Agriculture Committee on April 2nd, 2012

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Well, anybody in your coalition who would say, “Jeez, Albert, this is a problem, every time.”

Is there ever any dialogue among your coalition?

[Albert Chambers]

Yes, and I think it's fair to say that most of those issues are brought to the attention of the agency by the member associations dealing with the specific industry initiatives. The role of the coalition isn't to be involved in what we would call a vertical issue, such as meat or poultry inspection, or the dairy industry, where there might be specific issues of concern across the country or in certain regions. That's a member issue or a company issue. As the coalition, our role is to bring broader perspectives to the discussion in terms of the whole supply chain.

That sounds like I'm dodging your question, but I'm not, because it's not my mandate to be on the turf I think that you want me to be on at the moment.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Holmes, do you have any specific examples of where you think the CFIA could do better to help your members?

[Matthew Holmes]

We've had a really productive relationship with CFIA. Our sector actually approached them, and asked them to work with us on a regulation. They were pretty shocked by that—they don't encounter that too often—but it's part of our assurance to consumers that there is integrity, backing, and enforcement to the claims that are out there.

One area that we've seen that is of great concern to many of my members right now is the widespread use of the term “natural” on products in the marketplace. It's a product claim that doesn't have any basis in a standard, or indeed in any common definition, and these products are often misleading consumers. At this point, we would like to work more to see those sorts of claims better scrutinized, and perhaps have more enforcement.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I think that's all the questions I have, Mr. Chair.

It really sounds like CFIA, from all the testimony we've heard so far on supply chain, is doing quite a bang-up job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

We'll now move to Mr. Rousseau for five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

If you would, please put your translation device on, Mr. Chambers.

Ben, I was going to ask the same question. Again, you stole everything I was going to say. They must be good questions if you asked the same ones.

Mr. Chambers, I wonder what your role is when one link in the chain is implicated in a food safety incident.

Do you have a role to play when such an event occurs and, if so, what is it? Does Canada do enough to determine what parts of the chain are problematic in terms of food safety?

[Albert Chambers]

If I understand your first question, the coalition doesn't have a specific role in the cases where we're dealing with a food safety incident. Our role is much broader than that, at the policy level, if that's your question.

Do we do enough to identify where we may have challenges in the supply chain? I think we've done an awful lot in that area. I think that if we went through an exercise, a serious exercise in developing a national strategy, we might find some areas where we need to do some additional work. The coalition's position, for the most part, has been that we have the parts of a strategy. We just haven't put them together in a coherent way. Going through that exercise of putting together a strategy would probably identify some areas where we do have some weak links.

But over the past decade we've seen industry, with government assistance—I'll put it that way, because industry has taken the lead—work to try to fill in the gaps with tools that businesses along the supply chain can use to strengthen their capacity in the area of food safety. Whether that's in trucking, or on-farm, or in the handling and distribution system, an awful lot of work has been done. There may still be some gaps, but if we stepped back to, say, 1995 and looked ahead, we would see that we've filled in a great many of those gaps over the past decade and a half.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Do you believe that the inspectors of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have enough tools on the ground to do their job?

[Albert Chambers]

Does the agency have enough tools to do its job?

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I refer to the inspectors, les inspecteurs.

[Albert Chambers]

I think what we're going to see in the coming years is a change in the role of the inspectors. Clearly they have a great many tools available to them in terms of their powers of enforcement and their ability to do those kinds of things. The challenge we've seen—as your subcommittee and as others work their way through the unfortunate events of several years ago with the listeria case—has demonstrated even more so that our enemy is bugs, and bugs can't be seen. The challenge we have is ensuring that businesses take their proper approaches and put in the right systems and have the proper cultural approach to dealing with food safety.

That's something that inspectors will have to learn to work with as well as they move into an environment where, in our belief, inspectors will have a greater role along the supply chain, not just in the current registered establishments.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chambers.

Mr. Holmes, the organic supply chain tends to be somewhat shorter in Canada. There are fewer players and more direct linkages between the consumer and the producer.

In your view, do we have specific strengths in our organic food supply chain in Canada and, if so, what are they? Can we improve the weak parts?

[Matthew Holmes]

That's an excellent question.

It's a fairly resilient group, in Canada. We're talking about 3,700 producers and about 1,100 to 1,200 handlers and processors. We have some of the pioneers in the world. We have the largest organic cereal maker in the world. We have one of the most important ingredient suppliers to the world. We also have some wonderful family farms and family businesses that are Canadian classics, if you will. There's an incredible diversity.

I would actually say that one of our strengths is our diversity in the Canadian organic sector. The supply chain linkages that are weak often change, but historically, one of the ones we've had great challenges with is in the beef sector, in livestock. I raised earlier the issue about abattoirs.

There have been other challenges. I mentioned the prairies. We don't necessarily have value chain connections in points along the prairies. We have commodity growers who are trading or brokering their product in large quantities, but we don't always have some of that facility at home to produce the flours or the pastas that the world is looking for. Sometimes there may be an opportunity there, and other times perhaps it's best to continue with the models that are working. It's a very dynamic sector, always changing.

I can't point to too many profound weaknesses in the chain. It's often geographical as well as sectoral, so you'll have crosscutting issues that will affect an area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. Zimmer, five minutes.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you.

First, to Mr. Chambers, I have a question with regard to your organization.

We've talked about improving the regulatory process and bringing that up to the 21st century. When I say the term “modernizing regulations”, what does that say to you, and as an organization, what would you say back as part of those regulations that you'd like to see modernized?

I know it's a big question, but perhaps you could answer that.

[Albert Chambers]

There are a number of answers that have been identified by members of the coalition. For example, we see in a number of areas where the legislation requires a regulation to be passed in order for something to be added to a list, whether it's a food additive or whether it's a processing activity, etc. There is some opportunity to change there so that we can deal with things in a much more administratively efficient fashion—move things out of regulation and into administrative lists, where there are still requirements for preconsultation and information to the public, etc., but we don't have to join the government-wide queue to get through the Governor in Council with a regulatory change.

So that's an area where, at the simple regulatory level, there are probably opportunities for inclusion by reference. Both the coalition and the subcommittee in their recommendations supported the use of international standards. If we could move to where we're referencing international standards, then potentially we're working in a system where a codex standard, or an ISO standard or something like that, in some cases an OECD standard, could be the basis and we don't have to go through the process of changing the regulation every time that standard changes.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Just for the sake of an example—and you've used some groups as an example—how would you see that roll out in practice? It certainly would be an awesome thing to do, but what would rolling that out actually look like to you?

[Albert Chambers]

I think the officials have been giving it a lot of thought over the past several years.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Yes.

[Albert Chambers]

I think we probably need to have a food act, as opposed to the Food and Drugs Act. In that process, then, we probably need to go through a discussion of what in this day and age—and remember, it's been a long time since we restructured the Food and Drugs Act from a food perspective—are the tools that we need to have in the legislation, what are the ones that need to be in regulation, and what are the ones that can be dealt with administratively.

I think that when we get into that discussion, there are going to be a number of very clear examples, such as changing lists of food additives or others like that, where it'll be just razor clear that it's something we should be dealing with now in an administrative way.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Right, and to follow up on that a little bit closer to home, though, what is your organization's view on what has happened so far with harmonization federally to provincially...? Regulatory-wise, how has it gone so far? Where would you like to see it go? What's your perspective there?

[Albert Chambers]

One of your colleagues asked why it takes so long to do things federally, and I couldn't give him a precise answer. In this case, I can give you a fairly clear answer: getting 14 governments to agree is a pretty massive challenge.

We have some good examples of how they do it elsewhere, though, that we think are worthy of looking at. The Australians have developed a system that has now been in use for not quite a decade, whereby they have an agreement amongst their Commonwealth government and the states and territories on a mechanism for making decisions that impact both on the commodities and on the products that are dealt with in the federal jurisdiction and in the provincial—or there, the state—and territorial jurisdiction.

It's something that we could look at here and provide a mechanism for. One of the challenges we have is that in some provinces it's the Ministry of Agriculture that's responsible. In some provinces, it's the Ministry of Health that's responsible. We don't very often get those ministers talking together nationally. We can look at some of those opportunities and move them ahead. Some of the provinces have modernized their food safety legislation. They may not yet have gone as far as the rest of the world has gone, but from what tools are available to them, they've moved ahead of what's in the Food and Drugs Act.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I still have some time, and I have just one last question. In terms of that “modernization” term, you as an organization would still see, I guess predominantly, that modernization has been a positive, as opposed to any lack of regulation being perceived as a negative. But we sometimes see efficiency as a better way to operate, and I guess....

[Albert Chambers]

Some of my members don't like me using the word “modernization” either, but yes, at this juncture, as long as it's achieving the objectives in the context in which we've set them out—which is that there are these principles we're working with, these responsibilities we share, and these tools we've accepted as being part of our tool kit to move things ahead—then modernization is going to be a very positive initiative, event, and series of events.