Yes.
Evidence of meeting #10 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was potatoes.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #10 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was potatoes.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kody Blois Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Obviously we're seeing challenges of differing degrees in the agriculture sector. Certainly we've had some testimony to this committee about some success stories of local companies and things like that.
You mentioned the wage subsidy.
Are there any other federal programs that you have been able to take advantage of, including perhaps the Canada emergency business account?
3:35 p.m.
President, Whyte's Foods Inc.
So far, there have not been any. I think there was a minor wage subsidy that didn't add up to much of any consequence—certainly not the 75% wage subsidy—and there have been no other options in terms of government assistance to this point.
So no, and we're in significant need of some....
3:35 p.m.
President, Whyte's Foods Inc.
I can submit that information to you later on, if that's okay.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kody Blois Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I'm curious about the size of your company. Obviously the Canada emergency business account is open to those who have a wage payroll of between $20,000 and $1.5 million, and at least that would be $40,000.
I am just curious. Certainly there have been a lot of businesses in the agri-food industry that have taken advantage of it. Maybe your payroll is over $1.5 million, but I certainly want to steer you to—
3:35 p.m.
President, Whyte's Foods Inc.
Yes. We have about 350 employees, and fully staffed in Wallaceburg, it will about 500 employees.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kody Blois Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I want to talk to you about the labour program. Was labour a challenge before COVID-19 for your business generally? You mentioned you had 350 employees, but I assume these sectors are challenging at the best of times.
3:35 p.m.
President, Whyte's Foods Inc.
We're new in Chatham-Kent, so there's that. It's hard to answer.
I'll let Philippe answer in terms of Quebec; he deals with it more closely than I do. Although I can certainly answer, I'd love to hear his thoughts on it, if that's okay.
3:40 p.m.
Vice-President of Procurement, Whyte's Foods Inc.
I can answer you. For Wallaceburg, I can give you an idea. We did an open house at the beginning of last summer in 2019, and in two days we had 600 people show up to give their resumés for a job. It was very interesting in that region. We were told before we were sent there that getting employees would be much easier than in another region just because there were a lot of job losses in the last 10 to 15 years.
In Quebec it's been hard. It's been hard on our two plants. There's a lot of competition around, and now what it's doing is basically forcing us to pay more money to get the employees. In the Wallaceburg region, the biggest challenge now is really, like I said, day cares and schools being closed. Concerning the program from the federal government of $2,000 per month, people would rather take the money and stay home than come to work. We see even regular employees we have who decided to take it. They say they're scared to work, but we've been supplying them all the equipment necessary to work in a safe environment.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Kody Blois Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
We've heard this testimony from other folks regarding the emergency response benefit.
What would you propose, then, in terms of the government? Obviously there may be some situations where people may be taking advantage of the benefit, but for the most part, there are a lot of Canadians who are in need. Is it your position that it shouldn't have been introduced? What exactly would you have liked to see?
3:40 p.m.
Vice-President of Procurement, Whyte's Foods Inc.
It's difficult, because I think there was a real need for people to get some money if they lost their job. In our case, it was not necessarily people losing their job; it's people who.... I don't want to interpret everything, but we know for a fact that in some cases people are just taking the time off. We know that other people have to take care of kids, they have take care of their parents or they have people at home who may have an immune system that's not as strong, but we're an area where there are pretty much no cases, and we're putting in place all the protective gear and safety measures we can.
It's a very difficult question to answer. There's a need for it, but there's also a need to help companies to keep their people working.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Kody Blois Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I'll move over to Ms. Ventin.
Thank you for your testimony as well. With regard to the stakeholders you represent, we know there are challenges. Can you speak to how some of the businesses are pivoting or being able to make changes as a result of COVID-19?
3:40 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Government Relations, Food & Consumer Products of Canada
First of all, we've seen a huge increase in demand. As was stated earlier, there's been a loss in the food service market, so our members have had to cope with losses on that front and rechannel. But really, there's increased demand and they've had to work with very difficult supply chains, disruptions to the flow of ingredients, packaging and inability to secure PPE.
They've been doing this in the context of already having labour shortages within the sector. Before COVID-19 hit, there was a 10,000-person vacancy in the food and beverage manufacturing sector in Canada. This only got worse. If you put it into context, all of a sudden there's COVID-19, and people are stocking up and buying a lot of products on store shelves, so our members are responding to that at a time when their supplies coming in are unpredictable.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Ms. Ventin. Unfortunately, we're out of time.
Thank you, Mr. Blois.
Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.
3:40 p.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you very much.
I thank the witnesses for being here.
I'm sorry, Mr. Brubacher, I will try to give you the floor for two minutes at the end.
The issue raised by the witnesses today concerns workers.
Ms. Ventin, you talked about an incentive program for the unemployed, benefits for students, and a training credit to help your businesses.
Do you think that the benefits should be adjusted according to people's availability, so that they don't lose the whole amount at once? We had proposed that for the student benefit. In a nutshell, do you think that could be a solution?
3:45 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Government Relations, Food & Consumer Products of Canada
First of all, just going back to the Canada emergency response benefit, the CERB, I think it was good that the government acted very quickly and responded to the huge demand and serious financial challenges faced by Canadians. We absolutely recognize that. However, the impact of this is that fewer Canadians are now applying for the jobs that are now vacant in food manufacturing facilities, including production line jobs. One company recently told me that they have a 50% decrease in—
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Ms. Ventin, do you not think that modulating benefits, as in the case of employment insurance, where the amount received is gradually reduced, could have been a solution? Do you think that makes sense?
3:45 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Government Relations, Food & Consumer Products of Canada
Are you referring to the Canada emergency response benefit in particular, that government program?
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I'm thinking of the Canada Emergency Benefit, including the one for students. We could modulate the amounts instead of having recipients lose the entire benefit all at once as soon as they earn more than $1,000. If we were to lower the amounts progressively, as we do for regular employment insurance benefits, would that help?
3:45 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Government Relations, Food & Consumer Products of Canada
What we would like to see—and I think the government is on the right track—is a wage top-up to incentivize people to work in our industry. We would like to see those wage top-ups not only go to health care workers, who are absolutely essential, but also to food workers. We understand that it's up to the provinces to make that decision. We would like provinces to take the lead like P.E.I. did and provide wage top-ups to workers in our industry. In addition, we should retroactively remove the income tax on wage top-ups provided by the private sector. Instead, we should look at it as more incentivizing Canadians to—