First of all, I'd like to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology for including Windsor as one of the cities to hold hearings in. It's important that Windsor's voice be heard, as we are a centre of manufacturing in Canada.
My name is Ed Kanters. I'm the chief financial officer of Accucaps Industries Limited. Accucaps is a full-service contract manufacturer that supplies soft gel capsules to a variety of customers in the pharmaceutical, over-the-counter drug, and health and nutritional industries. We have three plants in Ontario and we employ in the neighbourhood of 750 people across those three plants.
A significant issue facing our organization is the difficulty we have shipping our products across the border, here and the Windsor-Detroit crossing. We all know the world changed with September 11. Any Canadian organization that wants to export to the U.S. must be prepared to work within the rules and regulations that exist. The challenge we face is that the landscape continues to change. There are regular changes in customs regulations and procedures that can, at any point in time, significantly delay scheduled shipments across the border. Other agencies, such as the USDA, place complicated permitting and certification requirements on products that can act as non-tariff barriers to trade. Slowdowns at the border and regulatory issues can create the perception with our U.S. customers that it's becoming difficult to deal with a Canadian supplier.
To deal with this risk to our business, we have invested in infrastructure so that the impact on the customers is as transparent as possible, but we need support from our government agencies to address these issues and facilitate the smoother movement of product across the border.
Currency issues have also impacted our business significantly. The instability over the last four years and a steady strengthening of the Canadian dollar has put significant pressure on organizations such as ours. We understand that market forces drive currency over the long run, but fiscal and monetary policy domestically can help to smooth the nature of the currency swings. It adds a level of complexity and risk to organizations such as ours to react to sharp swings in currency value in a short period of time. Continued attention towards keeping our fiscal house in order as a country will help to keep our currency stable and mitigate an element of risk that we must deal with in our businesses.
A third challenge we face is funding the research and development required to develop new products and processes. Research and development has been mentioned by a number of my colleagues on the automotive side of things, but it's important across all sectors of industry. Canadian industries that wish to stay competitive on an international basis must do this investment in research and development. To compete effectively against products from parts of the world with much lower labour costs than ours, we need to be innovative in developing a steady stream of new products and new processes to manufacture those products. The SR&ED program is definitely helpful in supporting this, but this is an area where more is needed if we wish to stay competitive and keep an edge, particularly in our industry.
I wanted to keep things very brief, so I tried to stick to my notes exactly. Thank you for your attention.