Delivered to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on Tuesday, June 16, 2026:

Thank you to the Committee for the invitation to appear today.

My name is Kristina Farrell and I am the Chief Executive Officer of Food and Beverage Canada, the national association representing Canada’s food and beverage manufacturers. 

Our industry is Canada’s largest manufacturing industry and largest manufacturing employer, supporting more than 320,000 jobs and generating more than $170B in annual sales. 

Food security has become an increasingly important topic as Canadians face rising costs, global instability, supply chain disruptions, and shifting trade relationships. These challenges have prompted an important conversation about Canada’s ability to feed itself and strengthen its economic resilience. 

At Food and Beverage Canada, we believe Canada has an enormous opportunity before it. 

The good news is that Canada does not have a food availability problem. Canada already produces far more agricultural products than our domestic market can absorb. The opportunity is to process more of those products here at home, creating jobs, attracting investment, increasing exports, and generating more value from Canadian agriculture. 

In other words, Canada’s food security challenge is increasingly a competitiveness challenge. If we want a more resilient and self-sufficient food system, we must focus not only on agricultural production, but also on processing more food here at home. 

Every additional tonne of Canadian agricultural product that is processed domestically creates jobs, investment, exports, tax revenue, and economic activity. It also strengthens our supply chains and reduces our vulnerability to external shocks. 

That is why Food and Beverage Canada has consistently advocated for a stronger focus on domestic processing capacity. 

We welcomed elements of the recently released National Food Security Strategy, particularly the recognition that domestic processing is an important part of Canada’s food system. Investments in food infrastructure, distribution networks, and support for SME’s may provide benefits to parts of the food system. 

However, we remain concerned that the Strategy places considerably more emphasis on food production and distribution than on the competitiveness challenges facing Canada’s food and beverage manufacturers. If Canada wants to produce more domestically, we must address the factors that influence where companies choose to invest. 

Our members consistently identify labour shortages, regulatory burden, transportation and energy costs, and lagging productivity as barriers to growth.  

Food affordability starts with the cost of producing food. 

When manufacturers face higher costs, those costs ultimately work their way through the supply chain. Improving affordability therefore requires improving competitiveness. 

For Food and Beverage Canada, that means focusing on four things. 

First, we must significantly expand domestic processing through targeted investments that support modernization, automation, and productivity improvements. We have consistently called for a five-year, $2B domestic processing fund to help companies de-risk large-scale investments needed to produce at scale and compete against imports. Reducing food production costs at the source is the most effective lever for ensuring food affordability over the long-term. 

Second, we must address labour shortages by ensuring food and beverage manufacturing has access to a stable, permanent workforce. Food security depends on people. That means, among other things, creating pathways for workers already contributing to Canada’s food system to become permanent residents. 

Third, governments must reduce unnecessary regulatory burden and ensure new regulations are evaluated through a food affordability and competitiveness lens. Efforts should also be made to identify and remove outdated, misaligned, and duplicative regulations that no longer add value to health, safety, or consumer confidence, yet continue to inflate costs and hinder productivity.  

Finally, Canada must create a more competitive investment environment. This requires speeding up permitting timelines to build or expand capacity, as well as accelerating approval for innovative food ingredients that are already safely used abroad but await CFIA or Health Canada approvals. 

Other countries understand this. Around the world, governments are competing aggressively for food and beverage manufacturing investment. They recognize it as not only a food security issue, but as a major economic development opportunity. Canada should be doing the same. 

The Prime Minister has spoken about processing more of what Canadian farmers grow, strengthening food sovereignty, and building a more resilient food system. We support that vision. But achieving that vision will require more than growing food. It will require a long-term competitiveness agenda that encourages businesses to invest, innovate, and expand capacity in Canada. 

Canada has all of the ingredients needed to become a global agri-food leader. The opportunity before us it to process more of what we grow, create more value from Canadian agriculture, and strengthen our economic resilience.  

If we get this right, we can strengthen food security, improve affordability, create jobs, attract investment, increase exports, and build a more competitive Canadian economy.