Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, members of the committee. I have asked the clerk to circulate a one-page diagram, which I'll make brief reference to during my presentation.
Success in the pulse industry is measured in a number of ways, but for any business the bottom line is the bottom line. Profitability is the measure by which every business can gauge its success.
At the macro level, the field crop supply chain has three elements. The crop is grown, the crop is moved, and the crop is used. So grow, move, use. Using that grow-move-use model, I want to highlight where the opportunities are to look at what can be done to make the Canadian egg supply chain more profitable. During my comments I'll address Pulse Canada's view on the role of the federal government in addressing challenges and issues and in creating the opportunities to improve the competitiveness and profitability of Canadian agriculture.
An overarching theme in grow-move-use supply chains is continual improvement. What you do now will never be good enough if you want to continue to be competitive into the future. Even in areas where we may see ourselves as the world's leader, the challenge is to identify what we can do to be even more effective.
If you go to the first page, the second slide, on the bottom of the diagram we talk a bit about efficiency at the farm level. Efficiency at the farm level is related to yield—controlling the variability of yield and optimizing efficiencies on inputs, including machinery. Because diseases and pests continually adapt, genetics and the focus on crop genetic improvement and inputs need to keep pace on a continual basis. We want to have increasingly safe products from Canadian agriculture and we want to make continual improvements to our production practices.
The question for the federal government is to outline a vision for your role in the partnership of investing in crop development. Research is a long-term investment, and while funding can be allocated in five-year blocks, the vision needs to be laid out for the next 20 years.
From a regulatory perspective, the question of the federal government is what additional things need to be done to ensure that Canadians have ongoing access to new technology. An example is the role of the PMRA in registering new crop protection products and the role of PMRA in working with other regulators around the world to ensure that what can be used in Canada will result in crops that will be accepted in other markets.
In our view, resourcing questions exist at the PMRA that need to be addressed. The positive changes of Canada's involvement in global joint reviews, changes to policy regarding registration of generic chemicals, and the collaboration undertaken by PMRA and EPA in the Regulatory Cooperation Council are all really good examples, but they have created demands at the PMRA that need to be addressed if the agency is to keep pace with the demands that we're now putting on it to be part of a modern chemical registration system.
Let's move to the third slide.
The “move” part of the equation, or what we've labelled “efficient distribution”, will mean something different to everyone. If you're a railway, you'll have metrics that speak to gross ton miles, cars processed for switching hour, and car velocity. If you're a port, you'll look at things like terminal unload capacity utilization, out-of-car time, and average days at berth. The grain monitor report that Mark is the author for reports measures such as car cycle time and transit time. If you're a shipper, the measures that matter most are car order fulfillment, car spotting performance, transit time variability, and overall responsiveness.
In other words, of what a shipper has ordered, how much did the railway allocate? Of what the railway allocated, how much did the railway deliver? When did the railway deliver it, and did they deliver it when they said they would? Then, when the shipper releases the product, did the railway get it to the destination within a predictable timeframe? And during all of these important interactions, did the railway communicate with the shippers to ensure that any changes could be accounted for down the supply chain?
All of these measures are important and reveal something about efficiency to the specific stakeholders looking at the measure. And while each stakeholder expects to see maximum efficiency within their operations, we know that in order to ensure the overall system is putting products on the right vessels, at the right time, and without delay, we can't be looking at each operation in isolation of the others.
After all, there's a customer on the other end of the supply chain that cares about one thing only: did Canadians deliver the product when they said they would get it to them, and get it there on time? If we're doing that consistently and reliably and doing it within a reasonable timeframe and at a reasonable price, Canadian exporters will be competitive in the global marketplace.
The government committed to tabling a bill that should go a long way to supporting that goal. With rail being central to movement of products in this country, establishing service-level agreements is key to ensuring that expectations and commitments between railways and their customers are defined, agreed upon, and upheld. This in turn will help ensure that we can enhance the predictability with which we make a sales commitment.
But service-level agreements are only one tool in the tool box. Across the system, supply chain stakeholders have to be vigilant in the search for ongoing improvements. Greater predictability and meaningful commitments between railways and their customers will allow for improved communication with downstream supply chain partners, and we have to encourage greater collaboration across the whole supply chain. All players will need to embrace the idea that we need to take collaboration to the next level.
Pulse Canada believes that the federal government has an important role to play, and we were pleased to hear Minister Ritz's announcement on Tuesday of this week of the new mandate for the crop logistics working group to improve the performance of the grain industry's supply chain by focusing on innovation, building industry capacity, and increasing stakeholder collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, performance measurement will be a priority. This is essential for the industry and is the key role for the Government of Canada as we plan for a future that includes an enhanced legislative environment and a greater emphasis on continuous improvement from all. We need to ensure that we're measuring the right things and that they're telling us something meaningful about the overall competitiveness of Canadian companies in the export business.
Pulse Canada is committed to working with the federal government and all stakeholders to ensure that the right tools are in place. We're committed to ensuring that the industry has the capacity to use the tools and has forums in place to continue the search for ongoing improvement. We're committed to ensuring that measurement systems become more integrated, report more frequently, and report the measures that matter most. Longer trains and more gross ton miles don't mean anything if the shippers aren't getting cars when they're committed, and record unloads at port don't mean anything if vessels continue to be backlogged at anchorage. Most certainly, if we're not fulfilling customer orders on time, none of these efforts or measures matter.
Let me be clear: the theme in “move” is that we're not there yet. We know that new solutions are being introduced, and we are anticipating some of them from the federal government. We know that a number of different groups are collecting a wide range of measures, but we simply aren't there yet.
Getting there is a process; it's not a one-shot deal. We need to continuously gather facts and evidence on performance. We need to assemble the right players and then have them analyze the evidence and look for ways of continuous improvement, as we did with the rail freight service review. We need to test those solutions in the real world, and we need to ensure that the right measures are in place so we can tell if the solutions are leading to improvement. The bottom line is that everything we do ought to create a measurable improvement in performance of the system.
The final point to make on this slide is on the issue of access to markets. The government plays the lead role in signing trade agreements and in working to find bilateral and multilateral solutions to the many issues that impact trade.
Mr. Chairman, as I'm running out of time, I'll just make one final, quick comment on the last slide, on “use”. The Canadian pulse industry is proud to be the world's largest producer and exporter of pulses. The challenge in front of us is to ensure that we have a strategy that ensures we maintain that enviable position. In addition to growing a crop that has the attributes that farmers need, we need to grow crops that have the attributes that consumers want. Attributes desired by consumers around the world include food that's healthy, nutritious, and, as consumers are increasingly interested in knowing, produced in a sustainable manner.
Mr. Chairman, there are clear examples of where the federal government needs to play a leadership role and clear examples of where government can partner with industry through programs like Growing Forward 2. It's through programs like Growing Forward 2 that we hope to take our strategic plan and work plan, partner with the government, and put it to work for the betterment of the industry.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll conclude my remarks.