Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, everyone. I am pleased to speak to you tonight, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity. I will introduce myself first. I am Ghislain Gervais. I am a poultry producer in Saint-Guillaume in Centre-du-Québec. I operate an agricultural an

Finance committee  Since February 2016, I have been president of Sollio Cooperative Group, formerly known as La Coop fédérée. Supply chains and food self-sufficiency are issues of great concern to us. In operation for nearly 100 years, Sollio Cooperative Group is the only Canada-wide agricultural

Finance committee  Attaining food self-sufficiency will require investment in innovation. It is important to know that operating margins are very slim in the agri-food industry. When something like COVID-19 happens, it is almost a perfect storm because the margins disappear. We need innovation.

Finance committee  Some companies are already very vulnerable owing to COVID-19. If there is a second wave later this fall, I feel some companies may not survive. That would jeopardize the country's food self-sufficiency, in a sense. If fewer Canadian companies are producing the food that Canadians

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  We have used our cooperative business model to set up large cooperatives that have a major impact in the regions. The values guiding our decisions are honesty, accountability, solidarity and fairness. These are values cherished by Canadian society. I have another example of our

Finance committee  Due to the pandemic, we are unfortunately not able to add as much value to our export products as we would have liked. It is important to know that all the products we succeed in exporting represent economic value that we can reinvest in modernization and elsewhere to better su

Finance committee  We were hit hard last year when China banned pork from Canada from June to November. There is currently some partial opening. I say “partial” because we have a plant in Red Deer, Alberta, that still cannot export to China. For us and for the organization, it represents a $2 mil

Finance committee  I hope so. Thank you for your questions.

Finance committee  I am sorry, I did not understand the question.

Finance committee  These are the costs of implementing all social distancing measures, purchasing plexiglass and buying visors and masks. They do not include costs related to the loss of productivity due to the slowdown of the chains. These are only the implementation costs.

Finance committee  In Olymel's case, the costs amount to $20 million. For Exceldor, which you probably know, the costs are about $15 million, and for Agropur, they are between $15 million and $20 million. The impact on processors of implementing these measures is enormous. It is ironic, because we

Finance committee  It is one potential solution to be considered. As I said earlier, the first measures announced are a step in the right direction, but the needs are much greater than that. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture recently conducted a survey, which showed that $2.6 billion was neede

Finance committee  I am not aware of that discussion. However, there are additional impacts, that is for sure, and we expect to receive support in terms of absorbing some of the costs of the crisis. We can document them, we can provide figures, no problem. A crisis like COVID-19 is an extraordinary

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. Sollio Cooperative Group has facilities in nine of the 10 Canadian provinces. So we have a presence practically from coast to coast. The sector we are most concerned about right now, because it is the most affected, is meat processing, and I am thinki