Finance Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Dr. Marlene Smadu]

Yes, absolutely. They're running remote and rural stations, they're clinical nurse specialists. Yes, they're practising, often from those vulnerable circumstances.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

That's interesting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Do you have any idea how many nurses would be in Afghanistan right now?

[Dr. Marlene Smadu]

I don't, but I had a very interesting conversation with a nurse who has been in Afghanistan. She practises in Calgary and will be going back to Afghanistan in May. She's in the reserves. Her comment was that they're badly in need of nurses to work in Afghanistan, so we've arranged some speaking engagements for her.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you.

We'll conclude with Madame Ablonczy.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank all of you. It's always good to be in our neighbouring province of Saskatchewan. I'm from Alberta. Of course, you know the joke. Half the people in Calgary are from Saskatchewan, and now we know Saskatchewan's coming to Alberta for workers. So there's a lot of back and forth, and we appreciate that.

I want to ask a question of you, Mr. Schmeiser, because my husband sells farm machinery and he would never forgive me if I didn't ask you a question.

We know there are machine manufacturing companies, like Flexi-Coil and others, here in Saskatchewan. You've asked for some tax relief measures and those sorts of things. Could you give us some idea of how the Canadian industry of farm machine implement manufacturing is faring compared to your competition across the border?

[John Schmeiser]

Thank you for the question.

Based on 2005 sales that are provided by the Manufacturers' Association, $2 billion worth of new farm equipment was sold by those five companies that I alluded to a little bit earlier—three headquartered in the United States and two headquartered in Italy.

In Canada, a short-line manufacturer, Flexi-Coil, is now owned by an Italian company, but there are significant manufacturers like Bourgault Industries, Morris Industries, and MacDon Industries that make farm equipment designed for western Canadian farming conditions. Their numbers equal the $2 billion that was sold by what we call the “majors”, or the foreign-based manufacturers. So $4 billion in new farm equipment was sold in 2005, split equally between foreign manufacturers and Canadian manufacturers.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Is equipment manufactured here in Canada more cost-effective for Canadian producers?

[John Schmeiser]

At one time it was. In the case of the examples of the manufacturers that I gave you, it was designed more for western Canadian farming conditions.

Just as a quick example, an air seeder designed by John Deere is probably more likely to be designed for soil conditions in Iowa and Nebraska, whereas an air seeder designed by Bourgault Industries originally was designed for farming conditions here in Saskatchewan. But to credit those manufacturers, they've taken that technology and exported it to other places in the world that have similar types of soil conditions and farming conditions.

Also, the other thing that really comes into play is the currency exchange. Our short-line manufacturers based here in western Canada were doing very well when the Canadian dollar was around 65¢ or 66¢ U.S. The U.S. market has slowed a bit for them, but other markets, like eastern Europe, western Europe, and Australia, are still pretty strong for those manufacturers.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

You mentioned needing tax breaks for training and for journeymen's tools. Do you have difficulty in keeping people in the industry? Where would they be going otherwise?

[John Schmeiser]

The answer is yes, we do. And they're not only going to the oil industry, which is the big assumption, they're going to the trucking industry and they're going to the automotive industry. In the last two years, our organization has gone over to Germany to recruit mechanics to bring them over to fill the void. The bottom line is that we're not getting enough people into the industry. We've seen colleges like Olds College and SIAST in Saskatoon cut back the number of spaces for mechanics, which is our biggest need. They're cutting back the spaces because the demand just isn't there.

We're trying our best, through our charitable foundation, to get scholarships to get people into the industry. We're going overseas. Our salaries have come up. But at the end of the day, it's the farmer and customer who pay, through the labour rate that we charge.

Everything we're doing is like a shotgun approach, so we're looking for the one magic bullet that's going to solve our technician shortage. We can't find it. We looked inward and decided that if we pay our people more, our chances of keeping them are going to be better. We've seen salaries increase as high as 30% to 40% in the last two years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much.

Panel, if you'll indulge me for a moment before I dismiss you, I would like to conclude with a couple of brief remarks.

Our committee is engaging in a rather intensive process, as you may understand, over a period of a number of weeks. We are going to lose four of our committee members, so I'm going to use this occasion prior to their departure just to say thanks to them.

I know you appreciate the importance of what we're doing better now perhaps than you did at the start of this process. It's an intense process of listening, gathering incredibly important information, weighing the pros and cons of every argument, and trying to come together with a clear direction as to how we should proceed as a country.

It's a very important process. It could not happen without the support and participation of hundreds of people who represent thousands and in fact millions of Canadians, so your participation, panel, is important.

I should note that we are over halfway in our process now. Congratulations. We have heard over 250 presentations. The participation of this particular committee's members in the discussions and in virtually all of the meetings of our committee is commendable, to say the least.

We couldn't function as a committee without the support and dedication of our staff. Our logistical people, researchers, translators, and our clerks deserve a tremendous thanks.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

I am truly disappointed that four of our members cannot accompany us to my home town of Portage la Prairie for our next meeting, but I do encourage all the other members of the committee to look forward to that. I hope you'll find the prairie hospitality to be to your liking, as we have here in Saskatoon.

So thank you again, particularly to all committee members for their professionalism and their independent contributions. We have kept to a bare minimum the excessive partisanship that all too often characterizes televised parliamentary work, and that has increased the effectiveness of our work. I also think it has probably contributed, to some degree, to an increased level of esteem among those who have participated in the process and who have communicated to all of us that they appreciate that. So I thank you all.

We are adjourned.