Industry Committee on July 6th, 2020

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Great. Thank you.

I see that I am out of time, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Lambropoulos for five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'm actually starting to lose the connection, Madam Chair, but I will do my best.

First of all, I would like to thank you for representing this group of workers who took on their role heroically during the pandemic, which we are still fighting. These workers continued to provide essential services to all Canadians when they could have stayed home and received the CERB. They remained loyal to their employers during that time.

As you pointed out, the pension plan is already inadequate for these workers—

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Yes, Mr. Patzer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

As I'm hearing both the member in French and the interpretation at the same time, I'm hearing nothing. There are two voices at the same time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

MP Lambropoulos, can you make sure you're on a French channel?

Okay. Can we try again?

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

There we go, done. So I will continue.

As you pointed out, the retirement plan for those workers is already inadequate. Their group insurance is inadequate. They certainly deserve more than this $2 premium.

My first question goes to you, Mr. Lacroix. Could you tell me what percentage, how many, of your members still earn only the minimum wage set by their own provinces?

[Stéphane Lacroix]

I would say that it is at least 50% of them. In some cases, they earn a little more than the minimum wage. Here, in Quebec, a considerable number of our workers earn barely more than the minimum wage.

Here is what I have noticed in recent years. Each month, in our grocery stores in Quebec, 10% of the employees leave the job to go and work elsewhere. So we have a rotation; it is a revolving door situation. That very clearly indicates that conditions are not adequate. Even if the salary is slightly above the minimum wage by $1 or $2, the conditions are clearly inadequate. So people decide to leave the job, to look elsewhere, and to work in other industries.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

In your opinion, what measures should be put in place to deal with periods of uncertainty like this one? What conditions, what salaries should grocery store employees have?

[Stéphane Lacroix]

I don't have a specific salary to suggest, but I can state that, if we do not re-value the grocery trade—let's call it that—we will never be able to keep people. We will never be able to stop the revolving door. That would involve a substantial increase in salary.

If someone earns $25,000 or $30,000 per year, can they buy a house and start a family? In Montreal, a basic, decent condo costs between $300,000 and $400,000. Can a worker earning $25,000 or $30,000 a year afford to buy a condo or anything other than a mediocre apartment?

They also need decent group insurance, so they don't have to empty their wallets to go to the dentist. Then, they need a pension plan that will allow them to retire at 60 or 65 without too many financial problems. Finally, they need a decent wage. Is that $17 an hour, $20 an hour or $25 an hour? It depends on the regions and the circumstances, but one thing is for sure. The government has to get involved in this. It has to evaluate the situation completely from one region to another. It has to establish a structure that will result in the companies in the industry making sure that their workers have decent wages and conditions.

So I can't tell you whether we are talking about $17 an hour or $20 an hour, because that will vary from one region to another. Thank you for the question.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much for your comments, Mr. Lacroix.

Monsieur Dias, on June 18, 2020, in a media release you stated that the extra $2 an hour was only beginning to make up for the historic inequalities in the industry. You stated that this $2 premium should never be removed, and if anything it should be increased.

Do you have any comment on this?

[Jerry Dias]

You're absolutely correct. The average Canadian makes $52,000 a year, so that's about $25 an hour. The broader question is, if grocery store workers are deemed essential during the pandemic, then certainly they're deemed essential, period. Why should they earn less than the average wage earned here in Canada?

I see the red card so we're out of time, but there's no question that I stand by my comments.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Our next round of questions goes to MP Dreeshen. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I know that Mr. Masse had indicated the bread scandal and the collusion associated with that. Coming from a farming community, I just wanted to make the point that even if you doubled the price of bread, farmers would only be getting a few pennies more. There is a lot of money made in agriculture, but it's not necessarily made by farmers.

What I'd like to do is talk to Mr. Lacroix as far as the Teamsters are concerned. It's been so important to get the products to the stores. I know that there were major issues earlier on. I had spoken with a lot of people who were concerned—the truckers and so on—about simple things like having public washrooms open, places where they could pick up food, and so on. Hopefully we've learned something from that.

The other thing we can look at is maybe for the grocery people. When we go to our local co-ops and so on to pick up our groceries, we see the great effort that is being made, and we see the workers wiping down the equipment between customers. We see the little dots on the floor. People understand that if we follow those, we'll be able to continue working together. I think that's critical.

I'm not sure who initiated some of those things, and I'm curious whether those were steps that the workers were helping to incorporate, and what other suggestions you might have for front-line workers, whether it be those who are on the grocery line, or—perhaps starting with you, Mr. Lacroix—those who are actually getting that food to our stores.

[Stéphane Lacroix]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Dreeshen.

You mentioned something interesting when you were talking about trucking. I can tell you that we have learned nothing from trucking. Of course, trucking companies are doing their work properly and have established a structure to protect truckers. Nevertheless, that took a huge amount of time and was extremely difficult. The companies needed to be constantly reminded to establish safety procedures for their people. Even today, truckers often have difficulty finding places where they can go to the toilet or have a shower.

The situation has been resolved, but it took a lot of weeks. François Laporte, the president of Teamsters Canada, had to give a lot of interviews in order to put pressure on the system.

I believe that the government, and the industry too, needs some crisis management, a continuity plan—a contingency plan, if you like. The continuity plan must be done before a pandemic, or between pandemics, not right in the middle of a pandemic, when we are already going through a difficult situation.

As for the safety measures that were established, retail businesses and grocery stores did a good job and we must acknowledge that. They paid some attention and showed some empathy for the workers. The workers also came up with ideas and proposed things that enabled them to stay safe.

Before I finish, I would just like to add that, on dozens of occasions, I have personally seen the extent to which members of the public, customers in grocery stores, are not always aware of the situation. They go in the opposite direction to the signs, they are physically close to the workers, they touch the workers, and they touch the products when they do not need to.

There is still a lot of awareness work to be done, and it's not just up to grocery companies and grocery stores to do that. It's up to the government to do it, but it is also up to us all to show some discipline collectively. As I was saying to you earlier, we are in the middle of Canada's first major pandemic, but I don't think it will be the last.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much.

[Paul Meinema]

Could I address that question as well, Mr. Dreeshen?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Yes, thank you.

[Paul Meinema]

Early on in this pandemic, we put together a list with our unions around the world of the 20 best practices for retail stores that included everything that you see now. Many of those came from workers, they came from unions, and some did come from the employers.

We forwarded that to Minister Hajdu, what all the workers and all the employers who we represent saw as the best practices, and I'm proud to say that most of them have been adopted, but not all of them. The other part is that it's not consistent throughout.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

We now turn to MP Ehsassi.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for your very powerful testimony. I know I speak on behalf of all my colleagues and Canadians in general when I say we owe a great debt of gratitude to essential workers during these very difficult times.

Even before this pandemic, I think the topic of living wages was problematic, let alone at a time like this when a lot of employees have a lot of concerns.

I'll start off with Mr. Dias.

In response to my colleague MP Jowhari, you said that your union had received no heads-up that they were phasing out the wage increases.

If we take it back one step further, throughout this difficult process during this pandemic, was management at these grocery stores in touch with you as to how to put in safeguards? It seems to me that workers would know much better what needs to be done than management. Were they ever in touch with you with respect to what safeguards to put in place?

[Jerry Dias]

The grocery store chains were certainly in touch with our local unions. They were in touch with my staff who represent the grocery store workers, and my assistants have been all over this.

We have been a part of the discussions as they relate to the workplace, the health and safety of our members and, frankly, the protocols and procedures for the customers.

Once again, on the whole issue of the pandemic pay, not once did any one of the major grocery stores contact our union to say that they were going to be cutting the pay. They never talked to us about cutting the pay. They never talked to us about agreeing on a lump sum payment. That was not done with us at all.