Thank you very much. I'll start off for the two of us.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for allowing us to speak to you this afternoon.
As was mentioned, the presentation you have in front of you we prepared and submitted back in September. There are a few changes, but we'll highlight those for you.
My name is Jim Laws. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council here in Ottawa. We are Canada's national trade association of federally inspected meat packers and processors of beef, pork, poultry, veal, and lamb.
The meat processing, packaging, and rendering industry is the largest food processing industry in Canada and the 11th largest manufacturing industry in the country. The industry has annual sales estimated at over $19.5 billion, and it employs over 67,000 Canadians.
Our members include companies such as Excel Fresh Meats, Cargill Foods, Lakeside Packers, Tyson Foods, Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Olymel, Piller's Sausages and Delicatessens, Quality Meat Packers, and Rancher's Beef.
Working in a meat processing plant is tough work. It's cold. The work is physically demanding, with many tasks accomplished in the standing position. It can be repetitive in nature. Although a lot of technology has changed the processes over the years, there is still a lot of manual labour in the processing of meat. Several of our meat slaughter and processing facilities are in trouble, especially in Alberta. They simply cannot find enough labour to keep the plants running.
Alberta Agriculture recently estimated the current economic loss within the meat industry alone in Alberta to be $500 million annually. The current shortage of semi-skilled meat-cutting labour in Canada is causing Canadian meat factories to sell their current production in lower form, such as bone-in or untrimmed, than they would if they had more labour.
The labour shortage also causes Canadian meat processing companies to import, for example, partially processed, high-value pork supplies from the United States, much of which originated in Canada, because the Canadian pork factories do not have enough labour to further process the pork to sell to their Canadian customers' high-value specifications.
The other factor is the huge economic potential of added value from processing live animals that are sent to the United States. Approximately eight million pigs and one million cattle are exported annually from Canada to the United States. We estimate the economic loss to Canada for the meat industry to be over $3 billion annually.
Canadian agriculture was built on immigration. Many of Canada's current producers, in fact, were not born in Canada but have built successful and prosperous farm businesses here in Canada. The same holds true of Canada's food processing sector. Canada's foreign worker program provides that opportunity for our industry to grow.
Thank you very much.
I'll now pass it on to Mr. Badger.