Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee. It's great to be here today.
It's going to sound like I'm repeating messages you've heard already.
A very unfortunate situation took place on February 24 when Russia declared war on Ukraine. It's not a good situation at all. My grandfather immigrated from Ukraine back in 1927, so it was near and dear to my heart too, even though my last name is Pelissero. I'm Italian on one side and Ukrainian on the other side. I was born in Canada, and I'm just confused and mixed up, so that's why I'm wearing a tie today.
In all seriousness, we're here today to discuss those same concerns that our colleagues have discussed regarding food safety. In the egg sector, there are 1,200 family farms across this country producing eggs each and every day for Canadians so that they have them to buy in the grocery stores. The egg sector delivers roughly 19,000 jobs and adds $1.3 billion to our GDP.
We are very thankful for the measures the government has taken to support Ukraine in this crisis. However, it would be unwise of us not to raise our concerns here today regarding the remission order and how it relates to Canada's egg-farming sector.
While the intent of the remission order is to support the Ukrainian farmers, our concerns shine a light on the complexity of hasty decisions when it comes to the trade of food items. It is likely that once CFIA completes the export certificate process for eggs and egg products, large egg-processing companies based in Ukraine could leverage this remission order.
I'm also a member of the International Egg Commission and an office-holder there. There is one large processor in Ukraine. Their name is Ovostar. They are also the largest egg producer in Ukraine, with 6.4 million layers. That's 8% of the production in Ukraine. Our concern is whether they would be helping all Ukrainian farmers or whether it would be one producer and one processor benefiting from all of this.
As far as traceability and food safety programming there go, they also have a processing facility in Latvia. Does that mean product will flow in from there? We're not sure. We hope it wouldn't be, if that was the case.
We talk about the welfare standards for hens and the high level of accountability of our farmers, through daily audits, for instance, that are rigorous. We are concerned about the unfortunate situation in Ukraine. We know that just being able to farm each and every day is enough for these farmers, never mind the audits they have to have in place. I can't imagine having to deal with a war along with doing all the paperwork farmers need to do each and every day in order to export something through a processor to go to Canada.
As we continue to talk about the things that are unfolding, we cannot guarantee what level of production will be tapped into. We have just come through COVID. We were managing that, pivoting on an almost weekly basis with the spikes and openings and closings of restaurants and how those affected the production. Not once were we shorted in the market, but trade agreements and TRQs, as Mr. McFall mentioned, make things far more manageable for us and do not impact our farmers each and every day.
Mr. Lambert will identify and highlight the other topic, so I'll pass it over to him.
Go ahead, Tim.