Madam Speaker, I feel like starting my speech in a different way. I just heard that the Liberal government is supporting this bill. Everyone is pleased to be pleased, and everything is perfect.
However, we asked if it would be possible to seek unanimous consent to send the bill directly to the Senate. That way, it could move forward and produce growers could finally get some protection when they are not paid for their produce. It seems that some members withheld their consent.
There may be agreement, but some among us plan to take their time. I have a bit of a problem with that, because the request is clear and dates back to 2015. Furthermore, the Liberal government made very definite and public commitments in this file. I mentioned 2015, but the requests started in 2014. During the 2015 elections, the Liberal Prime Minister agreed to fix the problem. Now it is 2023. How is that for efficiency? We will not get far at that rate. For now, people are pleased to be pleased. They support the bill, and good for them, but I would like to see us move forward.
Now I will close that parenthesis and explain what this bill is about. This bill seeks to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act to put vendors of perishable products such as fruits and vegetables at the top of the list. When a perishable product is delivered to a purchaser, the value of the produce is deemed to be held in trust. Why is that necessary? It is necessary because producers of perishable products are in a vulnerable situation. We need to think of every scenario.
Not so long ago, we conducted a study at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri‑Food on inflation at the grocery store. Grocery store CEOs came and swore to us that their profit margins were thin, just 2% or 3%, and that they were still the same. When we asked them to show us a breakdown of their profits, they refused, claiming that they are competitors. They promised to submit these figures to the Competition Bureau during its investigation. When we saw the Competition Bureau report, we discovered that they had not provided the figures.
When produce growers appeared before the committee, they told us they were seeing lettuce worth 99¢ being sold at a discounted price of $2.49, which means it normally costs more than that. I am talking about prices from March, and the situation is even worse today. The grower gets only 99¢, so I think the profit margins are over 2%. The profit margins are above 2% because it is a fresh product.
Negotiations are unbalanced. A purchaser can refuse the stock and say they will go and see another grower who has been negotiating for three or four days. If the grower's warehouse is full of fresh produce and they wait too long, their products will no longer be fresh and appealing. Consumers will not want them, and the grower will not be able to sell them. In that case, they will be forced to give in. This is just one example.
Government officials now agree, and that is good, but they told us for a long time that there were almost no bankruptcy filings and that the bill was therefore unnecessary. The truth is that there were no filings because there were no legal protections. Whenever it became clear that a customer was having trouble paying for merchandise or was on the verge of bankruptcy, arrangements could be made, similar to a kind of liquidation. Sometimes half the price, or even a quarter, would be accepted.
If an out-of-court settlement is not reached and the client goes bankrupt and the business owner does not have any protection, then the business owner would lose 100% of the production value. Business owners therefore end up agreeing in a panic to be paid 25% of the production value. These losses are not included in the statistics. Business owners seem as though they are happy to be paid, but they are receiving only one-quarter of the production value. That is why this is important.
I have a hard time not getting upset about this, because I cannot understand why we have not yet passed such a measure. It would be easy to do, and we have been calling for this kind of measure since 2014. It is now 2023 and there is still no legislation. What is more, it is free. It will not cost the government a cent. What it will cost is to perhaps put fruit and vegetable producers first and bank creditors second. I think maybe that is why some members are hesitating.
There are a lot of discussions going on in the House, Madam Speaker. In fact, for the past little while, I have been speaking indirectly to the very people concerned in this matter. I would like them to listen to my speech.