Perfect. Thanks very much for the invitation to appear today and speak in favour of Bill C-234.
My name is Ryan Koeslag, and I am joined today by Mike Medeiros, president of the Canadian Mushroom Growers' Association and a mushroom grower. Our association is a member of the Agriculture Carbon Alliance and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
For those who are not aware, Canada has a strong, adaptable and high-tech mushroom sector that contributes over a billion dollars to the Canadian economy. Canada grows over 150,000 tonnes of mushrooms annually, and mushroom farms are a big job creator in Canada, creating over 6,400 jobs with competitive wages. Although robotic technologies are being explored, almost all mushrooms are currently picked by hand, and we experience some of the greatest labour shortages in agriculture.
Canadian mushrooms grow 24-7, 365 days a year, supplying nearly all of the fresh mushrooms found in grocery stores across Canada all year round. We export 40% of what we grow to the United States.
Let's think about that for a moment. How many crops in Canada are grown 365 days a year? To grow crops in Canada during the winter, growing rooms must be heated. The carbon tax is adding additional costs to our farms for uniquely growing food in this country during the Canadian winter. Although mushrooms are grown indoors in climate-controlled buildings just like greenhouses, mushrooms were not exempt from the carbon tax. The Canada Revenue Agency has been unable to provide real reasons for why the greenhouse exemption that has been in place for a couple of years now wasn't applied to mushrooms, as the mushroom sector experiences some of the same cost factors as greenhouses, and large concentrations of mushroom farms are located right next to the major greenhouse growing regions in Canada.
With no alternative fuel sources currently available, our farms are unfairly penalized by the carbon tax. We support Bill C-234 for items like the heating of agriculture facilities for growing purposes, and see the carbon tax increasing the cost of production in areas like heating, transportation and other inputs.
I'll pass the floor over to Mike Medeiros, the president of the Canadian Mushroom Growers' Association and a grower at Carleton Mushroom Farms, located just south of Ottawa.