Industry committee  Mr. Chair, committee members, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Pierre Richard, president of the Quebec Furniture Manufacturers' Association and president of the Canadian Furniture Show. I am accompanied by Mr. Réjean Poitras, president of Amisco, a large furnitur

Industry committee  I'll give a general comment, with pleasure, and then I'll go to Mr. Poitras. He is living this reality because he exports to the States. From the general perspective of what we have seen from our members, it's not a light switch. If the dollar goes down, exports don't all of a s

Industry committee  A 15-second answer would be that we are late in the game. We're working with the Quebec government, which was about to release the details of what they call la stratégie numérique. We hope that within that there will be a few indicators of where we can be more concrete in the sup

Industry committee  Congratulations to you.

Industry committee  We surveyed our members on this matter. A number of our members actually were exporting to Europe. Today we have very few. It's very costly to play in the European market. Also, there are a lot of barrières non tarifaires. Therefore, the American market is the market of choice fo

Industry committee  There are examples of companies in Quebec that have made this shift. I'm thinking of South Shore, for example, which sells 95% of its products online now, as well as in Canada. This company offers IKEA-type products, which may be easier to sell online compared with more tradition

Industry committee  In fact, the whole world is looking at this very closely. The furniture industry overall is lagging somewhat. Seven or eight years ago, consumers made online reservations for airline tickets or other tickets. Then, they started to buy shoes. Ten years ago, no one would have beli

Industry committee  With the perfect storm I mentioned before—the Canadian dollar, the products coming from low-cost production companies, and the slowdown of the economy—we were selling less. What has happened is that products coming from countries that produce at low cost have basically wiped out

Industry committee  Be better than the others.

Industry committee  We're going beyond our area of expertise; however, we do know a bit about the Canadian market. I would say that in Quebec we are very strong in the residential portion of the industry. In fact, it's higher than the 36% we were talking about in terms of the overall industry. In

Industry committee  That are different from those in the rest of Canada?

Industry committee  You're right. Many of the recommendations are monetary. On the non-monetary side, I would say that the one you just mentioned is very important. When there are changes in government regulation and the industry is not consulted and finds out about it in a memo that's sent to the

Industry committee  The answer is yes. There is a shortage of skilled trades. Number one is to attract the people. In some cases we can train them up pretty easily, but in other cases you do need labour that is a bit more skilled. That's correct. There is a shortage.

Industry committee  Right now in Quebec, one of them is rembourrage. We also need people who sew.

Industry committee  For sofas, etc., that is one of the areas that is very difficult to find people for at this time.