Thank you.
Food and beverage manufacturing is Canada's largest manufacturing sector and largest manufacturing employer, employing more than 318,000 Canadians. When we're talking about this industry, we're talking about the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families and the stability of food supply that Canadians rely on.
The biggest challenge for us today is unpredictable access to our most important market—the U.S. Roughly 80% of Canadian agri-food exports go south of the border. Our supply chains are so tightly integrated that even small shocks cascade quickly. While we appreciate the government's efforts, many existing programs to support our industry still miss the mark. Too often these programs are narrow in scope, slow to deploy and too complex for small companies to take advantage of, or they exclude companies that are integral to our supply chains in their criteria. This leaves many manufacturers without meaningful support.
We were pleased to see the domestic processing fund in the Liberal Party's platform. However, respectfully, $200 million is simply not enough dedicated support for Canada's largest manufacturing industry. For many companies, annual operating costs go into the millions of dollars, meaning that this fund risks being oversubscribed quickly. Similarly, the regional tariff response initiative is a step in the right direction, but its restriction to companies with fewer than 500 employees excludes many of the larger manufacturers that anchor Canada's domestic food production capacity.
Given the investment needs of our industry and the gaps in current programs, we're hopeful that the newly announced strategic response fund will prioritize our industry and companies big and small. Supporting this industry is critical not only to Canada's food sovereignty but also to enabling us to compete with imports, diversify our export markets and seize new international opportunities.
We agree that market diversification is important, but strengthening domestic competitiveness must be part of this strategy. This means tackling key structural challenges—labour shortages, by extending expiring work permits, ensuring pathways to permanent residency and ensuring our access to the temporary foreign worker program; and regulatory burdens, by reducing duplicative or outdated regulations that cause unnecessary costs and delays—providing capital investments and supports, and avoiding new sources of domestic uncertainty, such as ensuring that food is exempt from Bill C-5.
A competitive domestic processing industry is the foundation that allows Canada to add value to its primary agriculture, to supply quality and affordable food to Canadians and to withstand trade disruption. Without it, we risk losing capacity, jobs and resilience.
Thank you.