International Trade Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

So it's 150.

[Paul Gaunce]

It's 75 to 150 head.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Is that comparable to the case in the rest of Canada? It seems to me that's a little bit higher than in Quebec or something.

[Paul Gaunce]

It is higher than in Quebec, but you have to remember that we have 198 producers and Quebec has around 5,000. They have a lot of smaller farms, but they're going that way.

When I started milking cows 37 years ago, we had 600 producers in New Brunswick, and now we're down to fewer than 200. We're making more milk. There are a similar number of cows, but farms have gotten bigger just for efficiency gains.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Would you consider the dairy industry in New Brunswick fairly healthy at this point?

[Paul Gaunce]

It could be healthier. It's certainly been tough the last year and a half because the world price of milk has gone so low for skim milk powder. Butter is still staying quite high, but skim milk powder is very low because there's a glut, and it has certainly hurt our blend.

With our WTO agreements, we export probably 20% of our production now just to meet the agreements we have. That certainly shows an effect. Skim milk powder is running around $1,500 a tonne. Two years ago it was $5,500 a tonne. It's a huge difference in price.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Well, I'm glad to hear that you see some opportunity in the cheese industry, and I agree with you. I've had some of the Canadian cheeses. We're even starting to produce Gouda cheese. I think it's as good as the Dutch one, so once we get Canadians hooked on that stuff....

[Paul Gaunce]

Don't be surprised if there isn't some Dutch background in the making of it. We have a lot of Dutch farmers in Canada. Actually, if it wasn't for Dutch people, the world would probably be short of milk, because there are Dutch farmers pretty well everywhere.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

They certainly have made a good contribution. Even Mr. Eyking in Cape Breton was telling us about his family and how they've grown the industry there as well. It's a good story, and I have been excited to go through this process with the consultations, and especially with dairy, we see such opportunity.

I'm glad to hear that it's healthy. It can always be healthier, but maybe with the right tuning we can turn it into the world-class dairy industry that it's always been known as.

[Paul Gaunce]

Part of that opportunity will involve making sure our processing plants get upgraded and get more capacity. The market growth in Canada alone is actually pushing them to the limits for what they can make now. It certainly needs some upgrading in that area too.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Good.

I don't know how much time I have left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You have a minute and a half, sir.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Quinn, I know we're not going to get all the way across, but it's a fine port you have up here in the city, and I didn't realize it was the third largest. So it's Vancouver, Montreal, and then Saint John?

[Jim Quinn]

That's right. It's by volume, by tonnage.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

With regard to the trucking industry, I've always known that. With Mike Allen, a former colleague, we had a trucking caucus in the past. They were very eager to join that, because apparently you have such a huge....

Is most of the produce passed through by truck or by rail?

[Jim Quinn]

Most of the traffic that's containerized is by truck, and we're working hard to make that into an intermodal type of trade, which is essential. We're equipped for that because of those rail connections that I talked about earlier.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

How important is the trucking industry to the province then? Can you comment on that?

[Jim Quinn]

It's immensely important because our producers and our shippers and receivers are located throughout the province. If I had a map of New Brunswick, you would see dots throughout the province to show those who do business through the port, and that business is moved by truck. It's absolutely essential, and we have among the finest truckers in Canada here in New Brunswick.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

That's what I have heard. I guess I'm out of time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Time's up, but those were some good questions.

We're going to move over to the Liberals and the only New Brunswick MP on our committee. Ms. Ludwig, go ahead.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you very much for your presentations.

I'm going to start off where Mr. Van Kesteren left off, regarding the Saint John port authority. When we were doing public consultations in Saskatchewan, we heard from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, which said that it had seen what occurs when rail level of service is unable to meet the demand; shipments are delayed by weeks and contracts aren't honoured.

How prepared is the Saint John port if the agreement is ratified and CETA is ratified to work with the increase in capacity, or do you need anything further in terms of infrastructure?

[Jim Quinn]

That's a very good question, because in fact we're getting ready. Through our modernization, we're going to be moving our capacity from about 125,000 20-foot equivalent units—TEUs are an international standard for containers: 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, 8 feet high—to 330,000.

We'll also be including an intermodal rail yard at the back of the container terminal that will be able to hold a unit train of about 12,000 feet. The magic is that when cargo moves in and out of Saint John, those shippers and receivers have options to get to the marketplace, which is really good from a competitive standpoint.

We'll be very well placed when you think about what's happening in other ports in North America, specifically the eastern U.S. ports, where there's congestion not only within the gates of the port, but just as importantly outside the gates of the port, on the highways and whatnot.

Here there is an option for cargo to come into an area that can feed those areas, come in over the top, if you will, or continue down through Maine or up through Moncton to get to the populated areas of North America.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

With that increased capacity, do you have any projections on the numbers for new employment or changes to employment that could be offered as a result?

[Jim Quinn]

We do. We had some independent studies done, and they looked at that. They're estimating that the current jobs that are directly related to the container business from what we do today, about 500 jobs—that's direct and indirect—will more than double as we approach that capacity. Again, those are direct and indirect jobs. It doesn't include the induced jobs. There will be several hundred more induced jobs because of that.

It has a big impact, not only locally within the port for pilots, tugboat operators, longshoremen, and people of those professions, but just as importantly, it's the trucking industries, the rail line industries, and all the services providers that support those.

There will be a significant increase in those types of job opportunities.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Gionet, regarding the crab producers, those are very impressive numbers that you have put before us.

You mentioned that there is no competitor, no competing country, involved with the TPP. What position does Russia play in all of this in terms of also selling into the TPP member countries?