Agriculture Committee on Feb. 25th, 2021

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses very much for being here today.

My questions will be directed to the Canards du Lac Brome representative. I think I recognize the fir trees and the white building on Centre Road in Knowlton. I don't know if I'm right.

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

You're right.

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

I lived on Knowlton Road for several years and on Oak Street, which is not that far away.

Canards du Lac Brome is a jewel of my region, Brome—Missisquoi. I am happy to hear your comments today. You talked about the labour shortage. We know it's mostly in higher-skilled jobs.

How can the federal government help to attract and train workers for jobs in processing, which may be less desirable?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

I don't know if I expressed myself well. I was talking about unskilled jobs. I used those words to refer to the employees in our processing chain. Usually these employees don't necessarily have a specialty and we train them ourselves.

We don't have the same problem with employees in slightly more technical or specialized posts. We are not saying that recruitment is easy, far from it. It's very time-consuming. It used to be a lot easier. It's become very complicated for everyone, but we're getting there on the technical or more specialized side.

The difficulty lies more in recruiting production employees.

As for training, we offer it in-house.

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

I see.

In your opening remarks, you also mentioned that labour shortages lead to wasted product. Can you explain this problem in a little more detail?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

Under normal circumstances, when a slaughterhouse is fully staffed, the entire duck is recovered. This includes offal, feathers and anything inedible. In the case of a duck, this includes the tongue and legs. Everything is recovered. When we are short of manpower, unfortunately, we are forced to throw away parts that we could add value to, and that we used before.

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

Here is a small personal question. What do you do with the feathers?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

Much of them are taken up by the export market for insulation, coats and pillows, among other things. The duck feather is undeniably the best feather there is. The Canadian feather in particular is recognized worldwide as one of the best. It is better than the American feather.

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

This is a feather in Canada's cap.

Committee members heard a great deal about technological innovations during the course of this study. It is known that automation can replace some jobs, but not all.

To what extent can automation be a solution to do the kind of work your company does?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

As you probably know, in 2016, we were lucky, or unlucky, to have to build a completely new plant with all the new technologies. So we are fortunate to have the most modern plant in Canada and the best processes in the world. These are mainly European technologies. That's how we're set up.

Indeed, if we compare this plant to our former facilities, we can see that there are some very interesting aspects that allow us to reduce certain positions, and so reduce labour use. Nevertheless, this industry is very specialized and involves several operations. In general, there is a lot of manual work in slaughtering, and this will not change.

If we wanted to go further, we would be looking at astronomical sums for a very small market.

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

I see.

You also talked about importing ducks from Europe, whose standards fall under the Safe Food for Canadians Act.

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

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

What are your thoughts on the enforcement of this act? Do you think it provides good mechanisms to protect Canadian consumers from the importation of inferior products?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

In theory, when the law is well applied, it works well. The act is supposed to provide protection to Canadian citizens, both for domestically produced and imported products. There seems to be a problem in terms of the number of resources assigned to manage this. On the sites, many agency staff are monitoring every detail, whereas for an imported product, the same efforts are not being made.

It is not quite reciprocal, because although it is not impossible for us to export our products to the European market, it is much more bureaucratic and much more difficult for us to obtain approvals than it is for Europeans.

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

Okay. I've got 30 seconds left.

Beyond what was discussed, what investment would you like to see to help the processing sector, especially in the regions?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

As I said earlier, the most important issues in the regions are labour and market development. When it comes to labour, we need to be successful in attracting the type of people we need in our facilities. If the goal is to increase sales in new markets, you need to help niche markets like ours, which are often left to their own devices to try to develop markets from scratch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. O'Shaughnessy and Ms. Bessette.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Perron, you now have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank our two witnesses.

As Mr. Lehoux pointed out, your problems seem to be similar.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy, I'm going to continue with you.

What could be changed to rectify this situation? We've heard several times that imported products do not meet the same standards.

What are some concrete recommendations we could make to the government?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

On our side, the problem has been going on for several years. Historically, we've had a hard time being heard. That has probably been our biggest problem.

On the other hand, I must admit that the situation has changed a lot in the last few months. We have been put in touch with the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We were really heard and action has been taken.

The Association des éleveurs de canards et d’oies du Québec, the Quebec duck and goose breeders association, was forced to pay for independent studies. We had to do our own studies. Getting our voice heard and our point of view across was difficult.

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

You're getting into part of Mr. Falk's statement about a relationship of trust. You seem to be telling us that we are in a relationship of mistrust and denunciation rather than a collaborative relationship. But I understand that that is changing.

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

As far as I'm concerned, I can say that there has indeed been a lot of progress. I think the contacts and relationships we have managed to have in the last five months are historic. It's the right thing to do.

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

Have you seen any change with respect to foreign products that are sold in the grocery store, or not yet?

[Philip O'Shaughnessy]

Yes, we have seen a change. Of course, there's a particular economic climate right now. There are people in Europe who have stopped their production. Recently, we haven't seen the unacceptable things we used to see before.