Agriculture committee  Thank you, Guy, and thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank all the committee members, on behalf of the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, for the opportunity to speak on the ongoing supply chain disruptions having a significant impact on the fresh fruit and vegetable indus

Agriculture committee  Correct. Looking at projections and looking at support, and this is also in support of the testimony of Food and Beverage Canada, I think what really comes down in the play is that everyone is working with a smaller labour pool. I know for a fact that working with a smaller labou

Agriculture committee  That's a great question. The simple answer is that, yes, there's a role for government. It is creating the right economic environment to connect all of those businesses. I'll give you an example in the blur of the regulatory enforcement of how the business operates. We heard the

Agriculture committee  Right.

Agriculture committee  They are two different discussions, and one is about the market conditions and transparencies we heard earlier. The other piece goes back to market conditions in open production and trade. I think the reality comes back to this. If you are selling into the regulated model and y

Agriculture committee  Yes, most definitely. As an example, I can talk about Sliced, out west, under the Star Group. When you start looking at where and how they found success, you see that, number one, they ensured that they had control over their production base. They had an internalized ecosystem wh

Agriculture committee  We actually have a survey out asking some of those questions right now. I'm sorry, but I don't have the full details on the breadth of what the solutions are.

Agriculture committee  You've heard from Ms. Tait and Mr. Fraser some of the possibilities, and I think you touched on a key piece: Why isn't the industry leveraging the existing infrastructure and existing tools that are available to them? Is it because of the complexity? Is it because they don't fit

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  The information that's been provided to date is that until the 14th they are exempt, and they are working through the details. This is the bureaucracy. You have four departments that are working on moving temporary foreign workers to the farm and to the processing facilities, an

Agriculture committee  There's a range of pieces that come into play from the production level and from enabling more inputs, such as the registration of a greater volume and number of different crop production tools, that allow our producers to use and leverage a more cost-effective input in their pro

Agriculture committee  That's an extremely great point. The government can do one key thing for the fruit and vegetable industry, which is not effectively protected in a bankruptcy scenario under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. It can correct that by creating a deemed trust that would protect proce

Agriculture committee  Most definitely. I can only talk to the fresh fruit and veg sectors and to the processing side on that end, and that can include the greenhouse industry, as well as looking at the minimally processed. When we start looking at the investments, you're looking at protective barriers

Agriculture committee  Private investment is a key function of driving innovation. It's also rethinking how we process, so some new, innovative tools that can change the actual production line, change the thinking around how we operate our line, again, from a fruit and vegetable perspective. Also, it'

Agriculture committee  Thank you for your question. It's a good question, and I apologize to the interpreters because I have it on the English channel. I'll be very quick. I want to talk about the situation today, because we're dealing with a very unique environment where we have multiple layers of a