Evidence of meeting #33 for International Trade in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Steeve Lavoie Liberal Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Essentially, you share my opinion. We're working together to find solutions.
You also say that we must keep up the momentum. I find that interesting. What would be the three priority sectors?
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
I'd already mentioned labour mobility.
Liberal
Steeve Lavoie Liberal Beauport—Limoilou, QC
You're talking about workforce mobility, but is it for all sectors?
Are there sectors that you would prioritize for workforce mobility?
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Sorry, I wasn't talking about workforce. What I'm really concerned about is trucking. I'm working on transportation.
Even if we manage to liberalize trade through regulation to transport goods across the country, it's still a very significant barrier. I know there's a pilot project right now, but it needs to become permanent to remove the barriers. This is very concerning for the vast majority of our members.
Liberal
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
The financial services sector is also very important.
Ultimately, the administrative burden should be significantly reduced everywhere, especially for small businesses.
Liberal
Steeve Lavoie Liberal Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Yes, you're right when it comes to small and medium‑sized businesses.
Mr. McCain, you mentioned health standards and said they were a barrier. You said that some were secondary. In fact, it's not a field that I'm necessarily familiar with. To help me better understand, can you give me some concrete examples of issues related to health and safety standards?
Executive Chair, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I'm not a food safety professional, but I know what acceptable food safety standards are—what they look like and how they show up, operationally, in a manufacturing facility. The provincial standards are a patchwork across the country. They are not even in the same ballpark of standards, operationally. I think this would be widely recognized by the professionals at the CFIA and in any other jurisdiction that understands what the highest standards available are.
As a non-industry participant, you could walk through a federally inspected site, like any Maple Leaf plant, or any of the others, and witness a level of almost surgical cleanliness. Then walk through a facility that is provincially inspected. You would, very easily—as a layman—come to the conclusion that there are radical differences in the standards of care applied in those facilities. I think those differences are visible even to the naked eye.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
Go ahead for two and a half minutes, Mr. Savard-Tremblay.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Chan, a 2025 report published by the Centre for Productivity and Prosperity at HEC Montréal, a strong supporter of trade, states that regulatory barriers play a fairly minor role when businesses choose not to participate in interprovincial trade. Their study also indicates that, of the 8.6% who do not participate due to such barriers, less than 1% actually cite regulations as the main reason, and say that the distance is more likely the issue.
First, do you have anything to say about that report that might temper your own conclusions somewhat?
Secondly, is distance a factor that you've explored and examined as well?
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Excuse me, are you talking about distance?
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
Yes. The majority of businesses that don't engage in interprovincial trade say that distance is the main reason. In fact, less than 1% say that interprovincial barriers are the main reason.
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
That's absolutely right. In a country as vast as Canada, transportation will always be a challenge. The same is true for international trade.
As for the report you mentioned, I don't know if I'm familiar with it. I'm not trying to say that we disagree on the issue of distance, but we're somewhat echoing what we hear from our members of the 400 provincial chambers of commerce across the country, who say that it's very important to them.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
I have no doubt that's what you've heard. However, you personally estimated the cost of the barriers at $14 billion.
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
In fact, it's not our study, but we had estimated that distance could act as a tariff barrier of about 21%.
I can find the report for you.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
Your organization offers a skills recognition plan that takes into account the specifics of each province and territory, particularly with respect to official languages.
As you know, of course, there's still the issue of respecting French and the rules for professional associations.
Could you give us any details in two and a half seconds?
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Obviously, being a francophone myself, I find the French language and Quebec's rules very important. I don't want to try to diminish the importance for Quebec.
Liberal
Conservative
David McKenzie Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
I would like to ask Mr. McCain my first question.
Sir, you indicated that with meeting CFIA standards—the Canadian Food Inspection Agency—you're federally regulated, so that part of your business is working well. I want to ask you about transportation. How often is that a problem for your business, if ever?
Executive Chair, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I would hesitate to say it's never a problem. It's more a problem of access to the most efficient mode of transportation. Sometimes, with a particular location, we'd prefer to have, say, rail access directly to that location when maybe we don't. Those are illustrative of access points.
We don't generally have any restrictions attached to transportation systems, other than what I would describe as freight economics. When you're producing in Ontario and you want to ship to British Columbia, it's more costly than if you're producing in British Columbia. Those are all natural economics. They're not restrictions per se.
Conservative
David McKenzie Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
That's fair enough. I'm just wondering whether there's room for improvement in our national transportation network and, in particular, whether there are things the federal government could be doing that would result in benefit to your business.
Executive Chair, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I'm absolutely certain the answer to that is yes. I don't think that anything's optimized, but it's not a material impairment to our ability to achieve national distribution of our food products.
Conservative
David McKenzie Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Gentlemen, I want to ask you about this.
Mr. Chan, I think you mentioned that provincial ministers responsible for interprovincial trade really upped the tempo with respect to meetings. What I want to get at is why there's all the talk and so little result. Is it a question of time and resources? Are we not talking about some of the underlying business realities? Specifically by that, I mean a long-standing network of different provincial regulation.
Businesses react according to the environment that they operate in. Is it going to take more time to dismantle and allow businesses to make adjustments to a harmonized regulatory framework? Is that the real issue, or are we just not spending enough time and effort to harmonize more interprovincial regulation?
I'd be happy to have comments from both of you.
Vice President, Strategic Policy and Supply Chains, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Absolutely. Thank you for the question, Mr. McKenzie. I appreciate it.
First of all, the meetings have been important. I do want to give credit where credit is due, especially to the provinces. I mentioned that our provincial chambers had stepped up and written to the premiers saying they wanted to see actions. They saw more meetings. We have seen memorandums of understanding signed between provinces. We saw the signing of the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement. All these things are steps in the right direction, and we hope to see more of it.
Yes, obviously the provincial patchwork, as Mr. Lavoie mentioned, is 160 years of trade barriers across provinces. When you layer up these issues to try to protect interests in your own provinces, it's going to take a lot of time to untangle that. I'm very encouraged by the momentum, but again, we have that momentum now and we can't let it slip through our fingers.