Industry Committee on May 4th, 2020

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

My question is for Mr. Currie.

The CFA is calling for a $2.6-billion emergency fund to come out right away. Have you heard anything back from the federal government on that?

[Keith Currie]

To this point, the only thing we've heard back is that we have to use existing programming.

We've been working with our national commodities to come up with that figure. That's an aggregate number of the hurt to date, and actually those numbers are probably two weeks old now, understanding that we need more investment coming forward. However, we haven't really heard anything back, other than that we have to go through existing programs. We're struggling with that answer right now.

[Scott Ross]

I'd just like to follow up on Mr. Currie's response, if I could, for moment and just stress that the asks you're hearing coming from the cattle sector, for example, are the kinds of programming that we factored into the calculation of that number.

That $2.6-billion emergency fund we speak of is really to ensure that there's funding available for the targeted programming responses we're talking about today with respect to the cattle industry, for example.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Great.

A couple of weeks ago, my colleagues and I had put out a call for a new program from the federal government to help match students with agri-food and agriculture supply chain jobs. We've seen some shortages of labour due to COVID-19 right now with not being able to bring in some of our seasonal agricultural workers. The proposal would match students with jobs in agriculture, by a new stream of Canada summer jobs, giving them great experience in the industry and lots of opportunities there.

Are you supportive of that, and what have you seen out there as far as labour is concerned right now?

[Keith Currie]

We're definitely supportive of that. We're looking for labour. We're 15,000 to 16,000 jobs short on farms across Canada, even with a full complement of foreign labour.

We are cautious, though, that just walking onto a farm and starting to work isn't as simple as it sounds. I can't be an accountant because I want to be; I have to have training. It's the same thing with coming onto a farm.

There are certainly labour jobs. There are lots of them out there. Thus we welcome any student support that is available.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Ehsassi. You have five minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Member of Parliament Longfield.

Thank you ever so much for appearing before our committee. It seems to me, having listened to all of you, that processing is a very big part of the problem here.

Can the beef producers tell me how much of the processing of beef happens in Canada, and how much of it, in turn, is done south of the border?

[Bob Lowe]

I can't give you exact numbers. There is a percentage that goes south of the border. In Canada, the two major plants, or processors, are both in Alberta, and that amounts to about 70% of the cattle that get processed in Canada.

I don't know the actual percentage that goes south, but it's not very big.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

In terms of your recommendations, and I understand Ms. Jackson also was talking about export development, what are some suggestions we could utilize to build more capacity for processors?

I put that question to all of you.

[Fawn Jackson]

We have previously recommended this export development fund. One of the reasons is that, for Canadian beef, we have access to a number of new markets and we want to make sure we're optimizing that in terms of economic growth.

Perhaps a processing facility might need to invest in cooler space, or it might need to invest in some research or in some market development. Our idea is that if we could have this fund that would enable some of that growth, we would be able to optimize the Canadian beef industry's contribution to the Canadian economy.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Are there any other suggestions for immediate capacity building in the processing sector?

[Keith Currie]

I think the next stumbling block is employees. We have to make sure we have PPE in place and that facilities have protective barriers in place to make sure we're maintaining as much capacity as possible going forward. Getting people to work there is the big issue.

[Scott Ross]

Yes. Just building on those comments, I think we've heard time and again that recruitment is a real challenge in the current environment. There is the need for a financial incentive to help bring Canadians out to these jobs, and assistance with the costs associated with training would be a big investment in the processing sector as well.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you for that.

Go ahead, MP Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Ehsassi. You didn't say you were going to ask my questions when I said I would share my time with you.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Oh, my goodness.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Processing is an important piece, and when we look at the BSE outbreak, we see that a lot of the processing went to the United States. Now the Americans have a lot of plants that are shutting down. It seems to me that if we were able to build capacity, we could also capitalize on some export opportunities. You've mentioned labour being one of the issues. I know that in Guelph, we've helped Cargill to bring in some people from overseas to work as butchers. We have skilled positions that we have trouble filling. We also have interprovincial barriers.

I'd like to touch on that. I know we're talking about finances now, but I'm trying to get past COVID to the future opportunity of export development. What would it take for us to increase our capacity?

[Fawn Jackson]

I would suppose that one of the remnants from the BSE era was a set of regulations that required Canadian processors to remove a larger amount of something called “specified risk material”.

Next year we're hoping to get our BSE “negligible risk” status. I think this is a really opportune time to be thinking about this, because investment in processing.... As Keith Currie mentioned earlier, value added to the Canadian economy comes from further processing. We have the farms; if we have the processing, that's going to be our big opportunity.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

The demand will be there, but we need to meet that with the supply and the farmers need us to help them do that as well.

Mr. Currie, do you have anything to add?

[Keith Currie]

No, I'll just follow up from where Fawn was. Eastern Canada has been suffering for some time in processing capacity, so that investment for the future is also quite necessary to help us recover post-COVID-19.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, 100%. Thank you.

I'll turn my eight seconds back to the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Let's move on to our next round of questions.

Mr. Lemire, you have two and a half minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I yield my time to Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

My question is for our friends, the processors from Quebec.

You formulated a proposal to increase the Canadian Dairy Commission's borrowing capacity, which would have allowed it, and would still allow it, to reduce the amount of product it's throwing away. Could you tell us about that proposal and why it wasn't acted on? Is the idea still relevant today?