Industry Committee on Feb. 26th, 2019

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

—at Marlborough Public School. It's been coming a long time and it's coming a long ways.

One of the things I do want to touch on is that they will be working on some new procedural elements for the bridge. Can you distinguish between small and medium-sized trucking outfits and independent truckers and what they face at border crossings, versus some of the larger corporations like Chrysler, General Motors and Ford, which get exemplary service for just-in-time delivery ? They get that because they have the staff and the procedural elements in place to do a lot of the pre-screening clearance and a series of things that are much more expensive for a small or medium-sized business to go through.

Can you distinguish between the two and perhaps what other border crossings might need to help facilitate small and medium-sized trucking outfits that don't have that same advantage?

[Stephen Laskowski]

How I would answer the question is to say that because of the nature of the border, the border definitely has changed the way you do business as a trucking company. With regard to security requirements and food inspections, it's becoming far more complicated. It has forced both big and small companies to adapt. The question, I would say, has become less about size and more about your choice of market space. Some companies have exited the cross-border business because of its complication and have returned to domestic only, so yes, it's a challenge.

With regard to the bridge structure itself, we are very excited. Both the staff at the Gordie Howe bridge and the government agencies—because it's multiple—have reached out to the trucking industry about how we can build, service and design plazas in the actual structure itself to best accommodate trucking and trade. We are very excited about that opportunity.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes. There's a real movement for that. In fact, the Windsor and district Chamber of Commerce and the institute for trucking at the University of Windsor's logistics program are looking at the potential for a hub and other services. They have recently deserved a lot of credit for getting people together, even just to try to see about some best practices.

I do want to shift gears a bit and stay with you, because it is very important. You mentioned staffing personnel for the trucking industry and immigration. I remember that back in 2002 when I was at the Canadian embassy, Raymond Chrétien was the ambassador when the first suggestion from the United States was to bring in the US-VISIT program. They identified that three sets of Canadians that happened to be born in different countries would be identified and screened differently.

I protested that immediately, because I come from a border community where lawyers and accountants cross into Detroit every single day. Doctors and nurses—up to 10,000 medical professionals a day—cross into Detroit to save American lives. That has now transgressed into a series of Canadians who happen to have been born even 30 or 40 years ago somewhere else and who are now being screened differently in the United States when going in there. We still have yet to have a prime minister object to that.

What I'm asking, though, is this. If we are going to have a newer force coming in, which I guess we do need to work with about cross-border screening, are you concerned? Again, this is a policy where I can tell you that they'll have all kinds of problems on the border at different times, just depending upon where a person came from originally, even if they're a Canadian citizen, let alone a landed immigrant.

[Stephen Laskowski]

I think the answer to the question is that at times it's a challenge and sometimes that challenge goes away. You're dealing with enforcement policies and people—and I emphasize people—and different people take different approaches.

I will compliment the federal governments on both sides of the border for working with the industry. I think there is a recognition that trade is important to both countries, despite what you see in the papers sometimes. I think you would know best that border communities understand the importance of what Canada means to the United States and vice versa.

We do monitor those situations and we do work with the local port officials, and sometimes with D.C. I believe there are always challenges, but we've found that there is an ability to work together.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I did have one other question. With the introduction of recreational marijuana and that, have there been any disruptions in your industry? I know that a lot of education went into the process for people to cross over and back and forth, but has that become an issue in any other parts of the country? For example, I know that in Ontario we haven't seen that as much, but in any other parts of Canada between Canada and the United States at the border crossings, is any of your intel coming back and indicating that's a problem?

[Stephen Laskowski]

We are monitoring it. We have not heard anything as yet. We have concerns as an industry, and we will continue to monitor that situation. Our overall position is that we would like to see mandatory drug and alcohol testing for all commercial truck drivers in Canada.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Lastly, I have another question on entering the market in terms of low-interest loans for truck drivers, especially independent truck drivers. Are there any programs or any comparables you have for that? Often what I hear about from a number of different independent trucking individuals is the cost of borrowing for their rig.

I know that the capital cost reduction allowance is something that Michael Chong, who is here on the committee, has fought for years for, and I think this committee produced our first report on that back in 2004. Also, low-interest loans could be a way of people getting into their own business, if they had that capability.

[Stephen Laskowski]

It's not something that the alliance has really looked into. We have our challenges right now attracting individuals. At times, carriers might work with smaller individuals to leverage the marketplace and work with them individually. The overall challenge right now isn't purchasing the trucks; it's finding professionals to actually operate the trucks.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Now we'll move to Mr. Longfield.

It's your turn.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, everybody, for your testimony. We've heard some really good details coming forward.

I want to hear from Mr. Freeborn, a University of Guelph grad; I have to start there. We had testimony last meeting from NSF International. They were talking about the Safe Food for Canadians Act, and specifically about making people aware of the changes so that they're not caught when the rules change.

Do you have concerns around the communication and implementation of things like the Safe Food for Canadians Act? Is there something we can do better there?

[Kevin Freeborn]

I think the safe foods act is primarily focused on the processing and the manufacturing, where we focus more on the retail and the sales in restaurants. That said, that seems to be more of a national approach. The challenge we face is that regulations in different jurisdictions can change—at any time, really. It is difficult to determine when that happens or how that happens unless you happen to be in touch with someone who's in the know with regard to that. Having a national body as one resource that we could go to in order to determine where we're at with the current situation, as well as with a proposed future situation, would be fantastic for people in our situation.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks.

You were talking about the regulations we have in Canada for food service, preparation, handling and serving, and about the opportunity to export some of that training. The red maple leaf on anything to do with food is one of our strongest brands. It seems as though we have a big opportunity where we could be doing training and exporting training. Could you expand on that a little bit?

[Kevin Freeborn]

Sure. In fact, we've seen other programs from other countries get approved in Canada, but we don't really have many resources available in terms of exporting to other countries.

One thing that would really help in terms of streamlining costs and bureaucracy would be to have standards in Canada that mirror standards in other countries. We could have consistent harmonization of information across those borders. That would make it a lot easier to create programs that could be exported, as opposed to creating.... What we'd be looking at now would be creating a different program for each country. That would not be very cost-effective, and it would be difficult to do.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. Thanks.

When I spoke with one of the restaurants in Guelph a couple of weeks ago, they were bringing in chefs from Italy. Another one was having trouble finding chefs. It seems, when we're bringing people in, there would have to be some type of onboarding to get them into Canadian regulations. Is that also something through immigration that we need to be considering?

[Kevin Freeborn]

Yes. In fact, we work with a lot of employment agencies that bring in new Canadians or retrain existing Canadians. One thing they do is they use national food safety training programs. The ability to have a national food safety training program, as I mentioned, relies on your ability to go through that cumbersome process of submitting to every jurisdiction and getting agreement from those folks. It's a lot easier and it's a lot better for the workforce if we can move people around across our country with one national standard.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. Terrific. Thank you very much.

Speaking of Italy, Ms. Abballe, I was listening with interest to the testimony about our multi-level slaughterhouse approvals. Slaughterhouse approvals in Ontario are different from those in Saskatchewan and in Alberta. The USDA seems to have found a way of going through that. The cost on your business is something that you have to bear, where in other provinces the provincial government would cover that cost. Are you aware of any of that? Would you like to see a harmonized slaughterhouse inspection service that's federally regulated and controlled and eliminate the provincial inspections?

[Jane Abballe]

Yes, I think it would be much easier for everybody to eliminate one level of inspection and to allow everybody, like in the U.S., to set...to have one inspection in every province and sell all over Canada. It would be helpful for small businesses, for sure.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

If this question is commercially something that you don't want to answer, that's fine. But do you have an idea of how much business you could do if that was changed? I'm thinking about one small business. What's the opportunity for you to sell more product that you can't have because of the cost to your business?

[Jane Abballe]

I think it will be a huge increase. Canada is—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Will it be many times of what you're doing?

[Jane Abballe]

It will be many times, for sure.

I have phone calls from Vancouver, Alberta and even from the U.S., from New York, but I'm not talking about the U.S. now. Even just from the Canadian market, from Montreal..... I just had mail last week from somebody who has a huge retail store in Montreal. He wants to buy my product. He said, “Can you ship it? Or, I will come and pick it up.” I said, “You can pick it up; I can't ship to you.”

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. It's like our regulations haven't grown with Canadians' now wanting to transfer product across the country. Because of the way we've set ourselves up, we can't do it.

[Jane Abballe]

I can't. I can't even sell to individuals—I am a company—but a lot of people, not businesses, call me personally too. I can't sell to them.

I don't have, for now, Internet sales, but probably we would start right away to sell all over Canada.