George Morris Centre calls for change | Saskatchewan passes Ontario as Canada’s largest agricultural province
Ontario’s food processing industry continues to shed plants and jobs, despite a call from the government for a doubling of the province’s agriculture and food production value.
Ontario, traditionally Canada’s largest agricultural province, has lost that position during the past two years to Saskatchewan.
Meanwhile, Ontario farmers are finding fewer local processing market for their produce.
Late last year, Kellogg Co. an-nounced it will close a cereal plant in London. Ont., this year, eliminating 550 jobs.
The 89-year-old London food-processing icon sits on Kellogg Lane in the southwestern Ontario city.
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Meanwhile, H.J. Heinz announced the closing of a Leamington plant that was the major buyer for area tomato producers. More than 700 jobs will be lost and farmer markets destroyed.
The two historic sites are among many food processing plants that will be shuttered soon, part of a year that saw more than 30,000 Ontario processing jobs lost.
A Kraft Foods Group Ontario plant could be closed this year as well as other smaller plants.
The George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont., argued in a recent report that Ontario’s multibillion-dollar food processing industry should not be written off, but government and the private sector will have to make changes if it is to remain healthy.
“The demise of Canada’s food manufacturing sector is not a ‘done deal,’ ” wrote Bob Seguin, the centre’s executive director.
“This industry can fulfill the many public and private sector ambitions for it, but key changes have to be made, new investments won, far greater competitiveness in public policy as well as in private markets are required.”
Seguin said many of the problems faced by aging plants flow from public tax policy and investment incentives as well as corporate decisions to concentrate production in lower-cost jurisdictions.
He warned that changes needed to revive the industry will not be painless.
“It cannot be expected that the significant transitions within the industry will be costless or easily accepted.”
He said a key requirement is changes to foreign worker rules to make more skilled workers available.
“The industry’s past successes using traditional sources in rural and urban Canada are not sustainable,” wrote Seguin.
