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Briefly, what is all about:
There is a crisis in the food industry in Canada.

Q2 food price
Our company is on the Q2 food market since one month. In this month we saw a drastic drop in the food prices under two days. Than the prices were stable at that rate. Happily a rise was achieved, but than a more dramatical drop was seen, and the prices went the lowest in two months. Precisely 0.0483 gold per Q2 food. After that the price slowly climbed up to 0.0759 gold and now it is droping in the last few days. Rollercoaster, and a very bad rollercoaster, that I would say if someone asked about the market situation. But it is not all.

Labour costs
Luckly for the Canadian citizens, but sadly for the companies, salaries rocketed up a month ago. I don't knwo why it happened, but there was a lack of good workers on the job market. One of my fellow company manager told me it was due to the elections and some kind of PTO actions which moved a lot of active citizens and suddenly there were not enough workers. Okay, I can understand that, but than the salaries stayed high. I don't know the reason for that. Luckly for the companies, in the last week payments started to drop. Maybe now the managers figured out there are enough workers, but they are expensive.

Consequences
The low prices and the high salaries mean only one thing in every industry, and that is low profit. Currently it is not the case. It is even worse, no profits at all, but deficit. A company without liquid assets can't work with such factors. If it lowers the salaries, workers resign, productivity drops and the per product costs rise, creating more deficit, and eventually the owner has to face with the lack of money and the shuting down of the company. In the last month it had to happen to a few but weaker of us. Altough it wasn't the drastic. Not many companies were shut down. Some of them tried to upgrade or downgrade their quality levels in the hope of better market conditions. Actually I am pretty sure the Q1 industry is in even a worse condition and can't imagine the Q3 making too much profit or less deficit.

Industry overview
Based on the Erep Tool's statistics, there are 65 food manufacturing companies in Canada. 46 of them have at least one worker, but I don't consider such small companies functional. 20 of them have at least 10 workers, though seven of them have more than 10 workers, which is not optimal like the ones which have 9 workers (five companies). Actually the exception is the Canadian Wheat Board, obviously it is not primarily a for-profit company. The other 24 have 1 to 8 workers. Maybe those that have 7-8 workers can be considered as close to properly functioning companies.
Nine active and good shaped companies can be found on level Q1.
At the Q2 level, there are 10 functioning companies. Two of them on sale. Three of them are able to export to the USA, and one can sell in Russia. None of them does that. I will write about it later.
There are six good Q3, two good Q4 food companies.
Oh, and there is only one Q5 food company in Canada. Also it is in a pretty good shape. I guess it doesn't have serious market issues.
So, less than half of the companies are doing an okay job! The rest are stopped or in a vegetative state. Salaries are high. Market prices are low. Profit is a rare thing. Only I am wondering about why did the companies survived the so-called food crisis? Most of them had enough dollars and golds to maintain work, and were hoping of the weaker companies to stop. Maybe.
One thing is sure. This state of the industry can't be kept for a long time. Producers have to reduce costs and the only way of doing it without too much risk is to buy grain from elsewhere. I don't have to mention that, this is not good for the Canadian grain producers!
The problem have to be solved, and it is not only the problem of the food and grain industry but eventually the problem of the economy.

Solutions
1. Export
As I mentioned none of the Q2 food companies do export, and I bet the others are not doing it. The reason is simple. There is no country in eWorld, where food prices are higher than the Canadian market. Except the very few and small countries, where they consume less. Not to mention the usually extreme high import taxes. Most of the countries try to guard their most precious industry very much with 50-70-99% import taxes. Canada does this too, with 50%. This is the only reason why the whole industry didn't went bankrupt. But the very cheap countries are able to export with 50% import tax as well! So export is not going to solve it.
2. Taxes
VAT is already lowered to 7% and it didn't help much in my opinion.
Maybe if the congress raises the import tax from 50%. Possibly 99% would be the best, but the decision makers should think about the exact number.
3. Messacre
I mean if nothing happens, than eventually more of the companies have to be stopped, and the competition would be less and higher, better prices can be kept. After the drop and the better prices would sound a good investment and then new companies would enter the market, and the whole thing starts again.
4. Union, cartell or whatever
Let's cooperate and set a good but not too high price and than everybody sells at that rate. Happy end. However there will always be somebody who brokes the agreement in the hope of quick and better profits. Also higher prices would sound a good investment for new companies...
5. ?
Ideas?

I hope this was a good summary and I see the things right.
You can read about this issue here and here too.
Post your ideas!