Thank you.
I have a company in my riding, Frankia Fertilizers, that develops and export organic fertilizers to the United States. They obviously have to compete with American companies there. They interact with federal agencies on both sides of the border, and with state agencies. One of the big stumbling blocks they face is the time it takes to get a new product registered with both the CFIA and the Canadian intellectual property office. The CFIA takes 465 working days to respond, while the performance target for the Canadian intellectual property office for trademarks is 22-plus months. That compares with just a few weeks or months for American regulators that they deal with.
The people at Frankia Fertilizers are not objecting to these regulations around testing and registration. They simply feel that these regulations should come with enough funding support so that their applications can be dealt with in a reasonable time frame.
Can you commit to getting more resources to these Canadian agencies so that Canadian companies aren't at such a disadvantage?