Evidence of meeting #54 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Are you saying that a lot of packaged goods are coming in and the packaging is not even bilingual and might not even have metric on it?
Liberal
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
What you're alluding to—and I think it makes a lot of sense—is that you have legitimate companies that are registered, so if they have an infraction, they get a warning, and their names are on the line, so there's a channel it has to go through. If it doesn't come through that channel, the border agency will ask who's buying it and they'll say that it's not coming in unless there's a legitimate person who's picking it up. That kind of thing would really hit home.
President, Food Processors of Canada
It's an attitude thing. Now, the agency is very good when I make a complaint. They're very good to jump on it. But when my companies complain, it's not so quick. They have other things to worry about.
But you're quite right: you need accountability. In the United States, if we make a mess, we have to clean it up and we have to clean it up fast. We don't see that same speed. It's really just an attitude thing.
The other thing we have to be worried about is something that came to light just recently. If you're selling something into China and you have a very powerful brand, the number one brand or the number two brand in that category, you soon find out that you're competing against your own product. In other words, somebody else is making it. It's counterfeit.
We worry now that somebody will start manufacturing a product that's not what we expect it to be. It could be a dirty product; it could have something that's contaminated, or something that's illegal, to do harm. There are two problems. Number one, you open the package, and it gets into the food supply and into further processed products, and your whole food supply is contaminated.
If you remember, a few years ago the Chinese shipped in honey that had chloramphenicol in it. It contaminated the whole honey supply. What if somebody had something else that was less nice? It's a security issue here, and we have to worry about that. What happens if you have that product in your marketplace? You wouldn't be able to sell food anywhere. That's why now, with the terrorist activities that are being talked about, we should be thinking about the border.
Conservative
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
I welcome our witnesses.
Mr. Kyte, I want to pick up and expand further on the counterfeiting of products, because when there's counterfeiting of products, we have dispute resolution mechanisms between Canada and China, and we have dispute mechanisms at the WTO. There's a system in place for that, but you're talking about intellectual property, almost, on the ingredients of some of these products.
There should be some attempt from China.... What we're seeing in other products is that the Chinese are more interested in intellectual property, because they have more of it. I suspect that same thing is happening with the counterfeiting of product. Their marketplace is more sophisticated, it's worth more money to them, and they're putting more stringent controls in place because ultimately it's to their benefit. Are you seeing that as well?
President, Food Processors of Canada
Most of my members' brands are not big enough or powerful enough to be counterfeited in China. If you were Nestlé Quik or any of those kinds of brands, that's where you would really see it. Because the enforcement in China is different and is quite lax compared to North America, that's where I worry. It doesn't even have to be made in China. It can be made anywhere. Our whole food supply could be contaminated. My members are smart enough to be very careful about their suppliers, and we audit our suppliers, but I'm not sure that every company is that ethical.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
I want to pick up on your comment on licensing importers. For Canadian companies that are importing food products into Canada to then be manufactured into other products, how would that licensing system work? Again, how would it be regulated or governed?
President, Food Processors of Canada
Some of the products are now licensed; importers are licensed. For example, in the fish industry, all of those importers are licensed. That system works really quite well.
All the registered plants where we make food in this country are licensed, de facto. That works out quite well.
Where licensing isn't being used and should be used is where you have biscuits and other kinds of food products that need to bring up their level of surveillance, the level of surveillance should be improved, and if you have like products coming in from the United States or from elsewhere. I think it's a relatively simple mechanism. The benefits are huge because you have a way of knowing who's importing.
It's really interesting. A week ago I sent the Canadian Food Inspection Agency a note asking how many registered plants in the United States are shipping meat-containing products into Canada. They can't tell me yet. How long do I have to wait? That's worrisome.
We should know. Americans know. When we ship in the United States under the new Food Safety Modernization Act or under USDA, we have to be licensed. I think it's a quid pro quo and I think it makes some sense. You want some assurance that those people bringing products in have some idea where those products are coming from and under what conditions.
I don't think it's onerous.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy Conservative South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS
Finally, on food labelling, you commented that CFIA does a pretty good job at making sure our labels are up to international standards, but they don't do a very good job, in your estimate, of labels on international food products coming into Canada.
Do you have specific examples of that?
Certainly in the fish export business, which I'm very familiar with, when it comes to food labelling, product is turned around all the time if the labels are not absolutely 100% correct. Sometimes you can stop it at the country of destination, but most of the time it ends up being shipped at the shipper's cost all they way back to Canada, re-labelled, and then shipped over again.
President, Food Processors of Canada
Yes, the fish industry does a fairly good job, but that's because all of those importers are licensed and there is a responsibility there and there is accountability.
We've seen cereals from the southern U.S, canned tomato products, BBQ sauces, and all of those kinds of products that get into the Canadian marketplace.
There are two things that happen there. One is this product is sold without accountability, but also, a retailer would say, “Hey, wait a minute. That product is being sold in my competitor's store at a really good price” and he wants the same thing in his store. Product diversion is a huge issue.
I'll give an example.
When you have a price war down in the United States, you might have a lot of inventory left over. Where do you want to get rid of that inventory? You don't want to get rid of it in the United States, so you sell it to somebody who sells it in Canada for you. If it's ketchup or whatever, it goes to one retailer, and the other retailer is saying, “Hey, Heinz, I want my share. I want my product at the same price.” That's not fair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much, Mr. Keddy.
Now we'll go to Ms. Brosseau for five minutes
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I'd like to thank both of our witnesses for their presentations today.
Mr. Kyte, I have to bring up that this week and about two weeks ago I've been meeting with a lot of stakeholders and they've been bringing up issues about labour shortages.
How many companies do you represent?
NDP
President, Food Processors of Canada
Oh, I have no idea. But I know where you're going and I'd love to get into that conversation.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Okay, I think we can talk about it.
Temporary foreign workers is a big issue. Changes that were brought forward make it so that as of April 1, workers that have been here five or ten years are going to be leaving, so we're going to have quite a big labour shortage here in Canada.
Last year I brought up the issue because in my province, in Quebec, we had about $53 million in losses because of problems with temporary foreign workers.
This is a program that obviously has a lot of problems and it needs to be worked on. I know that some members could probably argue that this isn't the right place to bring it up, but we are talking about agriculture and we are talking about trade barriers and problems and we want to make sure that these companies are able to thrive.
In some of your remarks you said that we have lost American multinational companies and they've moved their production out of Canada. More than 150 food plants have closed their doors, so the trade deficit has soared up to $7 billion.
I was just wondering if you could maybe talk to us about problems that your members have with temporary foreign workers, and solutions, because I don't think these people who have worked in Canada for seven or ten years are temporary. They have a lot of expertise and it takes a long time to train them and they become experts in their field.
Maybe you could elaborate on the importance of this program and how it is important for maybe the agriculture committee to look at.
President, Food Processors of Canada
There are two sides to this. One is the seasonal labour we require. If you're processing fruits and vegetables, often you will need temporary workers to come in and they have to be there on demand. When the asparagus is ready to be—
President, Food Processors of Canada
Yes. For asparagus, peas, tomatoes, or whatever is coming off the field, God makes the decision when it's going to be ready for harvesting, right? You have to be able to get your labour in really quickly.
Now, the producers are able to get temporary foreign workers for seasonal work, but you see many of my processors are not, because on the other end they have lines, and they need people to run those lines. People don't want to work in those plants.
When I talk to HRSDC, or whatever they call themselves today, they will say, “No, you can go and hire these people from Kellogg's, and they will come and work in your plant in Tecumseh.” It's not going to work, and they are not going to live in a bunkhouse.
Many of my guys have tried to hire local people. One company put out notice of 100 jobs. People applied for the jobs. They didn't show up for the interviews—or 50% of the people showed up for the interviews. On the first day of work, 35 people showed up. In the second week, nobody showed up. How can you run a business like that?
What happens to the crops? We have to buy the crops even though we can't harvest them. We can't process them. That is a big problem.
Our proposition to HRSDC and the minister was to consider food as part of farming. It's a continuous process. Why shouldn't we consider that as one continuous process?
Some of those people we hire in our plants have been coming for 30 years. They are happy with the work. They know how to do it. They have the expectations. But to rely on people who don't want to work there....
It's right across the country. I was talking to one friend who has a fish plant in Nova Scotia. They built this business up from nothing, and they are very proud of it. He said, “Chris, my three most productive employees are 65 years old and nobody else really cares about working, or I can't rely on them.” It creates a huge problem for them because they have invested everything they have in that business.
Then, on the other hand, I have companies, say, in Alberta, where they can't compete with the oilfields, and yet they can find people who want to work. They tried. One of my members who has a business in Alberta was flying people from Trenton, Ontario, every week. They just got fed up. They wanted to go home. They didn't want to work in Alberta, and certainly not for the wages they can afford.
We're competing against Americans, right? American labour is much cheaper than ours. In the United States we, my members, can produce food at between 2% and 30% cheaper than we can in Canada.