Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to reiterate as well my regrets that I have to be here today, I guess, because we're right in the middle of the Royal Winter Fair in Brandon, Manitoba. It's one of only two royal winter fair designations in this country. It's a big event for our western Manitoba area and particularly for the city of Brandon. I spent the last three days there.
This issue that we're talking about today started back when Brandon hosted the brier back in early March. I've had farmers coming to me every day with their concerns since this happened back at the beginning of March. What are they going to do in terms of their seeding intentions this year? What has happened in terms of the drop in prices they've had since the beginning of December? If we've lost 40% of the sale of our canola, as my colleagues have pointed out, that's just under roughly two million tonnes of canola that we've lost exports for. That's a huge hit to the economy of the Prairies. At $500 a tonne—that's where the price was when this started, but it's much lower now—you can see that the agriculture hit is at nearly $1 billion.
We have a situation where our agriculture minister in Manitoba on Monday called for a face-to-face meeting between politicians in Canada and those in China. Premier Moe from Saskatchewan did the same, as did the ag minister in Saskatchewan. The only reason Mr. Eichler didn't include the Alberta minister is that they're in the middle of an election right now. I've had retailers come to me saying that they're very concerned about the farmers coming into their shops already talking about cutting back on the seed purchases they've already made for this particular year. A lot of those are made at the end of their fiscal year. The crop rotation we have in agriculture is three to four years in canola. Farmers make these decisions three to four years out in regard to the kind of crop program they'll have, the amount of canola they'll grow and the inputs they'll require. That's how long out the budgeting process can be impacted by decisions that are beyond these farmers' control.
We have a situation today where, of course, we are faced with this motion. I want to thank my colleague Luc Berthold from Quebec, as our ag critic, for bringing this to the attention of the committee. I also thank the committee for holding today's meeting. It is important, as you can see with the agriculture ministers who are already involved, that we have our Minister of Agriculture here at a subsequent meeting, along with the Minister of International Trade Diversification. My colleague from Saskatchewan, Mr. Hoback, just indicated the importance of making sure that we have the trade side here. This is definitely what this is about, the 253,000 jobs and 43,000 farmers, if I can reiterate what my colleagues have said. A lot of these jobs are on the west coast. They're in the cleaning and handling of the product in the terminals as it is loaded. There are a lot of union jobs involved in this also as they load those ships and make sure that the product is secure as well as safe.
The quality of this product is not in question. We have an extremely beneficial and thorough checking program through the Canadian Grain Commission and the CFIA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They do their work on a regular basis to check every outgoing shipment of grain that leaves our ports so that we know the quality of it when it leaves.
The other area was one that was mentioned yesterday when I was at a Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon before we raced out of there to catch a plane to get here last night. Over 300 business people in a community like Brandon showed up for a luncheon yesterday, and this was a main topic of concern for all of them as well. They know how important that cash flow is in our western Manitoba area to all of their businesses, whether they're in the retail industries, in clothing, in food industries, grocery stores or wherever.
I met with Bill Campbell, too, the president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, the general farm organization in Manitoba. He asked, “What can we do?” Basically he was saying that they're so frustrated. They don't know what's happened. They don't know what the government's plan is. They don't know if the government is talking to China. They don't know if the bureaucrats are talking to China. There are rumours that they are. I would hope that they are.
For the president of a general farm organization like that not to be included, as our colleagues in other provinces need to know those things as well, I think raises the issue of why this is such an emergency. That's also why we need the foreign affairs minister here. They know that this has gone on for at least a month already without the kinds of meetings that they feel are necessary to be able to bring the discussion point back to China on the political side. That is a big concern to them.
They know as well from their involvement in the Grain Commission and other areas that the quality of our product is not at question here. With regard to the dockage that goes into the loads, when it comes from the farm, with canola particularly, there's very little dockage as it leaves the farm, so that shouldn't even be a concern or a question here, because it's so easy to clean canola right out of the combine when it's being harvested.
The issue they're claiming is that it is way beyond their control. That's why they want to have officials from CFIA here, to find out about the scientific part of it, what they've done and how they do their checks. We can outline that, because we all know what the process is, but it would still be nice to hear from them.
I think it would be good to have some of the industry representatives themselves, who have been impacted by the sales of their product, and representatives of the grain companies appear before us.
It might even be good to have someone here just to make sure that the railroads are represented as well, to look at the kinds of handling that they feel are necessary and to see that there's no contamination or quality disturbance from their end either. From their end, it's pretty simple, I think.
The general public may need to know that. I think the agriculture industry already knows that it's a safe bet the quality of our product is as good when it comes off the ship as it is when it goes in.
With those areas, Mr. Chair, I guess I can reiterate to my colleagues—I've already done that—the importance of the value of the canola products to our industry. I'd also like to say that we have included soybeans in that. I think we're looking at 59% of our soybean industry exports going to China, about 1.7 billion dollars' worth a year as well. We're just into the process in western Manitoba, southern Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan of developing an expanding soybean industry right now as well. We certainly don't want to see these types of trade scenarios become the rule in other crops, as well as livestock areas that may be of concern as well.
I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair, for right now. If there's anything else that we can add after our colleagues have spoken, we'd be glad to help with that as well. Thank you.