International Trade committee  Thank you, honourable Chair and members of the committee. It is a pleasure today to present the Canadian sugar industry's perspective on trade opportunities in the Indo-Pacific. The Canadian Sugar Institute's members represent refined sugar production in four provinces in Canad

International Trade committee  Well, the volume gains are much lower than we had hoped for. The U.S. is a sugar market of 11 million tonnes. We got another 10,000 tonnes of sugar and sugar-containing products, so the volume gains were very small. The devil is in the details in the sugar market, as in other pro

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I would like to share the views of Canada's sugar industry on the implementation of the new NAFTA, the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement. The Canadian Sugar Institute strongly supports timely ratification of the new

International Trade committee  It's complicated. The devil's in the detail, of course, but I think the TPP approach is something to look back at. We obtained a modest outcome. Of course, we won't see that, but it did address a number of the issues that I talked about. We have quota limitations that have not ke

International Trade committee  I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee today as you consider priorities for the North American trading relationship. I'd like to speak to the critical importance of NAFTA to maintain and grow export opportunities supporting the growth in Canadian investment

International Trade committee  It's because we face quota restrictions going into the United States. Those quotas will be increased, and the rules within the quotas will be more flexible to allow more product diversity, but they won't eliminate the quotas. That would take either a U.S. sugar policy change unde

International Trade committee  There are direct benefits through the various quotas. Most of the countries are not fully liberalizing. Many food products are, but sugar itself won't be liberalized as a commodity, so we have to depend on food products, and many food products will eliminate duties. Canada will

International Trade committee  Sugar would be a relatively low-cost input, which helps make those products more competitive in those markets. That's the advantage our sector in particular brings and the high quality as well.

International Trade committee  It was mostly to do with the Canada-U.S. exchange rate, as well as some relocation to Mexico under the NAFTA, because the U.S. and Mexico have free trade, which exemplifies the problems when Canada—at least for one commodity but also more broadly—isn't part of a freer trade area.

International Trade committee  Surely the advantage we have in food-processing investment would largely shift to the United States, because they would have access to those markets. Their plants are much bigger in the United States, and we'd lose the advantages we have in Canada, including our import costs.

International Trade committee  First, let me explain that the reason operations were closed in southern Ontario was that Canadian companies were finding that operations have to compete globally, because our market is open. In the late fifties, those plants closed. Redpath Sugar built their plant and opened it

International Trade committee  No. Their industry is very small. It's mostly from Brazil and the Central American countries that we get the raw commodity. It's exported to Canada in 20,000- or 40,000-tonne vessels. It's very economic rather than importing refined sugar, which would be competitive with us. That

International Trade committee  I'll start from west to east for no particular reason. In Vancouver, British Columbia, we have a cane sugar refinery that was established in the late 1800s but is still servicing particularly small and medium-sized businesses in western Canada. Taber has a beet processing facilit

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Well, the TPP won't change U.S. sugar policy, unfortunately, but it does incrementally increase our access, mostly through sugar out of Taber, Alberta, and a quota for sugar-containing products. That'll help our refineries as well as those plants. More importantly, for other mark