Thank you, Madam Chair.
Members of the committee, good morning. My name is Lisa MacNeil, and I'm the president of Tree of Life Canada.
While Tree of Life Canada is one of the largest distributors of specialty and natural foods in Canada, I come to you today as the importer of British clotted and double creams. Traditionally served as part of an afternoon tea alongside scones and jam, these specialty creams are sold in tea shops and retail stores across Canada. All told, we supply these creams to roughly 2,000 SMEs.
I am here to provide the real-world perspective on how certain non-tariff barriers imposed by the government affect small to medium-sized Canadian businesses, our customers and ourselves. I will also offer some recommendations as to how the government could proactively address these issues in current and future agreements.
The specialty creams we distribute from our U.K. supplier are unique. They are prepared in a dedicated glass bottling plant using a proprietary production process that yields export-ready creams with a long shelf life and a fat content just below butter.
Despite the fact there are no similar products produced in Canada or in any country with which Canada has trade agreements, Tree of Life Canada has faced many unnecessary and burdensome barriers while trying to import these specialty creams.
For years, we were nearly denied outright access to the Canadian market simply because the products did not fit naturally and neatly into any of the categories across the cream quotas. As a result, our harrowing and completely avoidable experience has played out across several quotas.
First, Tree of Life Canada has been denied access to the WTO specialty creams quota since 2016. This quota uses a tiered system that prioritizes cans of thick cream with a fat percentage 20% lower than clotted cream. Any unused quota, which hasn't happened since 2016, is given to glass jars.
From 2016 to 2019, we were able to depend on a supplementary cream permit process, which is granted at the discretion of the minister. However, Global Affairs Canada and the minister abruptly decided to refuse our application in 2019 and encouraged us to look for a domestic producer, which doesn't exist, because it's such a niche product and therefore costly to produce on a small scale.
When there's a demonstrated and steady consumer demand, you would expect that obtaining permission to import the product would be relatively simple. It's been anything but.
From 2019 to 2021, we were unable to bring in any of these products tariff-free, which caused a dramatic disruption to our customers. We've since been able to secure temporary permits through the supplementary import process, but this method of access provides little room for business planning and growth and could be taken away at any time at the discretion of the minister.
Because we regularly run out of this imported cream, we have to turn away customers and Canadians have to go without the product for absolutely no good policy reason. While some claim that the CPTPP will fix all market access issues with regard to Canada-U.K. trade, this access is not the miracle that is being portrayed. This is a result of the allocation and administration policy chosen by Canada.
Indeed, for the CPTPP cream quota, distributors like us would get less than 10% of the overall cream quota access. If that doesn't change, we would be importing far less than we even do today.
The government can avoid these many pitfalls by revisiting its approach to quota administration and allocation in existing and future trade agreements. The comprehensive review of the allocation and administration of tariff rate quotas offers Canada the opportunity to align its quota allocation and administration policy with both its trade obligations as well as Minister Ng's mandate to ensure that trade benefits SMEs across Canada. However, for various reasons, the TRQ review, which began in 2019, has yet to be concluded. We are hoping that some of these issues will be addressed when the review finally resumes.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.