Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jean-Michel Laurin, and I'm president and CEO of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, CPEPC, or CCTOV in French. I'm joined today by our board chair, Mr. Joël Cormier, who is also senior vice-presiden

Agriculture committee  I would just add one more point that we put forward to the government. Several of our members began, as early as late February and early March, to put up plexiglass screens to separate employees as a security measure. We were told that expenses would only be eligible if they were

Agriculture committee  You mentioned the free trade agreements. In fact, the CPTPP is in force, but there are no imports related to our products yet. The new agreement with the United States will come into effect on July 1. It is important that the tariff rate quotas that will be granted under these ag

Agriculture committee  We don't have one. As a result of negotiating these agreements, we were promised programs. In a working group that we had participated in, a number of ideas were exchanged. We had two main demands. The first was to have a program that would facilitate the modernization of the pla

Agriculture committee  That is an excellent question. Thanks for noting that we were able to bring 10 associations together. Actually, we're now up to 11 associations. This is a very important topic. In regard to the challenge in our industry, you're asking about a request to increase the cap to 30%.

Agriculture committee  Yes, we are. Actually, what we're asking for is a level playing field. On the production side, we know for temporary foreign workers who have come into our agriculture sector, those applications are processed more quickly. What we're looking for is to make sure that we also get

Agriculture committee  The idea there is to have a central place within the government to process our labour market impact assessment requests so that they develop expertise. They get applications from all sectors of the economy. We're thinking that if we can have a dedicated centre within ESDC to rev

Agriculture committee  My colleague from the Canadian Meat Council mentioned this earlier. There's nothing temporary about jobs in our industry. The idea there is to ensure that the foreign workers who come in, if they're willing to stay in Canada and if the employer is willing to sponsor them—we know

Agriculture committee  We know there have been influxes of refugees, such as recently from Afghanistan. We understand. It would be great to find a solution. We have these people coming to Canada looking to get into the labour market. We need people. The idea there is to basically bring these two togeth

Agriculture committee  I can't speak to this specifically. Some of my colleagues might be able to expand on it. I'll be honest. Labour is somewhat of a new issue for our association. We have been working on this for several months now. I know housing continues to be a challenge, but I can't speak to s

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Perron. Let me remind you that the ratio you are talking about recently went to 20% in Quebec. However, for most of our members everywhere else in the country, it is still 10%. As for what the appropriate threshold might be, we have asked for it

Agriculture committee  That is an excellent example. As we have seen, labour shortages can have a direct effect on the availability of food. We have asked ourselves about the simplest solution that we could recommend to the government. In our opinion, it could quite easily make a few changes to two pi

Agriculture committee  Maybe, if I can, Mr. Chair—

Agriculture committee  I think what's changed since the last time the committee examined this—and I'm assuming our colleagues in the labour sector would probably agree—is that we've seen a seismic shift in the way labour markets operate, not just in Canada but globally. You can look at the U.S. and oth

Agriculture committee  With regard to financing, it's an important one. I can say that I've heard, particularly from members, that having access to regular financing is an issue. I know Farm Credit Canada has been more active in this space. I think it used to focus exclusively on farmers, but I know i