Agriculture committee  Yes, I can. Currently you can see on Canada's Job Bank website that we have about 750 empty full-time positions in meat factories across Canada, largely in Alberta and Manitoba, but that's not to say there isn't a need for them as well in Ontario. The challenge is that we have

Agriculture committee  We would like to have the opportunity for industrial butchers to be eligible to use the express entry program. We want to be able to offer jobs to people around the world who have butcher skills to come to Canada and work in our facilities. We want full-time workers; that's prett

Agriculture committee  Yes. The challenge is that I often get members, including people from Joe's company, who say they sell their product at a store in Montreal and they have to go through these very stringent requirements, such as testing requirements. For instance, they produce dry-cured meat. At t

Agriculture committee  Well, that would be the end game. Currently, in those places, there is a variety of different levels of inspection, depending on the province. Why is it that meat is inspected at different levels, with different testing requirements? It is historically understandable, given the

Agriculture committee  I can tell you that if you were to invite Agriculture Canada or CFIA employees here to appear before you, they could attest to the fact that they have been working with the provinces for probably almost two decades on a single meat inspection system for Canada, a national meat co

Agriculture committee  Well, certainly we were expecting that by now, which is almost April—this thing happened last summer—they would have told us what happened there. They must have found out something and they should be very much more forthcoming. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public H

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, yes.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is Jim Laws. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council. Joining me today is Mr. Joe Reda, first vice-president and treasurer of the Canadian Meat Council and chief executive officer of Les produits alimentaires Viau Inc

Agriculture committee  No, I think that was the only recommendation. We were happy to see that the final text included some exceptions, for instance with regard to translation, to people who had used a certain product for at least five years and for 10 years in the case of another one. It was not as b

Agriculture committee  We are hoping that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will appoint someone responsible for advising businesses on how to ensure that their establishments are approved by the European Union. This would help them a lot; it would be a great idea. In the ongoing discussions with th

Agriculture committee  We recommended that the government implement a program to make sure that every company has an advantage under any free trade agreement we've signed with another country. We now have several free trade agreements.

Agriculture committee  That's right.

Agriculture committee  Certainly we're very hopeful that these technical discussions that are going on right now between Canada and the Europeans do result in more closely linked meat equivalency protocols. Currently, for instance, the Europeans don't want the use of wooden pallets in the facility. We'

Agriculture committee  Certainly, it does point to where you can't comment on a deal until you see the text. We had been very fortunate that we were consulted along the way. On that particular section on the quota administration, in Europe currently there is trading of quotas, speculation, so that doe

Agriculture committee  We were worried about that section and the geographic indicators; we hadn't see the text. Now we've seen the text we're less worried.