International Trade committee  As the second-largest food processing industry in Canada, dairy processing contributes more than $14 billion annually to the country's national economy. Dairy processors directly employ 24,000 Canadians in 471 facilities across the country, with an aggregate payroll of $1.2 billi

International Trade committee  To mitigate the negative impact of the increase in market access under CUSMA, we propose a twofold approach: first, the allocation of dairy import licences to Canadian dairy processors; and second, a dairy processor investment program. We want to reiterate today that dairy impor

International Trade committee  Yes, indeed, last summer, money was announced for dairy farmers only. Nothing was announced for dairy processors, and that was certainly a great disappointment for us, as we said in our brief.

International Trade committee  Yes, I am not talking about CUSMA. We were disappointed. We hope that it will be in the next budget. As we said in our brief, we were part of the working group that looked at the financial impacts and the ways to mitigate them. We need an investment program and tariff quotas, im

International Trade committee  We suspect there won't be any processors paying the tariff. I stand to be corrected, but that's our expectation at this point, because the tariff makes it uneconomical to export to foreign markets.

International Trade committee  Yes, we agree with full and fair compensation for both dairy farmers and dairy processors.

International Trade committee  Perhaps I'll add a fourth one, the oversight clauses we find in the CUSMA agreement. We provide oversight to the U.S. government on all things dairy, basically, in Canada.

International Trade committee  Yes, the impact would be $60 million, as we discussed earlier. As Dominique mentioned, the peculiar aspect is that it applies to all countries, and that's a first in a trade agreement. According to our legal counsel it has never happened before that an agreement between two or th

Agriculture committee  On one hand, depending on their product line and the markets they serve, most dairy processors saw their revenues drop between 0% and 50% due to the decline in the food and hospitality market. On the other hand, dairy processors saw an increase in their costs related to COVID-1

Agriculture committee  I'd like to quickly go back to the point Mr. Barrett just made about the allocation of TRQs. We want to reiterate the importance of allocating dairy TRQs to dairy processors. Last week, we sent a memo on this subject to several government representatives, pointing out that alloc

Agriculture committee  Actually, the purpose of the program that was announced isn't to compensate dairy processors. It's to address the COVID-19 crisis. The government is making $77.5 million available to all food processors. The compensation we talked about in our opening statement pertains to the t

Agriculture committee  As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we need the government to announce the details of the export and import components as soon as possible. We've had positive discussions with both politicians and department officials. I know the department is working hard so it can make those

Agriculture committee  It could affect margins, but not substantially. Our working group estimated the losses stemming from the three agreements at $320 million per year, which includes the export caps. As we mentioned in our opening statement, CUSMA includes a clause that imposes export caps. Our esti

Agriculture committee  We haven't looked into that specific question.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. I can see that it would raise questions. Our association hasn't taken a stand on how TRQs should be distributed among dairy processors, depending on whether they are small and medium-sized businesses or large companies. Our position is that TRQs should be alloc