking for further reduction, inevitably that reduction will have a negative impact on the yields and the produce that we have.
I'm wondering if Colin has something to add at this time.
12:50 p.m.
Manager, Communications and Stakeholder Relations, Keystone Agricultural Producers
Thanks, Jill.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Going back to one of the things that Jill mentioned regarding being price-takers, when you look at the carbon tax.... In other businesses, if your input costs go up, you can pass along your costs to the consumer. However, in the situation we have with producers, they're unable to do that, so it affects them, and they have less capital to invest in their business.
We have one in eight Canadians working in agriculture. There are a lot of different jobs out there. Whether you're in a city riding or a rural area, you have people working on farms. You have agronomists and things like that. You have folks working in financial services who are selling products to farmers. Every dollar that they have to put into their business that they aren't intending to spend is one less dollar they can spend on economic activity to support other Canadian jobs.
Agriculture really matters to everybody, regardless of where you live. That's the message we want to make sure gets taken away from this.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you very much. That is your time, MP Morantz. Thank you for that.
Now we're moving over to the Liberals. There's no pressure, MP Baker, but you are the last questioner, and you are the last questioner as we move into recommendations for our pre-budget consultations.
You have five minutes, please.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I appreciate that, Chair. I think you and one of our witnesses talked about how you always save the best for last, so I really....
They said it. I didn't.
I'd like to start by coming back to you, Ms. Grynol, and the exchange that you had with my colleague Ms. Chatel about the labour shortage that your members are facing. Of course, this is a challenge in your sector and it's a challenge in a number of sectors.
What I took away.... Again, similar to my last exchange with you, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I want to make sure I'm clear on it and that I clearly understand so I can take that back to our minister and into the writing of our report.
What I hear you saying about the temporary foreign worker program is that conceptually and broadly, the scope is the right scope, but there are some specific elements of that program in terms of how quickly people get approved and the execution of that program that you're recommending be changed so that we can get more people here more quickly.
Is that a fair summary of what you're saying?
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Hotel Association of Canada
It's a little more involved than that.
What we're recommending is that we build a dedicated stream for tourism and hospitality through the temporary foreign worker program. What that means is we will have the predictability that we can get workers in to meet the summer demand. Because we have year-round jobs, we have recommendations on the permanent economic immigration stream, but we will still have temporary need in the sector, and that's where that program comes into play.
Right now, when you apply, you have no idea when you're going to be getting.... It's cumbersome. It's expensive.
It's more the predictability piece that we're asking for. We are unique in the sense that we have one high season. It comes every summer. This is not a surprise. We're hoping that we can get a dedicated stream, at least temporarily, so that we can at least get to the summer period and capitalize on what will be intense demand for Canada.
We liken it to a human body that was healthy, that went into a two-year induced coma and then came out and is missing limbs—because we no longer have a work force—but is being asked to run a marathon because demand for Canada is at an all-time high.
We want to get to that demand, but we are looking for the lowest-hanging fruit to help us get there. We have a sequence of recommendations in place.
The temporary foreign worker program is a part of it. We're asking for a dedicated stream, at least in the short term, to help us save the summer, and in the short term to help us deal with what is going to be a 360,000-person shortfall in our sector. That's two to three times higher than in any other sector, and it's not a problem that we can solve by ourselves.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you for that clarification. I really appreciate it. That's constructive input. Thank you.
You're representing the Hotel Association, but when I think about the tourism sector, I note that there's an ecosystem. Hotels are part of that ecosystem or that value chain of tourism, but there are other aspects of it. When I think about this sector, part of what's foundational to your success or your members' success is a strong economy with attractions that are supported in the various jurisdictions your members operate in, etc.
In those other elements of the value chain that need to prosper so that your members can prosper, in that aspect of the sector, are the necessary investments happening? What more needs to be done, either from the private sector side or from the government side, to make sure the whole sector is prospering and that therefore your members are prospering?
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Hotel Association of Canada
Thank you so much for that question.
The tourism growth strategy that we've been working on in consultation, not just with us, but with that ecosystem that you're referring to.... We've been working on this for 10 months now, alongside our minister and his team. In that strategy, what we have put forward are investments that could take us from 22 million visitors to 30 million by 2030, and a $105-billion industry to a $134-billion industry.
At the heart of it, it is about the government co-investing alongside the other levels of government and industry in building those major attractions—those convention centres and those Fogo Island Inns. We need to be able to capitalize on that. If we build it, they will come, and this is the moment for us to make those investments.
In addition to that, we're looking for marketing dollars so that we can continue to tell our story. Business events are going to be important, because, to go a previous question, we lost some ground there.
Central to all of this is making sure that in the first place we have a workforce to be able to meet the demand we have in Canada even today. With all of those pieces in play, that will create the demand drivers for people to come.
Of course, from a hotel perspective, we want to make sure at the same time that we have enough hotel capacity in this country, so we have recommended a credit facility so that we can keep up with construction. We're at less than 1% of growth today in terms of the capacity we have. We are short capacity. For example, in Calgary, we're 3,000 rooms short today. We need to be investing not just in the demand drivers but also in the associated capacity that would come with it. That's all been outlined in the tourism growth strategy.
We're hoping for something meaningful here. We're hoping that we can compete with other countries that are investing billions into the strategy, and not the low hundreds of millions.
Thank you for the question.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you, Ms. Grynol and MP Baker.
As we conclude this meeting, we want to thank our witnesses. This is our final meeting of pre-budget consultation with witnesses. We want to thank you for your testimony and thank all the witnesses who have come before our committee in this pre-budget consultation. We've received many submissions from organizations and individuals—I'm looking to the analysts, but I think it's more than 700—and now, from this point, the members will be looking at all those recommendations and constructing the report. That will be with the assistance of the analysts and the clerk, of course, who do a lot of the heavy lifting for us here.
To all the staff, the interpreters and everybody who's helped us throughout this process, thank you very much, everyone.
On behalf of the members' finance committee, this will conclude our meeting. Thank you.
We're adjourned.