Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Bill Greuel. I'm the CEO of Protein Industries Canada. I'm joining you today from Regina, so I'd like to take a second to acknowledge that I'm on Treaty 4 territory, the original land of the Cree, Ojibway, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota and Lakota, and homeland of the Métis nation.
Protein Industries Canada is one of Canada's five innovation superclusters. We were created because Canada has the potential to be a leader in the production of plant protein ingredients and food.
We were created to capture more value here at home and create a significant economic benefit for Canadians. We will do that by increasing ingredient and food processing capacity in Canada.
The Barton report, which has been mentioned today, laid the foundation for Protein Industries Canada, and we continue to use the goals set out in this report as our top-line objectives.
To date, we have over 240 members from coast to coast. Along with our private industry partners, we have invested well over $300 million into Canada's agri-food sector, with a large portion of that directly supporting ingredient and food processing activities.
Agriculture is a Canadian success story. We are known worldwide as the supplier of high-quality cereals, pulses and oilseed crops. Through the hard work of our farmers, ranchers, researchers, processors and many other important links in the value chain, agriculture and food, including food and beverage manufacturing, contributes upward of $112 billion to our GDP and employs more than 2.3 million Canadians.
Our success is understandable. We have the third-largest area of arable land per capita in the world, with some of the best growing conditions. We have proven to be resilient and dedicated, adopting new technologies to increase production while sequestering carbon in our soils, yet for everything we have to be proud of, we also still have much work to do.
We are only the 11th-largest global agri-food economy ,and I would argue that we should be much higher. We continue to be commodity-focused, making us vulnerable to trade disruptions of the kind we witnessed with canola sales to China and our pulse trade with India. We are lagging in science and innovation expenditures relative to many other nations. The reality is that we have a lot of land and resources, but we are not a large enough global agri-food sector. We have room to grow.
There is one way we can overcome these challenges to create more opportunities for Canada and for our people, and that's to increase ingredient and food processing here at home to add more value to raw commodities in Canada. Increasing ingredient and food-processing capacity in Canada is critical to our economic recovery and future growth. By increasing Canada's processing capacity, we will secure a safe supply of healthy, sustainable foods for Canadians and for our partners around the globe. We will insulate ourselves against trade disruption and create jobs and wealth for Canadians.
The vulnerability of our agri-food supply chain became evident in the early days of COVID-19, when for the first time many Canadians experienced a shortage of staples at their grocery store shelves. Thankfully, our food system bent but did not break. This is good news for Canadians, but we need to take some lessons from what 2020 has handed us, most notably in how we are fostering and supporting the food processing sector in Canada to ensure a resilient system that can take advantage of the growth opportunity that ingredient and food processing offers us to insulate ourselves in future from shocks to the system of the kind we experienced in the early days of COVID-19.
I believe we must do as much for the ingredient and food processing sector as we've done for primary production. It is not a question of either/or; it is a question of “and”. If Canada makes ingredient and food processing and food manufacturing a higher national priority, we have the opportunity to build an industry that can help with our economic recovery while also ensuring we insulate ourselves from future economic and unforeseen shocks, such as the global pandemic we are currently facing.
More processing will also insulate us from trade disruptions, and more importantly, create economic growth and jobs for Canadians. We know that by processing even an additional 20% of Canadian crops, such as pulses, canola and wheat, here in Canada, we can add an additional $12 billion to our national economy every year. I believe 20% is just the start and that we can and should do more.
In order to reach that objective and those of the Barton report, we need to take our ingredient and food processing sector to a higher priority. We need continued and deliberate investment and a plan like the one we have at Protein Industries Canada.
Canada needs to be a leader in science, technology and innovation. We need a regulatory environment that can keep up with the pace of innovation to ensure that our products can get to store shelves.
We need continued access to new markets to build on the brand as a preferred and reliable commodity supplier and to ensure that Canada is a preferred choice for sustainably produced ingredients and food. We need to attract capital investment. We know that in order to reach our full potential and to be able to process more here in Canada, we will need a significant amount of investment to build new processing facilities.
We are starting to see and build momentum. We have seen Roquette build the world's largest wet-fractionation pea processing facility in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, and Merit Functional Foods' new processing plant in Winnipeg will open in early 2021. As well, Verdient Foods and Ingredion continue to expand and commission new technologies in Saskatchewan.
Protein Industries Canada is working with all of these partners to do its part to grow Canada's processing sector. We must build on the momentum and capture this opportunity for Canada.
We continue to make connections between companies, from processors in the west to food manufacturers in the east and to multinational food companies that are incorporating Canadian ingredients into their global food brands. This work, and more, is what will help grow Canada's processing sector, a sector that's of the utmost importance and one that's a growth opportunity for Canada.
I have had the honour of being involved in agriculture my entire life, from growing up on our family farm in central Saskatchewan to working in seed genetics and crop protection to working in the public service in regulatory and policy roles. I'm very proud to be a part of this sector. This job as CEO of Protein Industries Canada is by far the most exciting, because I'm helping write a new chapter for Canada's agri-food sector, one that helps Canada become a global leader in the production of high-quality, sustainably produced ingredients.
I want to thank you for your time today and for your hard work and commitment to Canada's agri-food sector.