I'll make a quick comment on labour. The SAWP, seasonal agricultural worker program, is very important, and we have asked the federal government to continue to support those programs. Labour is a very important component in our industry.
I do have a few comments here on trade and international competition. Tree fruit products are generally freely traded, which can have its pros and cons. There are also the minimum phytosanitary requirements that do not impede trade in apples and cherries except for exports to countries such as Japan. This trade sometimes introduces new invasive pests and diseases to the tree fruit industry. We would like to see more effort directed to inspection at point of entry, especially for those areas of the world that are not at the same level of integrated pest management as ourselves.
Furthermore, a national plant health strategy has been promised but not delivered or developed.
I'll make a few comments on the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. We've made great strides with the AAFC's Pest Management Centre, and the PMRA has made great strides in working in harmony and collaboration with the IR-4 project in the United States to get simultaneous pesticide registrations. However, we are still lagging behind and we feel that it is high time that Canada fully integrated its registration system with the U.S. This may also help curb the huge discrepancy in pesticide prices between Canada and the U.S.--as much as 30% to 40% is quite common--especially at a time when the Canadian dollar is at par and we are still looking at these huge differences.
I would also like to point out that in terms of labour, we have all heard of the cost of production. B.C. farmers and Canadian farmers are always facing higher costs of production. Labour is one area. In fact, in the U.S. as much as 60% to 70% of the labour in some sectors is actually illegal foreign labour. These workers are mistreated. They are paid low wages and sometimes also they do not even receive wages compared to the farm work that they have completed. Therefore, we see this as an impediment and we are in direct competition with an economic system based on abuse of its labour force, which is another competitive advantage--or disadvantage, as we call it--that they may have.
The final trade issue we would like to raise with the committee is the level of government subsidies in other nations. In particular, there's the U.S. Farm Bill, which governs tens of billions of dollars in spending and includes everything from land stewardship, public in-school nutrition, biofuel, institutional procurement programs, export and agricultural research programs. The current $289 billion Farm Bill was enacted in 2008 and is going to be replaced, probably with something very similar, in 2012.
Canada has decided not to play the subsidy game and compete with the U.S. Farm Bill. This places our industry, our producers, and our young farmers at a competitive disadvantage such that the Doha Round of WTO negotiations will not rectify the current situation. If we cannot compete with the U.S. Farm Bill, then perhaps Canada needs to expand the list of sensitive products to other sectors and allow broader access to orderly marketing powers.
I thank you for your time and the opportunity to present today.