A sixth-generation farmer, Ottawa’s Bruce Hudson now faces a profoundly uncertain market for the 3,000 hogs he finishes each year.
Hudson, the co-owner of Panmure Farms Ltd. in west Ottawa, sells 80 per cent of his hogs in the United States and the balance to local buyers. It’s an arrangement largely imposed on him by a dearth of local processing capacity – and by regulatory trade barriers that make it difficult to sell Ontario pork in Quebec (and vice-versa).
As a result, Panmure Farms trucks thousands of hogs every year to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where they’re processed and sold.
But if U.S. President Donald Trump acts on his threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports, it would add about $60 to the cost of each of his hogs, Hudson says, and make his business almost impossible to sustain.
“I definitely would lose money with the limited, limited profits I have right now,” he says.
If interprovincial trade barriers are not swiftly removed, Hudson says, he would have to keep sending his hogs to the U.S. since there’s such limited processing capacity in Eastern Ontario.
“Hopefully the trade barriers are lifted or revised in short order,” he says. “I guess I could live with it for a week or two, but not for months and months.”
Removing interprovincial barriers, he says, would offer “a lot more options to move my product within the country.”
The movement of pigs across provincial borders is now governed by a welter of federal and provincial regulation.
Agricultural policy is a shared federal-provincial responsibility in Canada. Broadly speaking, the provinces are responsible for what happens within their boundaries, while the federal officials govern national programs and international trade.
The provinces control their own meat inspection, which allows them to restrict trade. Generally, for pork to be sold in Ontario, it must be processed at a provincially-licensed meat plant in Ontario. The same holds true in Quebec and other provinces.
There are also a number of federally-licensed meat plants that allow producers to market their goods across Canada and internationally. These plants must be licensed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The system is further complicated by processing capacity, which has been falling in both Ontario and Quebec.
Ontario has seen 54 per cent of its abattoirs shuttered during the past 15 years, according to Ontario Pork, the voice of the province’s 1,900 pork farmers.
Meanwhile, meat packing giant Olymel shut several of its hog-processing facilities in Quebec during the past three years. In response, the provincial government introduced a plan to reduce the size of Quebec’s swine herd and downsize the number of pork producers.
A commission tasked with managing that plan now requires provincial processors to give priority to Quebec hogs.
Bruce Hudson was one of many Eastern Ontario pork producers forced to find an alternative when a federally-licensed processing plant in Vallée-Jonction, Quebec closed in 2023. He now drives his market hogs nine hours to a meat plant in Pennsylvania.
Some farmers in Eastern Ontario truck their hogs as far away as Brandon, Manitoba, a 36-hour drive, for processing.
The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, an independent policy think tank, published a 2022 study on interprovincial trade barriers in Canada’s red meat industry. (Pork is classified as a red meat.)
The report estimated that roadblocks to interprovincial trade in the industry represent a $500 million annual “loss of opportunity.” But it suggested reform will be complex since there are different standards between federally-licensed and provincially-licensed processing plants, and between provinces.
“This complicates matters as it makes it more difficult to identify a single approach that can work for all,” the study concluded.
According to the report, some provinces have extensive rules relating to areas where meat is processed, such as requirements for leak-proof joints between walls and floors, while others do not. Provinces also differ on rules that govern staff change rooms and meat inspection offices. Meat inspection practices also differ with some provinces inspecting both before and after an animal is slaughtered. There are also different inspection frequencies with Ontario conducting audits as well as inspections.
The think tank suggested the best way to promote more trade in red meats is to have provincial processing plants meet federal standards.
University of Guelph professor Ken McEwan, an expert in agricultural economics, has studied the Ontario pork industry for years. In 2023, he says, of the 7.6 million pigs produced in Ontario, about 1.3 million market hogs went from Ontario to the U.S. for processing.
If the U.S. imposes tariffs on those hogs, McEwan says, the price that Canadian pork producers receive will be discounted by American buyers in order to pay the tariff.
Removing trade barriers between provinces might assist some of those producers, he says, but many will still face difficulties because of limited processing capacity in Ontario and Quebec.
“By and large, it’s a capacity issue,” McEwan contends.
Hudson is a descendent of William Hudson, an immigrant who came to Canada in 1832 from Leeds County, England, and purchased 50 acres of farmland. Panmure Farms now has a 1,000-acre cash crop and vegetable operation that produces corn, soybeans, cereals and sweet corn.
Hudson doesn’t know if he’ll continue as a pork producer, or withdraw from the industry to concentrate on his other lines of business.
“I’m in my mid-60s so it’s up to the next generation,” he says. “If they want to keep at it, OK, but we have to determine whether the market is there…It’s a difficult, difficult choice right now.”
Ontario’s pork industry employs more than 18,000 people and contributes $3.5 billion annually to the economy.
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