Bill S-11 (Historical)

Safe Food for Canadians Act

An Act respecting food commodities, including their inspection, their safety, their labelling and advertising, their import, export and interprovincial trade, the establishment of standards for them, the registration or licensing of persons who perform certain activities related to them, the establishment of standards governing establishments where those activities are performed and the registration of establishments where those activities are performed

This enactment modernizes the regulatory system for food commodities.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here today along with the officials.

I'm sure most of you realize that XL Foods Ltd. is in my riding in the city of Brooks. I want to thank you, first of all, Minister, for keeping me up to date on a regular basis, on a daily basis, including weekends, with what was going on in the facility. It was important for me and certainly for my constituency.

I also want to thank CFIA. You had stated that this facility should not be reopened until it could be recertified to make sure that it met all the standards. I believe that was the correct decision, and I support that 100%.

I've had the opportunity to give a couple of speeches, Minister, on this facility, and certainly on Bill S-11. I know the opposition has talked about things a number of times, and made a lot of noise about this, particularly around deficit reduction. I belive that CFIA’s reduction is $56 million, over time, and I understand that this is offset by $52 million in new dollars. That's what the opposition has said, and it complained that in fact inspectors have been cut. I understand that these are transfers of meat inspectors from CFIA to the provinces of B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as federal inspectors were doing provincial work.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

I am answering your question.

You talk about demanding papers. Yes, CFIA has the ability to demand papers, but not in a timely way and in a format that is usable. Those are the changes in Bill S-11, so don't muddy the waters any more than you already have.

CFIA has the ability to decertify a plant. That's a nuclear strike, and CFIA is loath to do that simply because of the recertification process that is required.

Having said that, to answer your question, the Auditor General of Canada has the ability at any time to audit any department, any agency, of this country. We would welcome that, certainly. He has that ability, and we would look forward to that.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Here's what I would like to ask you, Minister. I know that there has been consultation done on Bill S-11 and on what the industry itself has been asking for. Could you share with the committee what industry has been saying about Bill S-11 and the measures contained in this bill?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Well, when you look at the timeline shown behind me, Mr. Lemieux—you'll have a copy of that in front of you, or you will have shortly—you will see that CFIA began reacting immediately, asking XL for documentation and asking them to show where the bracketing was done on that first batch. I'm not saying that XL was negligent or criminally intent on hiding anything—absolutely not. What I'm saying is that they came forward with boxes and boxes of paperwork over a period of time, as they amassed it. Did they put enough attention on it? Probably not, but that's for them to describe and explain as they move forward.

At the end of the day, Bill S-11 now will give us extra tools in the CFIA tool kit. I'm happy to help put them there, with your help and the help of the opposition in getting this bill passed, so that they have the ability to ask for it on Monday morning and expect to get it by Monday afternoon, and in a useful format.

This is the important part: you can have timely access, but if you get 12 boxes of paperwork and have to sit down and start to analyze and go through all of it, that's time wasted, time lost, but if you have it in a format that is standardized across all food commodities and across all manufacturing processing in this country, you have something that can be worked with very, very quickly to initiate recalls or to say that we don't need a recall because it has been handled. That's the important part.

The biggest concern with Canadian consumers is the timeliness. They want to know that their food is safe, but they also want to know that when there is a breach, when there is a problem, we are timely in getting that product off the shelves. That's why I said right away, to assure consumers on the initial outbreak, that the product never made it to store shelves. Consumers needed to know that.

We have not seen any huge move away from beef in Canada. Actually, beef products are still moving, are still being consumed. We're not seeing any beef being stopped from export around the world, even into the American market, other than any product coming out of number 38, the Lakeside XL plant in Brooks. Even XL product—live animals and so on—that the Nilssons own is still available to go to the U.S. It's only the product coming out of that plant as CFIA works towards recertifying that particular facility.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

It's not really a genuine comparison, because with radar you have a speed gun that says you were doing this. There is no speed gun in a facility such as XL.

You know, I don't think anyone would say that XL was trying to hide anything. You have to prove intent in order to put AMPs in play, and I don't think it was intentionally trying to hide anything. What it was doing was giving voluminous boxes of paperwork, trying to cover off all the bases, which then had to be deciphered and gone through one at a time, put in a proper sequence, put in the right order to make sense of all the files, the testing data and so on, that it put in play.

What Bill S-11 would do is set a format that XL and other plants would be asked to follow, a format that would actually give you usable data when you ask for it—not boxes and boxes and files of paperwork, but actual usable data with trend analysis captured and so on, on a go-forward basis. Bill S-11, by regulation, would set a standard; all plants would be asked to do this.

Some do it now, voluntarily; some don't, because they're not asked to by regulation. These regulations would now set the benchmark for everyone to come to that standard.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

We'd like Mr. Da Pont to add, but we only get five minutes, as you know.

A follow-up to that piece is this. If indeed we have an XL—let's use the vernacular of the bad actor—what, then, in Bill S-11, through an enforcement mechanism or through the fines you've escalated, which we are pleased to see, would then allow you or CFIA to actually impose penalties because they were not forthcoming, without actually saying, “Now, we'll charge them because of all the other things they've done”?

Simply say, “Look, you were supposed to bring them forward; you decided not to; here's the enforcement piece; here's what you pay; this is the penalty.” It would be similar to what we see, Minister, when we drive down the highways in Ontario: it would say, “Go over the speed limit and enforcement is basically through regulation and fine.” You don't get off easy.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

You've mixed a couple of things together there, Mr. Allen, in talking about CARs as well. Those are separate from the production of documents on the timeline we're talking about. We'll certainly address that at some point, I'm sure.

The Weatherill reports are predisposed on a company that is transparent, that is looking to facilitate and help CFIA move forward in a recall situation. Unfortunately, in this instance, XL was not that forthcoming.

The CFIA, I should stipulate, did receive boxes of documents over a period of some three days, after constantly going back to XL with written asks—of course they were verbal to begin with—and expediting it to the point where it finally got documentation. As I said, it received boxes of paperwork over a period of two or three days that then had to be analyzed and worked back through to start to put together an assessment on a trend analysis to show where there were gaps and where there could possibly be spikes in E. coli.

The initial find, the problem, was that they had had a discovery but then had not bracketed properly. That's taking production on either side of the affected batch out of the food cycle as well. They had not done that, and until CFIA was back in there doing the trend analysis, that was not discovered. That then started CFIA to look even deeper. That's the timeline leading up to the 12th, as they put all of that together with sound scientific evidence to begin the process of asking for more documentation, and so on.

With XL not voluntarily coming forward with documentation, it became apparent that Bill S-11, which we tabled last spring, well in advance of this, started to look like the right thing—even more so than we thought—because by regulation it would force a facility such as XL, or any other one, to be transparent, to come forward with information in a timely way and a way that is formatted to be usable right away, not with boxes of paperwork that take days to work through It would be a format that is usable, very similar to our timeline. When you see it written down on a pad of paper, it doesn't give you the same impact as a flow chart does. This is the type of information we're requesting from facilities like XL.

George, did you want to add anything, or Paul?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to the minister for being here today.

As he noted in his opening, I believe he referred to recommendation 43 being the last one from the Weatherill report to be completed. Recommendation 43 actually speaks to recommendations 6 and 20 of the Weatherill report. I will read from the last half of section 6. This is a quote from the Weatherill report:

Meat processors should not wait for requests for information from the CFIA inspectors and should, in the interests of food safety, ensure that inspectors have all information they require.

I would draw the minister's attention to the timeline that he supplied to us, showing that indeed it was the CFIA that was actually making the requests, not necessarily XL Foods that was providing them voluntarily. Section 20, which is on page 43 of the report, also speaks to that:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency should formally communicate its expectation that registered meat processors will bring all information with potential consequences for food safety to the attention of their assigned inspector in a timely manner.

Around the document issue, Mr. Minister, it has been clear in the CFIA's timeline that one of the weaknesses of this particular incident was the availability of the information in a timely fashion and the fact that, in the vernacular of the CFIA, a lot of CARs were put out there—calls basically requesting information. There were delays in that process.

Can you point to me in Bill S-11 where sections 6 and 20—the two recommendations in the Weatherill report—will be fulfilled in the mandate of Bill S-11, understanding, of course, that there is a piece in Bill S-11 that talks to the production of documents when requested? Sections 6 and 20 call for more than just the production of documents when requested; they actually call for the facilities to produce them without a request, knowing full well something is occurring.

Can you help me find that in Bill S-11?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm joined today by officials from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency: the president, George Da Pont, as well as Neil Bouwer, Paul Mayers and Dr. Martine Dubuc.

It's a pleasure to be here as a former chair of this committee myself. Congratulations to you, Merv, on being elected to your position. Like you, I didn't tolerate tardiness either.

It's good to be back at this table to speak about an issue that is important to Canadian families.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, consumers remain this government's number one priority when it comes to food safety and consumer confidence. That's exactly why I'm here today to urge the members of this committee to pass Bill S-11—and you read out the long title, Mr. Chair, so I won't—the Safe Food for Canadians Act, as expeditiously as is possible.

The Safe Food for Canadians Act will strengthen and modernize our food safety system to make sure it continues to protect the safety of Canadian food.

This act will give CFIA more authority to require industry to produce timely and usable information when it is requested. It will also require companies to have traceability systems. These additional powers will help food inspectors analyze data to speed up any future recall investigations, thus more quickly protecting Canadian consumers.

The Safe Food for Canadians Act will improve food safety oversight by instituting a more consistent inspection regime across all food commodities, implementing tougher penalties for activities that put the health and safety of Canadians at risk, providing better controls over imports, and strengthening food commodity traceability.

The act will implement tougher fines for those who knowingly tamper with our Canadian food supply. Under current legislation, the maximum fine that could be imposed for such an offence is some $250,000. The Safe Food for Canadians Act raises the maximum fine level to $5 million, and possibly more with court activity, for activities that intentionally put the health and safety of Canadians at risk. This bill will allow the CFIA to create a regime for administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs. AMPs, Mr. Chair, will be a key tool in our inspectors' arsenals to discourage those who are looking to cheat or subvert the system.

We all know that Canadians depend on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and industry itself to make sure that their food is safe. These monetary penalties are an intermediate step to ensure that food processors are taking the safety of food production seriously. The act will also consolidate the CFIA's food commodity acts and will align inspection and enforcement powers across all food commodities.

This move specifically addresses recommendation number 43 of the Weatherill report. In fact, Mr. Chairman, upon passage of this important legislation, our government will have addressed all 57 of the Weatherill recommendations.

This new act gives government more authority in areas critical to food safety inspection and investigation.

While the number one priority is strengthening food safety for Canadians, the Safe Food for Canadians Act will also benefit Canada's agricultural industry.

The agricultural industry, as you well know, helps drive Canada's economy, with over $44 billion in exports and one in eight Canadian jobs. This act will further align Canada's food safety system with our key trading partners and increase importing countries' confidence in Canadian foodstuffs. This will help increase demand around the world for our top-quality Canadian products.

Finally, to address a concern that has been heard many times around this table, the act will strengthen controls over imported food, introduce the ability to license all food importers, and prohibit the importation of any unsafe foods.

Mr. Chair, recently consumers have heard a lot of fiction from opposition parties with respect to Canada's food safety system. I'd like to take this time to correct some of the fiction we've heard in the debates last week.

Let me begin with the member for Guelph, who recently said that Bill S-11 is not a panacea that would give the CFIA more powers than it has today.

Mr. Speaker, that is patently incorrect. The fact is that this act will give the CFIA more authority to require industry to produce timely and usable information. It will implement tougher penalties for intentional activities that put the health and safety of Canadians at risk while providing better control over our imports of foods.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, associate dean of the University of Guelph's college of management and economics, recognizes that this power is currently missing from CFIA's toolbox. He said:

The CFIA, on the other hand, does not have the authority to compel the speedy delivery of information from industry during an outbreak.

That is testimony coming right from the member for Guelph's riding, Mr. Speaker.

The NDP have stated that CFIA has fewer inspectors and less resources. This could not be further from the truth. Just because you didn't vote for it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, that our government has increased the budget of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency by some 20% since we took office. With this budget increase, CFIA has hired over 700 net new inspectors. The CFIA has also increased the number of inspectors at the XL facility in Brooks by some 20%, adding two veterinarians and six inspectors to the complement at the plant.

The member from Welland continues to make erroneous claims that the initial detection of E. coli was done by the United States. He continues to do this despite knowing full well that Canada detected E. coli on the same date that the U.S. notified Canada of their finding. Furthermore, he knows that no product associated with this initial finding entered the marketplace.

To repeat, at that time all affected product was contained and there was no evidence that any additional product had been affected. Thus, no recall was needed. As I said at the time, no product made it to store shelves.

The CFIA started investigating immediately. They have been acting ever since to protect consumers, as outlined in the timelines on display here, working in concert with the Public Health Agency of Canada and the provincial agencies they serve.

The opposition continues to mislead Canadians by saying that the U.S. system is somehow better than Canada's. This is false, for a number of reasons that I am sure the CFIA would be happy to explain to you, but I will give you two very clear reasons here today.

First, Canada and the United States maintain one of the largest trading partnerships in the world. That is only possible because our food safety systems are equivalent. We will continue to make sure that our food safety system is strong and that our imports and exports continue to meet this high standard, which is revered around the world.

Second, you will see by the chart provided that it was Canada that issued the first recall health alert to the public. While I realize that the facts do not suit the opposition's rhetoric, I'm pleased to get these facts on the record again here today.

Mr. Chairman, at each step of the process, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada have run a transparent investigation. They have published science-based evidence and information on websites as soon as it was available and have held many public briefings and technical briefings. Canadians can also sign up for instant information on recalls and food safety concerns. The agency will continue to rely on science-based evidence and a commitment to protect consumers. Our government will continue to provide the CFIA with the workforce and resources necessary to protect Canadian food.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, we all know that food safety is an issue that is very important to Canadian families. That is why consumers are our government's first priority when it comes to food safety. The Safe Food for Canadians Act will provide the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with much-needed additional authorities to protect Canadian food and consumer confidence.

I urge the members of this committee to help our government make Canada's robust food safety system even stronger and send this bill back to the House as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your kind attention, Mr. Chair. As always, I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

This is meeting number 52. Pursuant to orders of the day, we are studying the order of reference of Tuesday, October 23, 2012, Bill S-11, an act respecting food commodities, including their inspection, their safety, their labelling, and their advertising; their import, export, and interprovincial trade; the establishment of standards for them; the registration or licensing of persons who perform certain activities related to them; the establishment of standards governing establishments where those activities are performed; and the registration of establishments where those activities are performed.

Joining us today we have Mr. Ritz. I will just advise the committee that I will be adding 10 minutes to the end of the meeting for the minister to stay. He is the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board. I will ask him to open with his comments, and then we will move to questions from committee members.

Mr. Minister, welcome.

Safe Food for Canadians Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the second reading stage of Bill S-11.

The House resumed from October 22 consideration of the motion that Bill S-11, An Act respecting food commodities, including their inspection, their safety, their labelling and advertising, their import, export and interprovincial trade, the establishment of standards for them, the registration or licensing of persons who perform certain activities related to them, the establishment of standards governing establishments where those activities are performed and the registration of establishments where those activities are performed, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Joy Nott]

The point I was trying to make overall is that we've heard here about strategy concerning physical infrastructure, whether it be trucking terminals or rail lines or whatever else, but the point I'm bringing to the table is to have a strategy around the policy and regulatory environment.

What I mean by that is shown by the two examples I've put on the table. These are real examples that our members deal with every day.

To go back to the first example, with food, if Canada, for example, through Bill S-11 makes it a requirement that baked goods have fortified flour and it is required in all product that is going to be exported, then if the receiving country has a different regulation, those goods may be prohibited from entering. What I'm asking is, are we prepared for success from a regulatory standpoint?

The second example I brought up was that in a competitive situation with the United States—and we've had long-standing trade with the United States, and I don't need to elaborate for this committee exactly what our relationship is with the United States—it took almost four years to catch up with something that the Americans did simply because it got lost in the bureaucracy.

All I'm saying is that if we're going to enter into more trade agreements with different countries around the world, and we are wholeheartedly in favour of that, we need to start thinking very strategically. Traditionally we've only been focused on the United States, our major trading partner. They are always going to be our major trading partner. We can't take our eye off the United States. I'm just saying that we need to be a little more aware of how other countries are responding when we sign these agreements and they change regulations after the fact, and of what a negative impact this may have.

For those negative impacts not to become lost in the shuffle, we need to have some sort of body that recognizes them and reacts quickly in order to even the playing field again.

[Joy Nott, President, Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, for giving us the opportunity to present today.

My name is Joy Nott. I am the president and CEO of I.E.Canada, otherwise known as the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters. We've been around for about 80 years. Our members include importers, exporters, Canadian manufacturers, retailers, and supply chain service providers. Our members in total employ over a million Canadians and in 2010 generated $270 billion for the Canadian economy.

In brief, I.E.Canada very strongly supports an EPA with Japan. That said, there are strategic considerations that must be taken into account when Canada considers signing either an EPA or a free trade agreement, an FTA, with any country. It becomes even more critical when we look at doing it with an economy such as Japan, which is so well developed.

In the world of business, supply chains are integrated. Business people don't really differentiate between an import and an export. It's one continuous flow of materials, components, and finished goods until it actually hits the end consumer. Unfortunately, traditional government structure and policy doesn't match that business reality all that well.

In government, import and exports are generally viewed as two discrete operations where imports are generally considered bad for the economy and exports are generally considered good for the economy. In today's global environment with the supply chains integrated the way they are, that's not really the case any more for business. In fact, I think it actually hurts Canadian companies when the philosophy is that imports are less than favourable for the Canadian economy, because no Canadian exporter can successfully export without importing at least something for the manufacturing process.

To illustrate even further, imports and exports are also governed by two separate ministries of the Canadian government: exports by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and imports by the Department of Public Safety under the Canada Border Services Agency.

Canadians would be well served if there was a single body that was tasked with overseeing both imports and exports. If you're wondering what this has to do with Japan, I'm getting there.

Japan and the Japanese are very sophisticated traders. They are well versed in the world of global trade. They are very successful business people. If we are going to enter into agreements with countries such as Japan, once again I need to clearly state that the Canadian Importers and Exporters Association and our members have made it very clear to me that they are fully in support of this agreement with Japan and other agreements that are currently being negotiated and discussed.

That being said, as a colleague of mine said when testifying to a Senate committee in late September on Bill S-11, the devil is in the details. I have two very quick examples here, one where under Bill S-11 there are going to be requirements that products manufactured for export comply with Canadian regulations and if they don't comply there's going to be potentially a prohibition to export. What that accidentally does is it prohibits Canadian-made goods from entering foreign markets.

The second example I have is an issue that has been recently resolved, but I think it's a really good example of what we're talking about. Both Canada and the United States, along with other developed countries, are signatories to something called the Wassenaar Arrangement. It's a treaty that ensures sensitive goods are controlled for export so that they don't end up in the wrong hands.

On October 3, 2008, the U.S. allowed, and I'm going to call it an exception to this agreement, companies to transfer information intra-company among each other between countries without having to go through a formal process of applying for paperwork. It took Canada three years, nine months and 28 days to catch up, and we're both signatories to Wassenaar.

What does that have to do with Japan? Japan is a very sophisticated global trader and the message that I'm here to deliver today is that while we are fully in support of this sort of thing, we think there is definitely the opportunity to start looking at importing and exporting in Canada strategically, as opposed to two discrete operations. Business doesn't look at it that way and to ride the wave of optimism of my colleague at the other end of the table, I do think we need to be prepared for success.

If we're going to be successful and if we're going to actually enter into the trade agreements that we're currently negotiating, we have to get ourselves in a more strategic mindset so that we look at imports and exports, the general flow and what's good for business overall, as opposed to two discrete processes. Thank you.

Food Safety

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday I asked the minister to consent to amending Bill S-11 to include a third-party comprehensive CFIA audit, like the one that was requested by the Weatherill report. The minister said he had a panel “waiting for this type of an issue to move forward on”. The recommendation for an independent comprehensive audit was made three years ago and yet no action was taken. What panel is the minister talking about?

Could the minister confirm that he was not waiting for another outbreak like this to act? Will he tell us who his experts are, otherwise will he finally do the right thing and call in the Auditor General?