Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee and staff for taking your time and allowing us to speak today.
I'm Kevin Forbes, the past-president of the Lambton Federation of Agriculture. I am currently operating our family farm, which is a 200 cow dairy.
The Lambton Federation of Agriculture represents over 1,200 farm families across a very diverse array of industries, from cash crop, beef, pork, dairy and poultry, to dairy goat, sheep, alpacas, fruit orchards, vegetable crops, vineyards, wineries, greenhouse production, and maple syrup.
First off, we would like to congratulate politicians, the negotiators, and staff for all of the hard work over the past decade to bring the TPP to fruition. This has the potential to be a monumental trade deal for Canada. With all of the agriculture speakers today, we are going to try not to be redundant.
The TPP has potential to benefit industries such as beef, pork, and some of the grains and oilseed sectors by gaining access to, most specifically, Japan and Vietnam. There is also some small potential for the sugar beet industry as it tries to develop itself within Canada, which Gary will talk about in a minute.
Unfortunately, as with all trade deals, not every industry was able to make gains. The supply managed sector did have to make sacrifices to make the deal successful. We feel that negotiators did an excellent job in mitigating the losses to supply management. That being said, we've been proud so far as an industry not to have to accept direct payment from the government, and we'd like to keep it that way going forward.
However, the truth now will be how the government helps farmers mitigate the concessions made to their industries. In an October 5, 2015, press release, it stated that it government would provide an income guarantee program over the next 15 years. There is also a quota value guarantee program, a processor modernization program, and a market development initiative.
It is incredibly important for the government to step up and follow through with these programs. The two most important ones are the income guarantee and the processor modernization programs.
For the dairy industry, it is a vital time for processor investment. There are many aging dryers in Canada for processing skim milk, and they aren't going to last forever. There is currently over $200 million dollars of product coming into Canada tariff free because our processors can't even produce this—and the product is diafiltered milk.
An investment in one plant in Ontario and one plant in the west would help alleviate the stress in our system and would also be enough to cause a quota increase itself, which would help almost eliminate the impacts of the concessions of the TPP. The side benefit of investing in processors is the windfall of jobs that can come into the economy, and not just for the benefit of farmers.
For poultry producers, they accept the concessions that were made but are looking for government to stop the current fraudulent practices, including importers being able to import unlimited quantities of chicken by simply adding sauce or other ingredients, by importing spent fowl and falsely declaring it at as chicken, and allowing companies to substitute high-valued import cuts with low-valued domestic cuts.
In summary, the LFA is generally in support of the TPP agreement and we look forward to its being ratified in the future.
Gary does have something to add to that.