Industry Committee on April 22nd, 2021

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'm going to move over to Ms. Tiessen soon, but we had tool and die mould-makers here, and we pleaded this case to Maxime Bernier, the minister at the time, many times, as well as subsequent ministers, Tony Clement and so forth.

We have had some improvements, but again, I'm asking the analysts to bring this back. I have to make sure we get full responses on this. These are essential government programs that are rolled out budget after budget and so forth, but they require small business people, who are hustling to grow their business and do their things, to either hire a lawyer, hire an accountant or hire one of these consultants whose job is actually navigating government programs for assistance to business.

I only have a little time left. Ms. Tiessen, I want to ask you about the United States—I'll come back on that subsequent stuff—the antitrust that they have over there versus our own over here. It's a big divergence from what I was talking to Mr. Priddle about.

What kinds of disadvantages do we have as a country? Can you just give us a little glimpse of that, as a pivot?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

My understanding of what happens in the U.S. is that they are 100% able to investigate the effects of mergers, acquisitions and other anti-competitive behaviour on the labour market. They consider things like wage fixing to be anti-competitive behaviour, which means workers are protected from some of the egregious things that can happen when companies collude. That would also include no-poaching agreements—

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, like grocery stores did when they decided to collectively end pandemic pay coincidentally by having conversations on the side.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

Yes, absolutely, and it happens in other areas as well. We're currently researching the Shaw and Rogers merger, looking at what monopsony power might be occurring in that industry, how we might be able to countervail that with the tools we have, and why we would not increase the tools we have in our tool box.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you.

I see the yellow card, so I'll cede at this point.

Thank you to the witnesses and to Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

We'll now start our second round. Our first round of questions goes to Député Généreux.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Lavigne and Mr. Noël, I am a businessman and in 1993, became a founding member of the chamber of commerce of Kamouraska-L'Islet, which had been dormant and was brought back to life. I am well aware of the existence of your organization and of all it does. It is doing tremendous work everywhere in Quebec by bringing all the businesses together.

Mr. Noël, you talked about business succession. One of my colleagues has presented a bill to try and solve the problem. I would like to thank Mr. Lemire for noticing that our ideas on the subject are compatible. Your work is important to us, especially in terms of business succession. I am personally interested because I have a daughter who would like to take over my business one day.

You stated that the current crisis is also an opportunity. How is this a good opportunity for the whole economy, but especially for our regulatory framework?

[Philippe Noël]

Thank you for your kind words about our organization.

Obviously, we are in touch with many businesses from various sectors, including tourism and agriculture, and big corporations as well. The current crisis and its impact on revenues have required state intervention to help businesses manage their recovery. A lot of financial support has been given.

It remains, however, that some rules will have to be reviewed to help businesses survive this crisis, and we have to look at the way things are done. Let's take the opportunity during the crisis to improve processes, especially those that are required by the state, be it the Government of Canada or the Quebec government, which is the case for us, in order to increase regulatory efficiency. This is why we are saying that the crisis is actually an opportunity for us to review a number of government processes.

This will allow businesses to bounce back more quickly and efficiently in terms of planning, but also in providing the required information every year. That's why we are recommending one single income tax return, as we have done in the past.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

You know that the Conservatives agree with this proposal. In fact, we are the ones who put it forward so that we only have one tax return, while maintaining jobs and minimizing the effects of this change, obviously.

As I told you, I am an entrepreneur. Like everyone else, we were affected by the pandemic when it started 14 months ago. One of the things that the government had to do was to put aside all of the EI administration to provide the CERB much more quickly, because the EI administrative system was not responding to the demands. In any case, it was impossible to be able to manage the CERB quickly using an absolutely archaic system.

On the other hand, I observed that the financial institutions that supported businesses with $40,000 loans—now $60,000—offered in collaboration with their government relations turned around quite quickly. They have certainly demonstrated that it was possible to do things much faster than normal, that is, when there was no crisis.

Have you seen the same thing with your businesses, not only with the $40,000 to $60,000 loans, but also with the whole Emergency Wage Subsidy and other programs?

[Philippe Noël]

I have to tell you that, in general, we've received a lot of positive feedback about the wage subsidy. That is one of the reasons why we asked that it be extended until 2022.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

We will have it until September. We'll see what the third wave has in store for us.

[Philippe Noël]

That's right.

I was going to say that it's in place until 25 September, which is a semi-win. We were happy that there was at least some indication of that. Originally, we were asking that it be offered until 2022 so that this predictability could help them. The new Canada Recovery Hiring Program has also been established.

In general, the feedback we received was quite positive.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

My question was about the fact that these programs were set up extremely quickly, with the help of the private sector, such as banks and cooperatives like credit unions. We proved that everything was possible. This is what I observed because, as Mr. van Raalte said, the measures as a whole are not only federal, but also provincial and municipal. However, normally, when there is no pandemic, there is often no way to proceed more quickly. In fact, this is what we have seen for years and it has become a terrible burden.

Have you observed the same thing?

[Philippe Noël]

This is exactly what we are asking for. We are experiencing crisis measures.

I notice that our time is up.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Don't worry, it's always like that.

The Chair doesn't give us any leeway.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Our next round of questions goes to MP Erskine-Smith. You have five minutes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I want to start with Mr. van Raalte from the Treasury Board.

We have a growing demand across the world for plant-based proteins. Our government has made a bet on plant-based proteins. With respect to the super cluster, there's obviously great integration with our agricultural sector as it relates to pea proteins and other pulses, yet I received a note from Impossible Foods noting the challenges they face in sending products to the Canadian market, including simulated meat regulations. I wonder if this is on your radar at all.

They note, as an example—it is bizarre to even read some of it—that, regarding chicken nuggets, a simulated poultry product must have at least 16% total protein and no more than 15% fat, per B.22.029. However, an animal-based chicken nugget of white meat only, per food code 7035, has only 14% protein. Animal-based white and dark meat chicken nuggets, per food code 7034, have 12% protein and 16% total fat, which do not meet the requirements that simulated chicken nuggets must meet. There's one example. There are other examples within simulated meat.

Is this not red tape? I mean, you have a company here that wants to send product to the Canadian marketplace, and we are effectively telling them to reformulate their products for the Canadian marketplace based on Byzantine regulations.

[James van Raalte]

At a broad level, I certainly am familiar with the investments being made to support the industry around plant protein and the dynamic that's played out in terms of the interplay between different regulators. I'm not familiar with that specific technical definition. I would leave that to the subject matter regulatory experts.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I completely understand.

It's just one example of a broader challenge though, as it relates to doing business between jurisdictions.

[James van Raalte]

I think that the definitional requirement may have some administrative burden on it, and it may be unnecessary. It may be a compliance issue. It may be a definitional issue.

You would really have to work from an evidence- and risk-based perspective to get an answer to the question about why that type of regulation exists.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Here's another example, though, that is entirely nonsensical and in the same category. In our rules, B.01.100(1) of the FDR mandates that, literally, the word “simulated” has to be used on our products, and the words “contains no meat” or “contains no poultry” have to be used on the products.

In the U.S., they take a much more sensible approach. Simply, the rules have to be in place such that consumers are not misled.

We take a very granular, hyper focused approach that is clearly red tape, when our focus should just be on consumer confusion. Again, we're adding barriers in a Canadian context, whereas the U.S. just cares about consumer confusion.

[James van Raalte]

I have a couple of considerations around that, Madam Chair. Again, the technical reasons for specific regulations I won't be able to address.

At one layer, there's regular tension with stakeholder interactions. It's not necessarily with this dynamic, but in trying to provide clarity and far more—I would say—broad objectives around regulations, there's often a call by industry for more clarity and definition to avoid legal risk.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Sure, but “plant-based” and “vegan” are words that consumers understand, not “simulated” and “contains”. Anyway, I could go on.

I want to highlight one other issue, for your attention, in a similar space.

We have recently seen the Canada pension plan investment board invest $50 million into company-related cellular agriculture. We've seen Singapore develop a comprehensive regulatory approach, such that in December it was the first country to have regulatory approval of a cell ag product. The FDA and the USDA have been collaborating as of March 2019.

In the Canadian context, we see zero forward thinking on this. Instead, we see regulatory approval that requires Health Canada, an environmental assessment and nutritional assessments. We see CFIA labelling. A business that wants to do business in this space in Canada has no sense of where to go.

The U.S. is working on making this happen. Singapore has already made this happen. I encourage you to make this happen in Canada.