Thank you, Chair. Thank you, colleagues.
I want to thank the witnesses.
I apologize. This is something that is costing farmers a lot of money, and we have to deal with it. It's important that this committee focus on that at this point in time. It doesn't lessen what you bring to the table. We respect what you bring to the table and respect what you want to talk about. It's not that we don't want to do that. It's that in this last three weeks we've seen canola devalue in the marketplace by about $1 billion at the farm gate. We have farmers who have canola in the bins right now because of a political decision.
I think everybody on this committee would agree that the quality of our product is the best in the world. There's no question about the quality of Canadian canola or Canadian food, as far as what we export around the world is concerned. We know it's good. We have a situation now that's a political decision by China, using a non-tariff trade barrier to restrict access to JRI of canola shipments into China.
As I said, the market impact of that decision in Canada coming back to the farm gate is roughly $1 billion in lost value in the canola stock sitting in the bins.
We also have a situation where farmers are looking at their spring planting intentions. You're sitting there. You're looking at the marketplace. You see it going down. You're not sure what the game plan is to normalize this relationship with China. You have to decide whether you're going to plant canola, peas, malt barley, lentils. Maybe you shouldn't be planting canola based on what's happening right now.
It's very important that the committee look at this and do the study right away, as quickly as physically possible. We are devaluing canola as we speak every day. The market is reacting to what's happening, and there's not a clear message coming from this government on the path forward. We don't have an ambassador in China at this point. We're not sure what CFIA officials are doing on the ground there. We don't know when a minister will be going to China to talk about this.
I can assure you that when Mr. Ritz was the ag minister, when something like this happened, he was basically on the plane the next day. The last time this happened, the prime minister was in China within a month and talking about canola. He alleviated the issue and we got our market back.
The size of this market is some $26 billion to the Canadian economy. That is 25% of our farm gate receipts. The bulk of our profitability for the agriculture sector comes from canola. It is huge. That is why I was really hoping that the committee would have met two weeks ago when we first asked them to. I was hoping that our NDP member would have signed the letter at that point. I understand that he had some issues and he couldn't make it here. However, it needed to have a response immediately, even last week, and it didn't get that response.
I think it's important now that the committee take this on, make it an actual emergency, and understand the importance it has to producers in western Canada and for the Canadian economy in general. Have these three ministers come forward.
You ask, why the three ministers? Well it involves different areas of the government. You have trade, so the trade minister has to be involved. There's no question about that. With regard to agriculture, CFIA is involved in this scenario, so you have to have the ag minister.
Last week, the ag minister, in press conferences in western Canada when she did her western tour, happened to miss Saskatchewan. We can't understand why an ag minister would want to learn about agriculture and not go to Saskatchewan. That is beyond us in Saskatchewan.
The concern we have is that the ag minister said the Minister of Foreign Affairs has the lead on this file. If the Minister of Foreign Affairs has the lead on the file, then it's very important that she testify in front of this committee. She needs to answer for the placement of CFIA officials, for what we have for resources on the ground in China. There are some concerns, in talking to people in the industry, that we do not have enough people on the ground in our embassies around the world.
We are looking at non-tariff trade barriers popping up all the time now. We've seen it in Peru, in Vietnam. We've seen it in Italy, on durum. We're seeing it now in China on canola. There is some fear that it's going to spread to malt barley, to pulses. We know the issues we have in India on pulses. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has to tell us, to reassure farmers and Canadians on the integrity of our system, that we have the resources in place to do the work to make sure we can keep these markets open.
We export 90% of what we produce. You have to remember that. We export 90% of what we produce. This is an export-driven industry. Canola is a Canadian crop. It was developed here in Canada. It was our pride, our researchers. It was a success story. We developed it here in western Canada and we've taken it around the world. We've proven that it's the healthiest oil in the world.
When you start to hear all this, I think you can start to understand why I feel this is so important and why I'm very passionate about how this committee needs to address this right away.
I'm looking forward to seeing a positive vote on this, because I think everybody can understand the importance of it, and then I look forward to seeing all three ministers coming in front of this committee and giving us a path forward. We need to have some comfort and producers need to have some comfort that there actually is a game plan, that there actually is an action plan, that the government is actually taking this seriously so that they can make these planning decisions. Then hopefully, if the markets see that the government has a game plan, the situation will normalize and moderate as that plan is taken into consideration, and the discounting of canola in the marketplace which is happening as we speak will stop.
These are just some examples of why I think it's very important to do. I'll leave it up to my colleagues to bring forward some other examples, but I would strongly encourage you, Chair, to bring this forward as quickly as possible, and to deal with it even this week. We're willing to sit day and night. We're willing to sit next week if they want us to. Whatever it takes to get this to happen, we're willing to do.
Thank you, Chair.