The Canadian food industry is one of Canada’s best-kept economic secrets, says the Conference Board of Canada.
As part of its plan to design a proposed national food strategy, the business-financed research organization has published a report that details the extent of the food industry’s impact on the Canadian economy.
It includes creating 2.3 million jobs, adding more than nine percent to the country’s gross domestic product and adding $38.8 billion to export revenue.
“The picture of competition, innovation and opportunity that emerges here will surprise some since the food sector often is portrayed as traditional and pastoral rather than as a modern, profit-making industry,” said the report titledValuing Food.
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“However, in reality Canada’s food sector is a highly complex, globally integrated and thoroughly modern commercial industry that takes full advantage of science, technological advances and the latest marketing techniques as it innovates for growth.”
The conference board said Canadian consumers spend more than $4,500 a year on food and beverages if alcohol is included in the calculation.
It accounts for $155 billion annually in consumer spending, which is 16.4 percent of consumption spending and the highest in history.
The board said that with a mature economy and a slow-growth population, expansion for the Canadian food industry must come from export growth.
Yet it also said Canada’s food industry “remains one of the most heavily protected of all Canada’s economic sectors.”
It cited supply management and average dairy industry tariffs of 218.5 percent in 2009 as prime examples of Canadian protectionism.
The recently created Conference Board Centre for Food in Canada plans to analyze the impact of supply management protections and their impact on the ability of Canada’s food sector to innovate and compete. The analysis is unlikely to be complimentary.
The board report said trade deals and export competitiveness remain the only ways the sector can continue to grow, said the report.
