Agriculture Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thanks to the witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Ms. Bessette, you now have the floor for five minutes.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to begin by thanking the witnesses here today for their testimony.

I'm going to ask a few questions in the same vein as Mr. Lehoux', beginning with you Mr. Vielfaure. Your company, Bonduelle Americas, has a new processing plant in Bedford, in my riding of Brome—Missisquoi.

This year, the federal government established the Agri-Food Pilot project to facilitate the retention of workers by offering foreign or semi-skilled workers permanent residence. Can you tell me how the pilot program could benefit companies like yours?

[Daniel Vielfaure]

The program is extremely beneficial to companies like ours and we take advantage of it. Foreign workers come every year for four, five or six months. Some now come for a year. If we succeed in having these workers immigrate and come to work for us, so much the better. They would be filling jobs for which we are experiencing a shortage of workers.

If the program were made even more accessible and flexible, it would be extremely useful for companies like ours and for meat and other processing companies.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

Can you tell us about your company? What are the challenges in regional processing, particularly in terms of capacity?

[Daniel Vielfaure]

I'll come back again to workers. It's truly an enormous problem, particularly because we're regional. The food processing industry is often regionally based because the products come from the regions. However, fewer and fewer young people are staying. We're having trouble keeping them there so that they can work for us.

There is also the challenge of environmental infrastructures and other similar factors with respect to slightly larger plants. Sometimes, when a plant is a large one, it consumes as much water as the municipality. Our Bedford plant is a good example of this and we've established a partnership with the municipality for water treatment.

These are the kinds of challenges the regions are facing. The size of the businesses, and their labour and support requirements, can sometimes cause problems for the municipalities.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you very much.

How can the government facilitate large-scale processors like your company and, more generally, promote growth in the sector?

[Daniel Vielfaure]

In our case, and also for smaller processors across Canada, a code of conduct is required. I spoke about this earlier in connection with distribution. You need to understand that Canada is a small and highly concentrated market. There are therefore not all that many options for Canadian processors if they were to go into close negotiations with one of the major distributors. Being healthy here would help us export much more. It's clear to me that the code of conduct is very important. We're talking today about promoting small processors. But honestly, we have to recognize that they are the ones that have the most trouble negotiating with the major distributors. It's very complex.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you very much.

That's all for me, but if one of my colleagues wants to ask a question, there are a few minutes left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

There is one minute remaining.

Does anyone want to ask a question?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Chair, you say we have about a minute. I will quickly ask my question.

Ms. Yasmeen, you mentioned Linda Best here in Nova Scotia. She's a constituent of mine. She does tremendous work through FarmWorks.

In your work with your organization, can you speak to the importance of venture capital and some of the challenges the smaller producers have in being able to access loans from banks to be able to make some of this happen.

[Gisèle Yasmeen]

Again, my understanding is that this is definitely a barrier. It's outside the scope of our mandate as a more civil society oriented organization, but from our networks we have learned that access to land and capital is a big barrier for small producers and processors.

In terms of addressing the details of how that works exactly, I think it would be better to have someone from those small business communities answer the details of those questions, but it's definitely a barrier.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Yasmeen. Thank you, Mr. Blois.

Over now to Mr. Perron for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Vielfaure, you emphasized the importance of introducing a code of conduct, which seems to be in the works. You also gave a good description of the labour problem. I would like to ask you about regulation. People who have appeared before this committee have told us that deregulation was required, or at least changes to Canada's regulations to harmonize our practices with others elsewhere.

Given that your company, Bonduelle Americas, has a presence in many countries, your expertise could be invaluable to us.

What ought to be changed in the regulations? You said earlier that strict food safety regulations could be an advantage. Could you give us more details about that?

[Daniel Vielfaure]

I don't think that we should reduce our efforts in terms of food security and safety. Canada has done very well in this regard. Furthermore, when processing is done in Canada, it adds value to the Canadian brands being exported.

As for products that may be consumed, including “phyto” or plant-based products, we would do well to align our regulations with others, particularly in view of the fact that we have a major competitor in the United States. Bonduelle Americas is a good example. We are sometimes required to take products that are authorized in the United States but not in Canada. Inventory management becomes complicated. In situations like these, it would definitely be desirable to harmonize our regulations.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Don't you think that this might make the situation less advantageous for Canada? You spoke about this at the beginning of your statement.

[Daniel Vielfaure]

Not at all. In this instance, we're not talking about food safety or security, but rather about plant-based products that companies don't even bother to have approved in Canada because the market is too small. Financially speaking, it's not worth it. On the other hand, Canada could base its regulations on research carried out elsewhere for approval purposes. It's not even because we would turn the product down. What's involved are often products that are healthier, but that companies don't bother to have approved in Canada.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

What can we do about this? Do you have something you can suggest to us?

[Daniel Vielfaure]

I believe that there could be cooperation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, are perfectly capable of working together. They're doing so already. It would mean that the studies would not need to be done over again. There is no reason why we can't trust studies that were done properly elsewhere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Messrs. Vielfaure and Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Now we'll go to Mr. MacGregor for two and a half minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Yasmeen, when you are reading through Food Secure Canada's report about how we build those resilient food webs in local and smaller communities.... When Food Secure Canada is interacting with the many organizations involved in food security and small farmers, what kind of feedback are they needing? You already talked a little bit about the access to capital, but what about some other models like the co-operative model? Are they just looking for the capital funds to get a facility built that will then allow them to take their business to new heights?

I'm just wondering if you can expand a little more on that for the committee's look at this issue.

[Gisèle Yasmeen]

There are lots of different models out there. There are some co-operatives and social enterprises. There are just regular micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that are a part of their local communities.

Some of the challenges I've been hearing about recently are in distribution and who controls the distribution. Sysco and GFS are really big players. There are now some alternatives to those distributors, which are now servicing smaller producers and processors because of, again, sometimes the logistics, the last-mile logistics, the last-kilometre logistics and everything.

I know there are some challenges there in terms of being able to access distribution networks. We talked about retailing as well.

Again, this is a bit outside of the scope of the mandate of my organization, but there are all sorts of challenges in terms of getting your products into retail because of maybe some kind of regulation of the CFIA and whatnot. Those are also issues.

There is a host of issues. Again, it's how the system is designed, what its objectives are and who is at the table when policies and programs are developed. That is the key message. I am not necessarily the best spokesperson for the business side of things. That's the best I can do within my mandate, but I would encourage you to hear directly from the very small-scale producers and processors.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.