Thank you.
Thank you for allowing Maple Leaf to participate in this process.
As a leading Canadian agrifood processor, Maple Leaf Foods is confronting the consequences of currency appreciation and intense global competition by making some tough choices: driving for scale, efficiency, and innovation in every aspect of our business and doing some significant restructuring and refocusing to allow us to compete effectively in the future. This has involved some painful choices. I am here to ask the government to embark on a courageous journey of its own, built on better federal-provincial coordination, to strengthen our home-field advantage while building our global opportunities.
Ironically, most of the important items in our brief are not money issues. The areas of regulatory climate, trade policy, and labour market issues are fundamentals of business prosperity, which in turn will grow the economic and tax base to assist in meeting the government's other important goals. Pivotal to all these areas is the need for better federal-provincial coordination. I understand the difficulties and complexities of this, but being caught in between legislation, combined with duplication of some efforts, can diminish our ability to be nimble and competitive.
I'll talk about a few items in our brief. With regard to regulation, we would like to see revisions to the federal legislation for food safety, quality, and animal and plant health. We encourage more responsive federal and provincial government mechanisms and increased funding to deal with the growing number of food safety issues. Sometimes, smart regulations mean deliberately protecting the home-field advantage and not just assuming regulatory harmonization with the U.S. is the best solution to maximizing our competitive position. Yes, we want a level playing field when it comes to our primary input, but as we go up the value chain, we need to make strategic choices in terms of harmonization, just as our competing countries do.
With regard to trade, globalization means today, more than ever before, countries are competing on a global basis. A key component of creating a global competitive advantage for Maple Leaf's supply chain is ensuring that a highly efficient transportation gateway and corridor is available. Improved port and surface transportation infrastructure, especially in western rail service, the Deltaport container facilities and the container facility at Prince Rupert, and the investment in the Pacific gateway are vital to our export businesses.
With regard to labour, along with many other companies, we face significant labour recruitment and retention problems in western Canada, especially in our meat processing plant. We need quicker and easier access to the foreign worker program. Specifically, we need changes in legislation to facilitate the more rapid entry of workers into sectors where labour shortages are currently experienced. This includes a simplified efficient process to get workers into the country, an approval process that doesn't allow unions and competitors to block, and a clearer process on how foreign workers can eventually become permanent residents.
With regard to science and innovation, the federal government can strengthen partnerships with industry, academia, and the provinces to achieve a more cohesive national agrifood science and innovation strategy, joining efforts with a few key centres of excellence across Canada. All these priorities should be built into a new agricultural policy framework that places a specific focus on innovation and makes Canada unique and valued on the world stage as an innovator in food production.
Finally, with regard to financial stability for our farmer partners, this is critical. We have to move beyond a reactive, crisis-driven approach in income support to building policies and programs that support sustainable growth, innovative competition, and wealth creation in the whole agrifood value chain. The food industry, not just the farm sector, needs to be more fully brought into policy and program design and funding decisions. A new APF, better balanced toward innovation, food safety, and international trade, will be of great assistance.
In conclusion, Maple Leaf Foods is committed to a growing and prosperous Canada. We are now counting on the government to provide action in the five areas I have spoken of: one, implementation of smart regulation, with a more strategic approach to harmonization; two, an open, predictable trade environment, including improved infrastructure to facilitate competitiveness; three, better, more efficient access to foreign workers; four, a more strategic federal-provincial approach to science and innovation; and five, stable support for our farm sector.
Thank you for your time, and I appreciate the consultations you're embarking upon.