Evidence of meeting #50 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was wine.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Barry Sutton  Vice-President, International Sales, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
Ray Price  President, Canadian Meat Council
Jacqueline Sava  Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.
Pablo Garrido  Owner, Savia Wine Agency
Chris Wilkinson  Director of Sales and Operations, Soak Wash Inc.

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON

Well, fill your boots, then. If it has worked for you, then fine. If not, you can certainly take this advice for what it's worth to you. But in terms of rules and regulations and how to deal with places such as Australia or Portugal, I'd be shocked if they can't give you some advice.

I can't tell you what percentage of stuff goes into your product, and I'm not sure that any of these organizations can. It's your product, and that is proprietary, when it comes to the requirement for you to share it.

Anyway, that's the advice, for what it is worth.

5:15 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

It's not about how to relate to the other companies. I can get all the advice I might need by flying to Houston to the International Quilt Market, which happens to be a $34 billion industry—yes, quilting—so the president of Olympus Japan can come with his entire team for a meeting, because it's closer than getting to Japan, although I also will go next week, if you have space. I can get all the information I need on how to make it successfully through that meeting as a younger Canadian woman entrepreneur with a fourth generation male business owner. What I can't get is what you specifically just said. In Canada, I can't get access to regulatory information that is pertinent for Japan, and so I need government assistance to prove to my suppliers that I'm not just asking for the sake of asking.

It is exactly what you said. There are all kinds of resources for business relationships with Japan, from my MBA all the way through to preparing to go on TV and to these contacts that I have in the government. What I need is some kind of government support so that I can go back to a Canadian manufacturer, a Canadian distributor, a Canadian raw materials supplier, and tell them that while I appreciate that their information is proprietary and they are not required to tell me anything about the ingredients beyond what I'm doing, there is potential for this export market in Japan, that there is a new trade agreement with Japan, that this is currently my largest distributor, and it is testing my product.

I need the clout behind me to push my Canadian manufacturers and suppliers to extract information from within their organizations that they otherwise have no obligation to give me. That's where the finite difference is. We can find everything we need about international business relationships. That's not where the challenge is.

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON

Thank you for the chance to ask a question.

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield

We have Madame Papillon.

5:15 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I found your presentation quite informative, Ms. Sava.

You told us that when attempting to enter the Japanese market, you were faced with different standards, such as identifying chemical ingredients in your products and the level of biodegradability. The biodegradability concern must be unique to Japan, as a country with extremely strict environmental protection standards.

You also mentioned the testing to determine the effects on the skin. I imagine you had to obtain all kinds of certifications and go through multiple steps. You also stressed the lack of experts or people who could explain the procedure to follow in order to gain access to the Japanese market and export your products.

I am sure you had to incur costs associated with other non-tariff barriers that we didn't have time to get into. Could you tell us what those costs were and whether they could have been avoided if you'd had access to certain resources?

5:15 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

Thank you very much.

There were periods of time when I spent months doing nothing but answer questions for my Japanese distributor every day. Now I work late for our Australian distributor. It's easier to just work from seven until midnight than it is to wake up in the morning to 25 more questions. Every time we thought we found a thorough and appropriate set of answers, there would be another level of questions the next day. I spent about six months of all of my resources answering the questions.

5:15 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

If you factor in the scant amount of regulatory information you received and all the work you had to do, how much did you spend? Had there been government standards on labelling, for example, would it have helped? Would it have been easier if our standards were in line with Japan's?

5:20 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

Yes, if there were financial resources, we probably could have put them towards that. We couldn't find anyone who could help us get the more specific detail.

5:20 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

The European Union, for instance, has very strict product labelling rules for ingredients. Had the standards been the same, you probably wouldn't have had as much trouble.

5:20 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

Yes, that would have been helpful. If there were a government resource that had regulatory standards for the Japanese products already in existence that you could find, that would be great, but none of the organizations that we could reach or find had those.

5:20 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

That is a first step Canada could take to help our businesses deal with this issue.

5:20 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

Right. The official paperwork is not as important to me as the resources that are going to come along with it in terms of making sure there is access to that information. Even if you're looking at finding a consultant or someone in the market, you still need someone who's got practical experience exporting in that market so that you're assured of getting credible information and credible resources as well. Then it becomes a question of economics in terms of how much you'll also invest in the regulatory testing for a new market before you go into it at all.

5:20 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

You said you could access other markets, but what opportunities does the Japanese market represent for your company?

5:20 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

It was probably 25% of our business.

5:20 p.m.

Director of Sales and Operations, Soak Wash Inc.

Chris Wilkinson

They were our top customer.

5:20 p.m.

Director of Possibilites and Founder, Soak Wash Inc.

Jacqueline Sava

They were our top individual customer, and it was about 25% of our business that came essentially out of nowhere. As I said, they were in the testing phase of their market. Then, because we're in the process of reformulating, we're in a holding pattern until we present the new formula, because now they estimate it will take a full year to do the testing on the new formula before it will be approved. When we make a change to our formula here, it's like a marketing splash and off we go, because it meets regulatory standards. For them, it's going to take a year of testing before they'll put the new formula on the market.

That's where we are now. There's a lot of potential, and we're growing as well.

5:20 p.m.

NDP

Annick Papillon NDP Québec, QC

Thank you.

Do I have time for one last question?

5:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield

No, you've got quatre secondes.

We want to thank you very much for coming in. I appreciate that very much.

With that, we will get over to the House. I think we have some votes. The bells were supposed to ring about five minutes ago, so I imagine we're fairly close.

5:20 p.m.

NDP

Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC

Mr. Chairman, could I move that we drop two MPs from our trip and bring Mr. Garrido and Ms. Sava to Japan with us?

5:20 p.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!

5:20 p.m.

An hon. member

You're not going?

5:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield

It sounds as though you have created great sentiment around the table.

Thank you very much for coming forward. We appreciate that very much.

With that, we'll adjourn.