Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I'd like to clarify. I'm deputy minister, not minister. Minister Ernie Hardeman is the minister.

Agriculture committee  I think we have to understand that the issues that have been brought forth are relatively new issues. The announcement by Walmart and then the subsequent announcement by Loblaws were made in the last three or four months. What I think needs to happen is that there has to be co-o

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  We have a lot of foreign direct investment in various companies, whether it's in things like Nutella manufacturing, pizza manufacturing or those types of things. Those plants are all very new plants and they're very automated, so they have a competitive advantage over others. Ou

Agriculture committee  Certainly, we're in discussions here in Ontario and with other provinces; you're quite right. We're currently in the middle of our federal-provincial-territorial meetings. We are having discussions concerning the activities of some of these retailers and the provision of a grocer

Agriculture committee  As a quick response, investment in robotics, blockchain technology, data management and anything we can do to track systems will help us. Labour is the number one cost for food processing, and anything we can do to improve that will improve our efficiency and competitiveness with

Agriculture committee  In fact, I was done.

Agriculture committee  Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I'm pleased to provide an overview of the Ontario food-processing and beverage-manufacturing sector. I'd like to begin by expressing gratitude and a