Evidence of meeting #32 for International Trade in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was brunswick.
1:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Saint John
With respect to containers, it will increase from 125,000 to 330,000.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
You talk about interoperability among a number of railways. Do they all use the same trackage coming in, or do they all have separate lines coming in? How does that work?
1:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Saint John
The way it works is that we have our local short-line that connects to CN and then connects over to other short-lines and into other rail lines like Pan Am, Norfolk Southern, CSX, lines like that, and of course, Canadian Pacific.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
The interswitching rules that we have now let you do different things, or they can come in further than before.
1:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Saint John
That's right. I think the biggest issue again is the cross-border inspections, building on beyond the border.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
That's a great initiative. Once the U.S. election is finally over and done with, maybe we'll start to get further on that. It's been like pushing a rock uphill for the last few years.
The other thing that really interests me is the just-in-time nature of a lot of the deliveries that are being done now. In terms of your reach, the eastern seaboard is a given, but it's getting congested even for you to come in around. Are you shipping all the way into Chicago, Philadelphia, and places like that to get out into the Midwest?
1:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Saint John
Well, right now we're primarily an export port. The imports are starting to go this way, but absolutely, the goal with our new operator in particular is that we're looking at those different marketplaces.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Yes. You'll be able to draw from those areas that far out then, too.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
That's fantastic. Good.
Turning now to dairy, Paul, it's great to chat with you guys again. You made a comment about the quality of Canadian cheese, which is winning awards globally. There were, I forget how many, cheese manufacturers at the Paris food show last fall. They picked up award after award after award. They're doing exceptionally well in terms of getting into that marketplace. Cheese and yogourt and so on have been sort of an unknown factor on the Pacific Rim because of their shelf life, but over there they're starting to get a taste for it. There are some amazing opportunities for Canadian producers.
The other thing that's never talked about—we just talk about the loss of quota value, the 3.25%—is that there are lots of ancillary gains. More and more countries...for instance, Vietnam. The last time I was in Vietnam, they were looking at bringing in 10,000 Canadian dairy heifers, because they recognize that our genetics are the best in the world; that's proven every day. The animal husbandry that we have, the animal handling, the feed rations that have been developed, the equipment, the electronics, the collars around the cows that read out everything going in—all of those things are in huge demand around the world. Those are all exports, and we'd then have access to those countries as well.
So it's not a zero-sum game by any stretch. It's the whole industry writ large. Because you've had a solid bottom line for long, you've been able to develop way beyond what everybody else has done.
1:55 p.m.
Chairman, Dairy Farmers of New Brunswick
That's very true. Being a secure industry has certainly helped us move ourselves forward. We do have some of the best genetics in the world. Even China, one market that you didn't mention, is looking at our genetics. China is actually looking at infant formula from here.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Yes. I've been involved in some of those discussions.
1:55 p.m.
Chairman, Dairy Farmers of New Brunswick
That's a huge marketplace, and we're just making little inroads into it, but we're working on it.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
In Inner Mongolia I was on a couple of dairies that feed back into Beijing. One had 12,000 milking head and the other had 15,000 milking head. The biggest one I was ever on was in Saudi Arabia, at 90,000 cows. They all stood in little garages with water peeing down them all day long, because they wouldn't milk otherwise. It was not efficient by any stretch, and neither were the big ones I was on in China. They used a rotary parlour that was dialled up way too high. The cows were kicking the milkers off and nobody was even going out to put them back on again. We stood there and watched.
There's a tremendous amount of education, and you, as the leading dairy farmers in the world, have expertise that's valuable.
1:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Well, you know, that's not a bad thing, but it's pretty hard to have enough robots to do 15,000 cows.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Yes.
So this is a tremendous opportunity, and we're looking forward to the plus side. As you already pointed out, you have to look at a balance overall: the net benefit, the net gain. From the last statistics that I saw, roughly 30% of supply-managed industries also are involved in the trade sectors as well. They have grain, a beef herd, pork, and so on.
There's one thing we have never done well as a country—it's starting to happen now, and it's again coming out of the Pacific Rim—and that's the value-added potential.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
One of the markets that always shocked me was Hong Kong. They went through $7 million of beef tongue and stomachs a year. We don't eat a lot of that here. It's that potential where all those products that are hitting the trash can here have that kind of value in those other foreign markets.
Thank you.
1:55 p.m.
Chairman, Dairy Farmers of New Brunswick
Yes, it's a shame to lose that waste.
You should try tongue. It's really good.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Oh, I have. My dad always liked it pickled. I never drank enough to do that, but....
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
That wraps up our panels today, and we're on time.
To the witnesses, thank you for coming this afternoon and giving your submissions. We had a good dialogue back and forth. Good luck in the businesses you're in. You're in three totally different sectors, of course. It was good to see you all here.
We'll suspend for a minute so that the witnesses can leave. Then we'll go right to our open mikes.
Just so anybody here new is not familiar with our open mike, we've been doing this right across Canada. It's going very well. There's no dialogue between the MPs and the person at the mike. We're just here to listen.
We go from mike to mike. We'll go to mike one, and then we'll go to mike two, and back and forth. We've been giving people two minutes. When you hit the two minutes, I'll put up this white card. I'll let you go right to two and a half, if it has to be, but then we'll have to cut you off.
That's how we'll work it. It seemed to work well for everybody else.
We'll suspend, and then we'll come back in a few minutes.
2 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
We're going to get started. We have six presenters today.
We have Paula Tippett, Loch Lomond, at mike one. That's not Cape Breton's Loch Lomond, is it? We have a Loch Lomond in Cape Breton.
You go ahead. You have a couple of minutes.