International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I have some slides. I wanted to make sure the members could follow those. Is that possible?

International Trade committee  It was given to the clerk's assistant at the beginning of the....

International Trade committee  Yes, it was.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of Parliament. I'm here as the president of the Canadian Sugar Institute. We are the trade association representing all manufacturers of refined sugar in Canada. The sugar is produced from imported raw cane sugar, largely from developing coun

International Trade committee  That's a very big question, Mr. Menzies. As members of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, we fully support the position of that organization, which represents the majority of Canadian producers and farmers in Canada, that the main avenue to achieve meaningful gains in agrif

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, members of the committee. I'll speak for a few moments and then ask my colleague, Dan Lafrance, to say a few words about the perspective of Lantic and Rogers Sugar. I'm president of the Canadian Sugar Institute, which is the national trade association for t

International Trade committee  Costa Rica was producing about 20,000 tonnes of white sugar. Colombia produces 700,000 tonnes.

International Trade committee  We are consulted by the Canadian government. Unfortunately, we don't always feel that our input shapes the decisions made around the agreement. That's what happened with Costa Rica: we were told not to worry and that it wouldn't be bad, but it set a very negative precedent for us

International Trade committee  I think that was qualified by.... Generally speaking, that's what you want in a trade agreement, but we were partners with the growers on our international trade file, and clearly they recognized the threat to their sector as well as we recognized the threat to our industry, so

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to be here today. The Canadian Sugar Institute is the national trade association representing Canada's refined sugar producers. I would like to have been here with one of my members

International Trade committee  I think we've been pretty clear that that's our issue. Our market is already open. There's no tariff on imports of raw sugar. There's only a $30 tariff on refined. We have no export opportunity in this agreement.

International Trade committee  We have the one processing plant in Taber. It's about 250 growers, with about 150 employees at the plant plus seasonal workers during campaigns. Annual farm receipts for the growers would be in the order of $40 million, and then the value of the refined sugar that's produced at

International Trade committee  You're right, the U.S. is the bad guy, and we don't have access there. The only reason the U.S. is at bay is that we have anti-dumping duties against the U.S. right now. That case comes up for sunset review next year. That's on the U.S. side. These other competitors are coming

International Trade committee  I can only make a general observation; I can't speak to the specifics of any of those particular factors. It's clear that we have good, high-paid jobs in southern Alberta. It's been challenging recently to get and retain workers in this economy. Certainly, it's a very different w

International Trade committee  To answer your last question first, yes, the capacity is more than sufficient to meet all of Canada's needs. Our plants are under capacity, particularly in the west. We export a very limited amount. Our major export market would be the U.S., but as I mentioned, we're constrained