Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members.
Thank you to for this opportunity to speak this afternoon.
My name is Cheryl Paradowski. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Food Industry Council, which represents the grocery retail and wholesale sector in Canada. Our vision is to create effective solutions to the human resource challenges faced by the food retail and wholesale sector to ensure the long-term growth and viability of an industry that feeds 32 million Canadians in every community across this country and makes a significant contribution to the standard of living that we currently enjoy.
We are part of Canada's national sector council network. I understand that the committee has already received some presentations from our colleagues. I know my colleague Mr. Maynard is giving a little more of an introduction to sector councils, so I am going to speak mostly about our sector.
As an overview, our industry employs over 570,000 Canadians, which is just over 3% of the Canadian workforce. It is one quarter of the total retail workforce. The industry generates over $70 billion in sales each year, which contributes $22.5 billion to Canadians' annual GDP--about 2%--a more significant contribution, I think, than many people often consider from this industry.
The industry represents 45,000 businesses, one third of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, so we certainly represent a range across Canada. Unlike some of the other industries that I'm sure you've been hearing of, only 24% of our workforce is over the age of 45, versus the national average, which is around 39% right now. So we are a relatively young industry, although in some of the key positions we are still projected to have some impact from the baby boomer departure. As an example, one of our major stakeholders has 25% of their meat cutters, meat managers, and bakers between the ages of 58 and 65, so there are some impacts pending there.
I want to take an opportunity to speak about some of the key challenges we face. The first is based on being part of the service sector as a whole. I know, based on the colleagues I have with me this afternoon, you're certainly going to be hearing about skilled trades, many of whom consider themselves to be the poor cousins when we look at people's impressions of careers and jobs. If skilled trades are the poor cousins, I sometimes think the service sector is the illegitimate children who nobody is even prepared to recognize, because we really find that the impression people have is that this is not a sector where you can build a career, and it really hurts the opportunity for our industry to attract staff.
I heard a story this past weekend. I was meeting with an extremely successful one-store operator in the Ottawa area who worked in the industry all his life. He went to the University of Ottawa, studied business, and had no fewer than three of his professors try to convince him that he was going to waste his education if he didn't go out and work at a real job. That's the type of challenge we face in trying to build a competitive workforce.
Recently, over 85% of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business retail members reported hiring difficulties in the past three years, according to a survey they conducted in 2005. It is a huge challenge to attract individuals, starting in the service sector, then into retail as a whole, and then looking at food retail specifically, which isn't even as sexy as selling jeans for the Gap or cosmetics at the Body Shop.
Our stakeholders basically include the large retailers. Our board of directors includes Loblaws, Safeway, Sobeys, and A&P Canada, which now represents Metro as well. Of the major unions in the industry--and it is a highly unionized industry, with over 40% unionized, which is a fair bit higher than the national average--UFCW Canada is the largest, followed by the Teamsters, which largely represents the warehouse piece. Then there are major associations in the industry: the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers and l'Association des détaillants en alimentation. So we have a pretty representative group of stakeholders.
They have identified their major issues as improving the image of the industry as a career destination, because those are key issues that impact both recruitment and retention; and enhancing the training culture within the sector, because currently, as a result of the image issues, turnover is so high that it is difficult to convince operators to invest in training staff who are going to leave quickly.
In terms of looking at establishing stronger links with the education community, we certainly discovered one dichotomy. Our industry is indicating that there is a shortage of meat cutters, yet we have colleges cutting meat-cutting programs. We have to fix that up, along with strengthening the human resource practices of small and medium-sized operations that don't have a head office to back them up.
I'll finish with some of the recommendations, because we were asked to bring recommendations as to what the federal government could be doing about these issues. I certainly hope you will continue to consider the sector council program to be a key partner in addressing the issues of employability and the enhancement of the productivity within the Canadian economy.
The federal government can continue to gather detailed information about diverse labour market needs and issues that would help to drive the federal immigration policy. Considering that HRSDC estimates that 100% of the growth in Canada's workforce will be the result of immigration by 2013, we have a concern that our current policies aren't going to attract the kinds of people who are going to be able to be hired into our sector. Sector councils can certainly be a key partner in providing that information as well.
We hope the federal government will continue retaining some form of national training and development mandate, even if it's as simple as the tax incentives that would encourage employers to consider training as an investment rather than a cost. Full devolution of the training agenda at the provincial level does create too many opportunities for duplication of effort and fragmentation of results.
Finally, we would suggest a review of the pension and income tax policies that currently create a disincentive for mature workers to consider part-time employment, because we do see this as being a primary source of an alternative labour market for the grocery retail sector, especially considering that demographics are projecting such a shrinkage in the youth workforce, which is currently our primary source.
Thank you again very much for the opportunity to address you this afternoon.