Our vegetables are delivered to industry firms to be processed—either frozen, canned or marinated. In Canada, that represents 20 per cent of cucumber production, 30 per cent of sweet corn and peas, and 60 per cent of beans.
Of course, globalization, coupled with the weakness of the U.S. dollar, has impacted our industry. Three of our plants have closed in the last two years, two of which belong to Kraft and another to Smucker's (Bick's).
Most of the products that were processed in these plants now come to us from Asia under the brand names of our major Canadian distributors. The economic impact of these closures is enormous. It represents a loss of approximately 18,000 jobs and economic losses at the farmgate of approximately $7 million. However, considering that the agricultural raw material represents only about 8 to 10 per cent of the retail price, total losses amount to $90 million for the Quebec economy as a whole.
Why does the “Product of Canada” designation need to be redefined? To our knowledge, the regulations governing the definition of “Product of Canada” are over 40 years old. As you will no doubt agree, the agri-food trading environment at the time was in no way comparable to what it is today. We did not have either GATT or the WTO.