Finance committee  Thank you very much for allowing the Canadian Meat Council to present to you this afternoon. We represent Canada's largest agrifood sector, the meat packers and processors. At the back of our brief, you can see all the member companies we represent. In fact, for the meat secto

Finance committee  Perhaps it's because the government was finally able to gain more control over the budgetary process. If other options that were not previously apparent now present them, it's time to explore this possibility. The meat processing industry is a truly North American industry in wh

Finance committee  Certainly. I'll use the example of Japan, which has a tariff system for pork that requires us to sell at a certain high price. Our preference is for a successful World Trade Organization deal, so that they will have to convert to a much clearer tariff rate, and we want to see tho

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, and thank you very much. My name is Jim Laws, and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council here in Ottawa. The Meat Council is Canada's national trade association of federally inspected meat packers and processors, established in 1919. The red mea

Agriculture committee  That's our view exactly. It's too bad, because they were in discussions with the provinces well before they made the announcement at the end of June 2006, so they knew it was coming. We would have preferred just one single program where the rules were known. It's not that complic

Agriculture committee  Canada Gazette part I was issued in December 2004, and that's when their proposed regulation was put in place. It was June 2006 when Canada Gazette part II came out, with pretty much the same regulation as proposed in part I. So there was plenty of time in between to decide what

Agriculture committee  Apparently they're all pretty much in the same boat, so that's where the complication lies. It would have been nice if the rules had been made very clear to everyone. Then things would have moved forward.

Agriculture committee  We merely want to know, or have someone write to tell us, if we are eligible to have reimbursed some of the expenses that we will incur, so that we can start construction. However, we haven't even received the go-ahead for this. Each province has a responsibility to deliver on f

Agriculture committee  I know that over the past two weeks, a departmental representative has visited each province in Canada to encourage them to sign on, to advance funds and to set out program criteria, so that decisions can be made regarding contracts with firms. Last Friday, we spoke to the mini

Agriculture committee  Some members are just shaking their heads, asking how they're going to make the deadline. As I mentioned in this report, we had been advocating before for the same list the Americans were going to have, because we knew that was going to put us in a very uncompetitive position. Bu

Agriculture committee  No, they did not put in separate lines at that time.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  We're also asking for these extra funds because there has been such a great delay in this capital money and because we think that all this $80 million and the provincial money is only going to pay for capital improvements, although we don't know because the rules haven't been mad

Agriculture committee  I'll say a few things. We need to make the rules known, make them clear. We need to set a bunch of rules that everybody in the industry across Canada knows. Everybody's working in a vacuum right now. If you could influence the provincial agriculture ministries in your province

Agriculture committee  I think you probably should be asking the agriculture ministry which provinces are farther along in discussions than others. They are the ones that are intimately involved in this, and they know the answers. We hear things, but they have the actual facts. In terms of what's hap