Evidence of meeting #6 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 malt.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Executive Officer, Grain Farmers of Ontario
—rather than ship the raw product, the better, absolutely.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Can you comment a little bit on that, Gord, on opportunities for value-added jobs and transformation of foods before product is shipped over to the European Union?
Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada
Our viewpoint would be right in line with various comments, the difference being that we see the particular products for us as being flours; protein concentrates and isolates, which are the protein part of peas, for example, that are isolated either by dry or wet milling; and then precooked frozen or even puréed products.
As Barry said, anything we can do to add value before we send it over is better for all concerned, in general.
NDP
Conservative
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Thank you, Chair.
I thank my colleague across the way for all those wonderful comments she's making in terms of CETA.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
I'm not sure if she's thinking about changing sides here or just what's going on.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
At any rate, I want to thank the witnesses for being here, and of course via video conference.
First of all, Mr. Kurbis, you did talk in your presentation about the overall potential for the pulse and so on. You're talking about a million tonnes of pulse flour per year.
Just in terms of that, do you see some additional investment happening, and obviously creating those jobs that our colleague across the way talked about? Do you have any kind of estimates on how many new jobs that might create for the pulse industry?
Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada
You know, we haven't done that analysis. It wouldn't be hard for us to plug in some of the multipliers to the number of tonnes that we're speaking about, but we haven't quite gotten around to that.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Okay. So do you have some information today—based on what you currently ship into the EU on those particular products, on how many jobs are created...or have—to do that right now?
Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada
The opportunity we're discussing right now is really contingent upon the continuation of trends in processed food products that are prevalent in both North America and the European Union today. The bet that seems to be on by the food manufacturing sector is that if you can take established brands that consumers are already used to eating and you can reformulate, at least partially, some of those brands with ingredients that have better health, nutrition, and maybe even better sustainability attributes than the current products, then the substitution effect can begin to be quite large.
At this very moment in time, we're really making inroads into the North American market. The European market is one that we expect future growth in, but we still have a trickle in there today.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
You did talk about brands. I'm not sure of the brands that are already going into Europe and how those brand names are affected by the agreement.
Do you have any sense of what that means for those pulse products going in?
Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada
In general, the first range of products that we expect to make inroads on is baked products and also pastas. As you have probably seen, there are examples on North American retail shelves today of pastas that have been reformulated to include lentil and chickpea flours, essentially providing a more complete nutritional and protein quality profile of the pasta. This is an example of the sort of thing we expect to see much more of in the future.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Okay.
You both talked about the potential of looking at the technology. I was interested in one of your comments, again, in terms of the underscoring of the EU; they have increased their factor by 100 parts per million under health.
Do either of you, or both of you, see this potential to make some headway with some of the issues we've seen with the European Union?
Chief Executive Officer, Grain Farmers of Ontario
Again, formalization of these discussions is needed. As I have said before, it hasn't worked to the speed, or to what we feel is required, in the past.
So yes, we're hopeful that this working group will help move some of these issue to resolution.
Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada
Yes. To that I might add that from time to time we really do encounter an issue that is technical in nature, with respect to moving along the process to establish regulatory tolerances. And when it's only technical and it hasn't yet gone political, then the forums that can bring regulators together, to try to figure out solutions, can be much more helpful than when you have a political, small “p”, issue you're trying to contend with.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much for your questions.
And now we'll go to Mr. Allen for five minutes, please.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Thank you to both.
I want to go back to talk about what you just talked about with Mr. Payne. I agree with both of you about having some sort of formalized group that says, “Let's sit down and address these issues”, but let's break it into two pieces.
Gord, you had your example that talked about glyphosate, saying, “Well, they'd said this was the regulatory regime and then all of a sudden it's this”, agreeing that's somewhat arbitrary as to how you plucked the number. And so do you have a sense that this area is more hopeful for you? Because, Gord, you said you felt that was more of a technical issue. Did you see, perhaps, better results in that, in the sense of both parties finding a place where they can land on an agreeable regulatory regime in a relatively speedy amount of time, albeit that's not speedy, but at least it's a relative amount of time?