International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am Yves Ruel and I am the manager of trade and policy for the Chicken Farmers of Canada. I would like first of all to thank you for inviting us to debate the important issue of import circumvention, in particular the case of

International Trade committee  Thank you. As a result of that, when we combine both programs, IREP and DRP, there's an increase of 35% since 2001, and that's an impact on our industry. Last year the imports under DRP reached 96 million kilograms, which is 9% of our production. As you've heard, CBSA also incre

International Trade committee  No, unfortunately we are not aware of any specific timelines. We heard recently that there was some discussion with Trent University on the DNA test. We've seen a decline in the imports number, and we've heard of some increased verification on the imports of spent fowl, but I am

International Trade committee  First, I would say that chicken farmers would like to produce as much chicken as they can, so if Concord Meats needs chicken, they can contact us, and Robin's members, and I'm sure they'll be pleased to offer it. In terms of the specific programs, Global Affairs Canada's import

International Trade committee  Go ahead.

International Trade committee  What's important for us in the trade agreement is to make sure that the three pillars of supply management are maintained. What's key in this case we're discussing today is import controls are fully maintained. We already provide lots of access, as was mentioned in the dairy pres

Agriculture committee  Yes. The remission order is for all goods, so technically it does include chicken. However, chicken is not yet permitted for import into Canada because CFIA has not concluded its study on issuing import certificates for products coming from Ukraine. That's why we're bringing this

Agriculture committee  First, our main concern is on food safety, so I don't think any threshold is even worth discussing. We're concerned about a country having the capacity to do proper inspections and to conduct proper analysis on animal health and care and the food safety of products. We care abo

Agriculture committee  It isn't an exact science.

Agriculture committee  Actually, even an economist or a statistician wouldn't be able to predict the number of kilograms of chicken that Canadians will eat 14 weeks from now. It's virtually impossible to predict exactly. We nevertheless have some historical knowledge of consumption trends. For example

Agriculture committee  I can't answer for the processors, but there are always adjustment mechanisms. Canada has a tariff rate quota that permits the importing of a certain number of kilograms. There are also various market options: processors may decide to increase inventories or do more further proce

Agriculture committee  I think it's important that you hear the answer to that from the chair of our association, Mr. Klompmaker. He's a farmer and he's very familiar with what a farmer goes through when he has a case of avian influenza on his farm. It's very trying. So I'll let Mr. Klompmaker describe

Agriculture committee  The unfortunate situation that Ukraine is experiencing raises many questions for us regarding the sanitary infrastructure in place. As Mr. Klompmaker said, it's very stringent when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency takes on this role. In view of the unfortunate situation in Ukr

Agriculture committee  I mentioned 2019 because that was the year the Canadian Food Inspection Agency audited the Ukrainian system. There have been a lot of AI cases in Europe in the past year and in Canada since January.

Agriculture committee  We don't know who was consulted or whether anybody was consulted, but it came as a surprise to us.