International Trade Committee on May 28th, 2026

[The Chair (Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)), Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm calling the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 39 of the Standing Committee on International Trade. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, September 18, 2025, the committee is resuming its study of Canada and the forthcoming CUSMA review, which we are much anticipating, all of us.

We have with us today, from the Canadian Meat Council, Kyle Larkin, president and chief executive officer.

Welcome, Kyle. We all know you very well. We talk meat and eat meat all the time, so it's always great to have you here.

From the Canadian Coalition of Aluminum Extruders, we have Jamie Neil, chief financial officer of Dajcor Aluminum, by video conference.

It's great to see you, Jamie. I'm glad you were able to join us today.

From White Birch Paper, we have Guy Trottier, general manager.

Welcome to you all.

Mr. Larkin, I invite you to make an opening statement of up to five minutes, please.

[Kyle Larkin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Meat Council]

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you, Chair and members of the committee, for inviting us.

My name is Kyle Larkin. I am the president and CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, also known as the CMC. The CMC is the voice of Canada's federally licensed meat industry and the largest component of Canada's food processing sector, with annual sales exceeding $32 billion a year and supporting nearly 300,000 jobs across the country.

Our members process over 90% of Canada's meat, including beef, pork, veal, lamb and bison, supplying Canadian families in more than 90 export markets with safe, traceable and high-quality protein. The Canadian red meat sector is diverse, encompassing large multinational operations and many small and medium-sized enterprises that form the backbone of rural Canada.

We appreciate the invitation today to speak to the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, as our largest customers can be found in both countries. CUSMA and NAFTA before it have made our meat and agri-food supply chains highly integrated. The free trade pact has also benefited the meat processing sectors in all three countries, allowing them to competitively trade among each other and export to high-value markets around the world.

As you may know, Canada's meat processing sector is highly dependent on international markets. Each year, we export around 65% of the pork we produce and 50% of the beef. This amounts to over $10 billion in exports of meat products every year, with the United States and Mexico accounting for the majority of those exports.

The U.S. in particular accounts for $4.2 billion in exports of Canadian beef and $1.5 billion in exports of Canadian pork, for a total of $5.7 billion. In return, the U.S. sends $2.2 billion of meat products to Canada each year. Not only does this two-way trade benefit Canadian producers and processors, but it also benefits American ones. For example, our sister association in the United States, the American Meat Institute, notes that exports to Canada and Mexico of American meat products added $91 in value per cattle head and $28 per market hog.

Mexico is also an important and growing market for Canadian meat. It is our third-largest market for Canadian beef, with annual exports of $272 million in 2025, a growth of over 10% in one year. For Canadian pork, Mexico represents our fourth-largest market, accounting for $371 million in exports last year, a growth of over 17% in one year.

The political turmoil caused by the American administration has opened the door for Canadian meat processors and exporters. During my participation in the team Canada trade mission in Mexico, I was able to experience first-hand the potential growth opportunities and demand for Canadian beef and pork.

Due to this high volume of exports, the continuance of CUSMA is of the utmost importance to the Canadian meat processing sector. Thankfully, all three of our countries' agri-food sectors are aligned on calling for a full 16-year renewal of the agreement as it stands.

At the Canadian Meat Council, we continue to work closely with our sister organizations in the United States and Mexico in advocating to our leaders to uphold the agreement. In fact, I will be in Washington, D.C., next week to meet with members of Congress, senators and officials from the U.S. administration, as well as an organization named the Agricultural Coalition for USMCA, to highlight the cross-border economic benefits of the agreement.

At the same time as we advocate for CUSMA, we must ensure that we remain competitive at home in Canada. That's why the CMC continues to advocate for regulatory harmonization with the United States. This includes aligning our enhanced feed ban program with U.S. standards to eliminate unnecessary compliance costs. This regulatory change alone could save the processing sector $25 million a year. It also includes aligning our defatted beef regulations, which would allow the Canadian sector to extrapolate the same amount of ground beef from trimmings as the American sector does.

Both regulatory changes would allow us to remain competitive while supporting food affordability here in Canada. We must also continue to monitor potentially harmful policies in both the U.S. and Mexico that could limit cross-border trade, including mandatory country of origin labelling, known as MCOOL, and inspection inconsistencies.

Finally, the high integration among the agri-food sectors in Canada, the United States and Mexico is a strength for our negotiators. CUSMA and NAFTA before it have supported the cross-border trade of agri-food products, ensuring food affordability, food security and North American food sovereignty. It is paramount that CUSMA continues in its entirety. This remains the number one priority for Canada's red meat processing sector.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Larkin.

Mr. Neil, you have up to five minutes, please.

[Jamie Neil, Chief Financial Officer, Dajcor Aluminum, Canadian Coalition of Aluminum Extruders]

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Jamie Neil. I'm the interim president and CFO at Dajcor Aluminum. I'm here today speaking to you on behalf of the Canadian Coalition of Aluminum Extruders. We represent about 90% of the aluminum extrusion capacity in Canada.

One year ago, we directly employed 4,000 Canadians. Today, we have lost 500 jobs and employ around 3,500 Canadians across this great country. If we do not act, we will lose another 500 to 1,000 jobs this year, and businesses will begin to close in two to three years. Aluminum extrusions support another 100,000 jobs in SMEs across many industries in this country.

Our companies have been operating in Canada for decades. These are not short-term businesses; they are Canadian manufacturers with long histories, skilled workers, large investments in equipment and deep knowledge that would be very hard to replace if lost.

Canadian aluminum extruders buy raw aluminum, often from Quebec, and turn it into shapes and parts that other industries need. These products are used in things like vehicles, rail, buildings, solar panels, data centres, aerospace, defence and many other applications. We are the link between Canadian raw aluminum production in Quebec and the finished products that Canada wants to build. This link is now under serious pressure.

There are three major problems that are happening at the same time.

The first problem is the loss of the U.S. market. The United States has historically accounted for 40% of Canadian extrusion productions. Section 232 tariffs have made the market much harder to access. Even more concerning, the tariffs are now being applied to the full value of the product, not just the aluminum itself. This means the tariffs are being applied to Canadian labour, Canadian overhead, Canadian fabrication, Canadian finishing and other Canadian value-added manufacturing. This is a major problem. If it continues, we believe extrusion exports to the United States will fall to zero.

The second problem is that the Canadian market is smaller than it once was. We're down about 15% from the 2023 peak for aluminum extrusion consumption in Canada, largely because of a slower economy and lower construction activity. We recognize that government policies, such as the buy Canadian policy, will help over time, and we support these efforts, but those projects often take years to reach manufacturers like us, and they do not solve the immediate issue.

The third problem is the surge of imports into Canada. As other countries also lose access to the U.S. market, they're looking for places to sell their aluminum extrusions, and Canada has become one of those places. We see large increases in imports from countries like Vietnam, Turkey, Thailand, the UAE, Malaysia and many others. This is not sustainable.

We're also concerned about unfair trade practices and products being moved through third party countries to avoid trade rules. We have heard from industry insiders that Russian aluminum is flowing through countries such as Turkey and then ultimately entering Canada as finished extrusions. This matters, because Canadian producers follow the rules. We employ Canadians, we invest here, we buy Canadian aluminum and we pay Canadian wages, but we are being asked to compete in a market that's becoming increasingly unfair.

There is also an issue with U.S. imports coming into Canada. We have a 25% countertariff on U.S. aluminum extrusions, but that's been largely under remission. We face barriers entering the marketplace in the U.S., but it faces no barriers entering the Canadian market. This creates an imbalance.

If Canada loses its aluminum extrusion industry, the damage will not stop with our companies. Quebec aluminum producers would lose an important Canadian customer, downstream manufacturers would lose reliable local supply, communities across Canada would lose skilled manufacturing jobs, and Canada would become more dependent on foreign suppliers for products that are important to our sovereignty. The reality is simple: If this part of the supply chain disappears, others will likely follow.

We're asking for urgent help.

First, Canada must restore fair access to the U.S. marketplace. On Tuesday, we met with Janice Charette when we were in Ottawa as a group, and we are encouraged by her knowledge of our industry and the impact of the revised section 232 application. We believe that she will fight for our industry to have more fair access to the U.S. market.

Second, Canada must protect domestic markets from import surges. We believe that tariff rate quotas, or TRQs, that protect the steel industry would help our industry. The U.S.'s closing of its doors to low-cost imports cannot leave Canada as the landing place for that material.

Third, Canada needs stronger import monitoring and enforcement so that we can better track aluminum products coming in and prevent circumvention, dumping and unfair trade. We have a standing CITT trade case against China that began in 2008 and was recently renewed for five more years. We know that Chinese metal is still making its way through other low-cost regions into Canada, but we do not have the enforcement available to catch this today.

Our industry is not asking to avoid competition. We're asking for a fair chance to survive and compete.

We have the people, we have the equipment, we have the experience, we have the plants and we have the ability to support the Canadian economy, but we need markets to sell to. We're asking this committee and government to treat this as urgent.

Thank you, and I welcome questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Trottier, please go ahead for five minutes.

[Guy Trottier, General Manager, White Birch Paper]

Good morning. My name is Guy Trottier. I'm the general manager of a pulp and paper mill located in Quebec City. We're right next to the Chateau Frontenac. We're owned by White Birch Paper. This mill has been in operation since 1927, which is 99 years of operation. I've had the privilege of being involved with the company for over 35 years.

Our business was formerly steered toward newsprint manufacturing, with products sold worldwide. India was a major customer for products but has completely faded away in the last few years as we have observed changes in business relations between the countries. With the decline in demand for newsprint both locally and internationally, our production site has engaged in a strong diversification effort to reposition our production line.

We now have three niche segments: high brightness paper, recycled kraft and recycled paperboard. Our most recent project involved converting machine one from newsprint to recycled kraft paper.

We were pursuing several goals in this conversion. We wanted to reduce our consumption of wood chips. The increased tariffs on lumber have made Quebec's wood chips less available and more costly. The second thing we were pursuing was to steer our production toward products with increasing demand versus newsprint and to position our manufacturing site away from mega-producers of commodity products. We also wanted to become a large recycling centre and to bring a plastic substitution replacement solution to the market.

We successfully started this new operation. A few months after start-up, at the beginning of 2025, the threat of tariffs emerged in the United States. Our products' destination was 90% to U.S. originally, but this had us revise our position and steer sales differently.

Nevertheless, if tariffs had been imposed at this critical point in time, which was early 2025, it would have potentially ruined all our efforts toward this project. We have now diversified our product portfolio and fully ramped up production and sales, a success that came with a massive internal effort by our team.

This project was initially presented in 2022 and benefited from the electricity rebate program from the Quebec Ministry of Finance. That was a strong tailwind that allowed us to reduce the risk of the project and come up with an attractive return on investment. The electricity rebate program came to an end at the end of 2025. That's really important to mention. It is now difficult to bring additional projects to life in light of this.

Our mill has presented a new project aiming at consolidating the future of our production site. We are now looking for ways to support this new effort. Over the last seven years, we've had the opportunity to visit a few dozen pulp and paper production sites around the world. Right now, China has become the largest producer. It used to be the United States. Now it really is China, and the United States is second.

Worldwide, what we're witnessing is large investments in new manufacturing sites. We're also seeing massive upgrades of existing ones. Mills in Quebec and Canada that previously benefited from an abundant wood chip supply and energy sources are now competing against really big machines, and we are basically trailing behind in this industry right now. The worldwide competition is increasingly fierce.

The world is changing. The way that countries do business together has changed as well. The big question now becomes how we work together to provide future generations with an opportunity to continue manufacturing operations in this new environment.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Mr. Trottier. It was a very informative presentation.

We'll go to Mr. Généreux, please, for six minutes.

Welcome to the committee today.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. I would also like to thank my colleagues for inviting me to be here this morning.

Mr. Larkin, very quickly, I just want to say hello for Stéphanie Poitras and Vincent Breton. They're major pork processors in my riding, people who are well respected for the work they do. They also provide a lot of jobs.

If I may, I'd like to start with some questions for Mr. Trottier.

Mr. Trottier, I'm the member for Côte‑du‑Sud—Rivière‑du‑Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, and you're at the Quebec City plant. If I understand correctly, you weren't necessarily involved with the Rivière-du-Loup mill, which unfortunately closed its doors last fall, but it was under your company's management. It went bankrupt. If I understand correctly, each of the entities in your company is independent. There were 190 jobs there, and now they're gone, unfortunately. That mill had been there for 60 years.

What were the biggest challenges you faced in Rivière‑du‑Loup? I know that you also considered the possibility of changing the machinery like you ended up doing in Quebec City. Why do you think that wasn't possible in Rivière‑du‑Loup?

[Guy Trottier]

Obviously, my focus has always been the Quebec City mill, but I do have extensive experience in the pulp and paper industry, so I was able to keep an eye on what was happening in Rivière-du-Loup.

The Rivière-du-Loup mill was heavily focused on exporting newsprint to India. As I explained earlier in my presentation, India has gradually reduced its orders from Canada. This has been happening a lot in recent years. Normally, what they did was place orders, but they were the ones who set the price. It was a different way of doing business. They would place orders, then set a price for the order. Obviously, the price kept dropping. It dropped to such a low level that people eventually decided they no longer wanted to take those orders. India therefore withdrew from the Canadian market in what one might call a slightly more strategic way.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

In that particular case, were we competing with China? China and India are quite close to each other, after all.

[Guy Trottier]

What I'm seeing in the international pulp and paper sectors these days is that Russia, China and India are working together. That's been very obvious in recent years. A number of mills in eastern Canada, which used to work with India and China, completely halted exports. The Soucy mill took a direct hit. If I remember correctly, 60% to 70% of its production went to India.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

What about your view of the relationship between the United States and Canada, particularly regarding softwood lumber and everything that stems from that, such as wood chips, which you need to make paper?

I'm well aware of it, because I know who bought the plant in Rivière-du-Loup: it was the Groupe Lebel. Based on my recent discussions with Louis-Frédéric Lebel, the 10% tariffs recently imposed by the U.S. government have hardly helped the Canadian industry—right now, they allow Europe to ship lumber to the U.S. that's cheaper than what we can produce just a five-hour drive away. It's incredible, really, when you think about it.

Do you think the Liberal government's relationship with the U.S. government—the way it treats the U.S., or the way it works with the U.S.—is hurting exports to the United States, particularly at this time?

[Guy Trottier]

What we're currently seeing is that wood chips—a by-product of softwood lumber—are much harder to find in Quebec. Things are also harder in terms of prices. Our Papier Masson mill—located nearby in Gatineau—has had to start sourcing wood chips from Ontario, because wood is scarce in Quebec and prices are very high. The mill has therefore managed to secure a wood supply from Ontario.

As for the relationship with the United States, there's no doubt that all these tariffs are reducing the number of softwood lumber producers in Quebec and driving up the price of all by-products—in our case, wood chips.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Do you think Canada's approach should be different? This morning, I read that Mexico and the United States have begun negotiations. In fact, they started beforehand, but now they are embarking on a more significant round of negotiations. Canada is at the table, but it feels like we tiptoed in.

Do you think we should really be pushing the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement negotiations much harder than we currently are?

[Guy Trottier]

I'd like to answer, but that's not really my area of expertise. I wouldn't be able to provide a precise answer on that subject.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Is your project in Quebec—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 25 seconds remaining, Mr. Généreux.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Someone's stealing our time here too—that's not good. I'm joking, but time always flies by too quickly.

Mr. Trottier, thank you very much, and thank you for your testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Ehsassi, you have six minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you also to the three witnesses. I found your opening remarks very comprehensive and informative, so I'm grateful for that.

I will start off with the Canadian Meat Council.

Mr. Larkin, allow me, first of all, to say thank you for all the energy you are putting into the work you're doing. You're here today, I saw you in Mexico during the Canada trade mission and you'll go off to Washington pretty soon. You have a very good perspective on the overall industry in all three of the CUSMA countries.

Just for the benefit of all of us, could you tell us how integrated the industry is among the three countries?

[Kyle Larkin]

That's a great question.

I'll give you an example on the cattle side, which I'm sure you've heard from our friends at the Canadian Cattle Association. You can have cattle that's born and raised in, let's say, Alberta, Canada, moved to the U.S. for fattening and finishing and then moved back to Canada for processing by one of the companies that I would represent.

We're highly integrated on the cattle side and equally integrated on the pork side. The processors on both sides of the border and in Mexico work fairly closely together, just as our organizations do. The Canadian Meat Council has a memorandum of understanding with the American Meat Institute and the Mexican organization, called Comecarne, and the premise of the MOU for all three of our organizations is to work together on CUSMA and push for a flat renewal of the agreement.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

You also touched on the issue of the need for harmonization, so what are some of the non-tariff barriers that in your opinion could benefit from greater harmonization among the three countries?

[Kyle Larkin]

There are two regulatory pieces we're missing here in Canada. Our American counterparts are more competitive within the U.S. and internationally in terms of extrapolating more meat from cattle specifically than we can in Canada, and it costs our beef processors a significant amount of money every year.

Number one is specified risk material or the enhanced feed ban. It has two different names depending on who you're speaking to. This originated when we had BSE, the foreign animal disease, in Canada about 20 years ago. The U.S. brought in regulatory changes to deal with this at that time, but they have moved forward and past those regulatory changes to allow beef processors in the U.S. to derive more meat from the carcasses of cattle, specifically for pet food.

We're not there yet. We've had good signals from the Government of Canada that we'll get there likely by the end of the year, but there's still some work to be done. The issue that's newer per se is defatted meat. In the U.S, for five-plus years, they have been able to use this new innovation, an extrapolation process, to take the lean trim—the fat from the cow—and put it in a process to extrapolate more ground beef from the carcass and out of the lean trimmings.

Here in Canada, we are not allowed to use that extrapolation process and mix the ground beef taken out of it with the ground beef that we deliver to Canadians, but we are—and this is the crazy part—allowed to extrapolate ground beef and export it to the U.S. for them to use. We're allowed to export it, but we're not allowed to use it here in Canada.

That's why we're working with the CFIA to try to get our regulations on defatted beef updated so we can use this new innovation, which would allow us to get more ground beef from the cattle supply we already have here in Canada. Our economic impact study shows that it could lower the price of ground beef on the store shelf by over 5%. There's a real benefit here to the affordability for Canadians.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

As a concluding question, you said you're working with the CFIA, so how long have you been working on this specific project?

[Kyle Larkin]

The first project on specified risk material has been going on for five-plus years, so we're glad to see that we're finally at the finish line.

On the defatted beef submission, we just put it in two months ago, so we're currently working with our CFIA officials to get it past the finish line. We're really looking for those regulations on defatted meats to be updated by the end of the year. It is a new process. It's a new innovation, at least for us in Canada, but as I said, it's been around for five-plus years in the U.S., and beef processors in that country have been enjoying that process for quite some time.