Agriculture committee  Our member company, Rogers Sugar, is certainly fully apprised of the “Product of Canada” labelling and will take that into account in its business decisions. Certainly their information to me is that this is not a significant driver of their business.

Agriculture committee  We've always labelled Canadian beet sugar as Canadian--as a product of Canada--so there's no change from a Canadian beet sugar perspective.

Agriculture committee  That would be nice if it weren't for the cost disadvantage of shipping sugar outside the Prairies. Further processed products in that part of the country may be able to be labelled “Product of Canada”, but in our industry, from what we've looked at, it's certainly not going to be a significant factor in driving sugar beet planting--

Agriculture committee  I represent the trade association. We don't sell Canadian sugar--

Agriculture committee  Well, it would vary with our crop.

Agriculture committee  Last year was an anomalous year, because we had a very small beet crop. It was about half the normal size. We would normally produce about 100,000 tonnes of sugar from sugar beets. We produce sugar beet thick juice and a variety of other products. We have access to a 10,000-tonne U.S. quota, which is fixed.

Agriculture committee  We import raw cane sugar and process it in Canada because we can't produce cane. We also produce sugar beets.

Agriculture committee  It really doesn't help our industry, because the vast majority of food products are produced in Ontario and Quebec. Given the transportation costs to ship beet sugar to the east, in many cases it would not be financially viable for a food processor, for example, to bring beet sugar into Ontario or Quebec in order to label a product “Product of Canada”, whether it was a sweetened dairy product, a bread product, or something else.

Agriculture committee  Our industry has been here, as I mentioned, since before Confederation. We can't produce sugar cane in Canada, so we have no choice but to import raw sugar. Under the government's new policy our sugar is not produced in Canada, except for beet sugar produced in Taber. It's unfortunate for many food processors who use sugar that we have long considered Canadian who can no longer label many products “Product of Canada” that contain even small amounts of sugar.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean the market for sugar beets?

Agriculture committee  In fact, the only product that we can export to the United States, except in times of natural disaster, is beet sugar. That's under the U.S. rules of origin.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean beet sugar?

Agriculture committee  Thank you, members of the committee. The Canadian Sugar Institute represents sugar refiners in Canada. We have cane sugar-refining operations in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and a sugar beet processing plant in Taber, Alberta. The industry also has two further processing facilities in Ontario that produce products such as iced tea, hot chocolate, and gelatin desserts.