Evidence of meeting #52 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cfia.
A video is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I touched a sore point there. Please, if you would give it to the chair, that would be fine.
10:30 a.m.
President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Yes, I will work with the clerk or the chair on what information can be provided.
I must say that providing names is probably going to be very difficult, because I think it raises privacy issues.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I have only five minutes, Mr. Da Pont. Mr. Valeriote had his chance for his questions.
Mr. Chair, if you could instruct the clerk to write that out and get it out to the members of the opposition, I'd appreciate it. I'd know for sure they have all the information.
It's been very frustrating. I know that Mr. Valeriote was very concerned about the review committee and the process of reviewing after this. In fact, he attacked the integrity of somebody in that committee. I think that's totally unprofessional.
In fact, Mr. Valeriote has had a history of crying wolf many times now. In the situation in his riding with robocalls, he was the one crying wolf, yet he was the only man who was actually found in contravention of the act when he did it. Again, there's not much credibility coming from that member. I wish he'd be a little more thorough in his diligence when he—
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Mr. Chair, I have a point of order. This is completely irrelevant to the question here—
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
No, I don't think so, and on the point of order, it wasn't Mr. Valeriote, it was the federal riding association, so you might want to correct the record.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
It is not a point of order, but I would ask that the questions be relevant to the guests we have here.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
The relevancy is very clear. All we've done here in the last two weeks is spread a lot of misinformation and fear. That's why I'm so happy to have you here to explain this, because they would not accept any explanation from the minister, and I don't think they'll accept the explanations you have posted on the website, which is very unfortunate.
I will move on to Bill S-11. Bill S-11 is a piece of legislation which.... Again, you addressed Mr. Valeriote's concerns. He's been talking in the House about how you didn't have the mandate or the ability to get information in a timely manner. You've explained that to him, so I hope he now understands that. I know the minister explained it to him probably four or five times.
One thing I want to talk to you about is labelling. You've taken the labelling provisions from the old act into the new act. Have there been any changes in the labelling legislation? Then when it comes to tampering, can you explain the process around that?
10:30 a.m.
President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Maybe I'll turn that over to Neil Bouwer and Colleen Barnes to respond.
10:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Policy and Programs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think I covered a little bit on the tampering side already, in terms of the new prohibitions against tampering and also threatening to tamper.
On the labelling side, the new act basically brings over the authorities that were in the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act that are food-related provisions. Through regulation, we'll basically maintain the regulatory oversight on packaging and labelling. There are various parts of the regulation-making authority that cover that. We would assure the member, Mr. Chair, that those authorities carry over into the new act.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
With regard to tampering, previously we had no way of properly investigating or enforcing. Why did you need to make the change?
10:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Policy and Programs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
The Criminal Code, under “mischief”, does cover tampering. Normally, property-related mischief offences are prosecuted under the Criminal Code. Of course, that is not pursued or enforced by the CFIA. The new tampering provisions enhance and clarify the penalties for tampering to make clear that it's a clear prohibition.
As I mentioned in my earlier statements as well, this is a key provision that we heard discussed in our consultations, because tampering—for example introducing certain foreign objects into food—or threatening to tamper, which can be also very negative to the confidence in the food supply, is basically a gap in terms of the existing legislative framework. Bill S-11 proposes to strengthen and enhance those provisions by pointing out specific prohibitions on tampering and threatening to tamper.
10:30 a.m.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Thank you, Chair.
We talked earlier, Mr. Da Pont, about the documents and the fact that we saw a large volume in some unusable form. I don't want to get into details that are too technical about how unusable they were or what kind of unusability they had. Was this different from documents we were seeing before, in this sense that they weren't usable, or were there indications earlier on that maybe some of the documents weren't quite as useful as possible, or did XL simply produce a whole pile of new stuff that was different from what we'd seen before and just wasn't usable?
10:35 a.m.
President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
They gave us the documents in a piecemeal fashion over September 10 and 11. They came in piecemeal. There were issues of incomplete information and there was difficulty in analyzing the information and putting it together. I can get Mr. Mayers to give you a bit more detail on that.
10:35 a.m.
Paul Mayers Associate Vice-President, Policy and Programs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the context of the documentation, I take from your question that it's the issue of the documents we would see routinely versus documents when in an investigation. For example, our routine review of documents in support of the demonstration that an establishment is doing the things it should have been doing with respect to its HACCP plan wouldn't extend to its distribution records.
The distribution records are a critical element in an investigation. These are the types of things that, when we get them piecemeal and without clear format and clarity, slow our ability—
10:35 a.m.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Mr. Mayers, I don't want to cut you off. You've been here before, sir. You know what the timelines are like.
We're clearly talking about different types of documents, right? That's really what I wanted to get at so that folks aren't out there thinking, “My goodness, if they were always getting the wrong documents, why didn't somebody say something?”
That's why I really wanted you to tell us that this is about something different, and that it came to you in such a fashion that you had some here but were missing some there and you couldn't draw any kind of thread through all of this to try to come up with any kind of logical explanation when you were missing page 27 of 32 pages and you didn't get page 1. That sort of thing is really what I wanted. I appreciate the opportunity to hear you say that.
I want to change tack for just a minute and go to labelling. As we know, there are two things that have happened. One was earlier on when CFIA announced a new labelling process through the web, so folks who were applying for labels, etc., would do that. That's a web-based product.
Of course, there's the piece that's now in this legislation, which talks about how the authority for labelling becomes the authority of the Minister of Agriculture, but as we know, in the past it was the authority of the Minister of Health.
The obvious question is, who now actually has the authority? Is it the Minister of Agriculture or the Minister of Health? There's the overlap.
Folks, this is where it gets to be one of these back-and-forth weaving pieces, where we have the Food and Drugs Act over here and food safety over there, with two ministries. As well, the minister and CFIA have now put forward this new web-based product that they're looking at as we go forward with labelling.
Who will have the authority? At this moment, that is unclear to me.
10:35 a.m.
President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
I'll ask Mr. Bouwer to cover the authority issue, but I did want to make one point about the web-based product and what it is. It is a tool. It's primarily for companies that want to be able to put a label together. We now do a lot of back-and-forth explaining of this and that, so we're doing a web-based tool that they can use themselves. That will help them put a compliant label together quickly, with less intervention from us.
Of course, we still have to do the job of approving it at the end of the day. It's only a tool to do things faster and quicker.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
10:35 a.m.
Vice-President, Policy and Programs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Thank you.
Health Canada remains responsible for the health and safety claims that are made on labels and also for the standards that are to be met on labelling. The CFIA is responsible for consumer protection and for other non-health-related claims that might be made on a label. As in other areas of food safety, it's a partnership between Health Canada and the CFIA.