Finance committee  That's the reason in our brief we say we can't put our head in the sand and hide from these issues. Canada is trying to negotiate a European trade agreement. Canada is trying to negotiate a Pacific Rim trade agreement. Wouldn't we rather, as a nation, work on solutions and come u

Finance committee  What we support in terms of the modernization of the immigration laws that are currently under way is a real emphasis on bringing in people to meet the needs of the labour market. Right now they're focused on highly skilled and semi-skilled workers. We also have unskilled positio

Finance committee  Well, you're talking about milk and eggs, but we're talking about poultry and cheese. Cheese is a really big one. In fact, there is a class of cheese just for pizza manufacturers, and it was necessary to give them their own class of cheese because of the concern that they would m

Finance committee  I can assure you that the margins in the restaurant industry are a whole lot lower than they are for the average dairy farmer. If it is so advantageous for restaurants to have these items on their menu, why are they disappearing from the menus of restaurant operators? Why are the

Finance committee  Why is it being...?

Finance committee  We are all in favour of freer trade and fewer subsidies in all sectors. I think that's our major point. Although it isn't the government that subsidizes the dairy or poultry industry in Canada, consumers do, to the tune of billions of dollars. So there's definitely a subsidy prog

Finance committee  First of all, it's in our interests as an industry to have a healthy dairy and poultry industry here in Canada. We are very dependent on the dairy and poultry industries. Unfortunately, what's been happening over the last several years is that these products, particularly dairy,

Finance committee  I would agree. I don't think there is a perfect system out there. What's happening in Australia is that certainly the fees are lower, but the number of cards they are introducing and the difference in fees between the cards—they're finding more and more of these premium and super

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon. It's a pleasure to speak to you this afternoon on behalf of the $65 billion restaurant industry. The restaurant industry is the fourth largest private sector employer in Canada, with 1.1 million employees. This is more than agricultur

Human Resources committee  Sorry. I'm really trying to stay within my five minutes.

Human Resources committee  The temporary foreign worker program, while needed, is expensive, it's administratively burdensome for restaurant operators, and it doesn't solve their long-term structural labour market needs. We need to better develop bridging programs between the temporary foreign worker progr

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just saying that the Conference Board of Canada projects a shortfall of labour in Canada of about one million people by 2020, with 200,000 in our industry alone. All industries are going to be hit, but our industry particularly hard. One reason

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about a key issue that's facing Canada's $63-billion restaurant industry, with its one-million-plus employees, and that's the labour shortage. In our most recent restaurant outlook survey, for the first

Human Resources committee  It's his 40th birthday today. Everybody should know that. [Applause]

Health committee  We're in the business of meeting customer demand, and that's why we believe it's really important that there be a very strong educational campaign, so that people understand they shouldn't be putting extra salt on their food. If a customer in a restaurant is asking for salt, it's