Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee for inviting Maple Leaf Foods to participate this morning. Maple Leaf Foods, as you may know, is a large—I believe the largest—food processor and exporter in Canada. We have 23,000 employees in the country and globally, and

Agriculture committee  I can make a comment just with respect to labour. Certainly, a company like ours, which has operations in different provinces, is subject to different labour regulations in every province, and there is a compliance cost to that. The other thing I could mention right now is the

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can perhaps make a comment on the first issue of playing tough with the Americans. The one thing that has been mentioned here is the growing tide of imported U.S. meat. We certainly see it in the pork sector. It's coming in large volumes, particularly

Agriculture committee  Well, I think the point is that these are revenue challenges to the producer, and depending on the ownership model, some of those producers have, by far, the majority stake in the profitability of the enterprise and suffer the majority of the loss when the markets fall. So the qu

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  No. Maple Leaf is proceeding with its plans. We've been an environmental leader and feel we can adapt. If there's one area of concern, it is perhaps that the moratorium or the pause that has been announced is open ended. It doesn't seem to have a fixed end point, which is a sou

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's correct. It would be moving away from the traditional primal cuts—or fresh and frozen commodity pork, often, which is then further value-added in the market. With much of what we send to Japan, that's what happens. Understand that value-added today doesn't just mean

Agriculture committee  Sorry, Mr. Chairman, are you referring to payments to hog producers--

Agriculture committee  Well, certainly at present, producers who participate in the elite swine program and our contract partners are eligible under CAIS, but a wide degree of business models apply, and the eligibility would certainly be in play for any producer who is currently in the CAIS program in

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chairman, we can't be specific. We've indicated in this presentation that the future of the plant is under review. It is a plant that combines primary and secondary processing, and it plays an important role in supplying product to our Moncton fac

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the committee for inviting us today to explain how we at Maple Leaf Foods are trying to address the challenges facing the pork industry in Canada. My colleague, Don Davidson, represents our fresh foods business and will be able to help me ans

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Maple Leaf Foods is probably familiar to most members of the committee. We're the largest food processor, employing 24,000 people in operations across Canada. One of our key operating companies is Rothsay, which is Canada's largest recycler of animal by-