Government Operations Committee on June 3rd, 2014

[Randy Jenkins]

I regret that I'm not able to confirm that this standard has been brought in for pesticides. I'm not aware of there being a qualification standard for dockside monitoring for pesticides.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Could you provide this information to the committee?

[Randy Jenkins]

Yes, certainly. I will research it and see what I can come up with and dig further into it. You caught me off-guard with that question, to be quite honest. I'm not aware of it being there, but I will check into it.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

The oceans are vast. Several of them surround Canada. How are you able to manage monitoring activities at docks and at sea? Maybe it is easier at docks because we know where they are, but when boats are at sea, what do you do?

[Randy Jenkins]

Thank you.

In both cases there are challenges. The CGSB's role is largely about process management, that they have the proper systems in place, that they have the proper repositories, the proper protection of data and information sharing, and so on and so forth.

Anomalies creep in, so even if you have a proper system, it is possible that the data that comes in is inaccurate, and that would be very challenging for the CGSB to determine. That's more a role for the department, and we use a variety of methods and investigations and oversight. It's largely data comparison among the fleet in an area, data comparison among different methods. You can appreciate when it comes to fish there are a number of different documents. The master files a report and sometimes they have to hail him at sea. They have to fill in a log. There are surveillance overflights to verify the area of fishing and the type of gear being used. There are independent inspections by fishery officers on board. So it is challenging.

We have had cases in the past where individual observers, not the companies themselves, but individual observers have either colluded with the fisher involved and submitted false data, or they were wilfully neglectful in carrying out their duties and utilized the master's data without independent verification.

I think about three years ago we did an in-depth analysis of the crab fishery, and it was determined that the data that three or four individuals had submitted was inaccurate for the area they were fishing. We dealt with them through the normal course of an investigation, and they were charged and taken to court. In that particular case, though, to bring it back to the CGSB, it wasn't a failure of the company per se in terms of process. The data came in, the data was handled properly, and the data was submitted through the system. That's why—and I think I alluded to it in my presentation—we have two sets of checks and balances. CGSB is focused mostly on whether the data systems are operating as they are supposed to when it comes to storage transmission oversight, because we expect the companies to have some oversight as well. But when you have wilful fraud and collusion, it's very challenging to root that out. It usually becomes apparent when you start doing the comparative analysis that something seems to be amiss, that there's an inconsistency every time a certain individual or a certain port is landed.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Could you recommend ways to make the board more efficient and effective?

[Randy Jenkins]

We've already undertaken some changes, as I mentioned earlier, when we did our at-sea observer program. We tightened up the qualification process significantly from what it was for the dockside, and we've now gone back and we're starting to amend the dockside policy as well to make it more arm's length and less likely to be subject to any kind of intervention.

Along with that, as part of my current role, we're just implementing a national intelligence service within DFO, and a subsection of that group will be tasked with doing audit verification specifically for catch monitoring programs. So they'll systematically and randomly check, and this will be on top of what the CGSB auditors do, and it'll be on top of our regular program. Their sole purpose will be to look for inaccuracies or data that doesn't seem to make sense and drill into it. If there are irregularities found, it'll be turned over to investigators to start active investigations. So we're setting up a separate program just to deal with those types of issues and try to prevent that from creeping into the program.

Data systems are important, but the quality of the data is important as well, because scientists and stock managers are basing their decisions, in part, on the information that comes in through those programs, on the fact that the dockside monitoring program and the at-sea observer program are, by their very nature, supposed to be independent verification of catch. They themselves are supposed to be the spot-checkers of the industry records. If we have problems with that program, it's very serious. So we take allegations of misreporting or inaccurate reporting very seriously, and we have launched investigations in the past and we'll continue to do so in the future, if required.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

I will now give the floor to Mr. O'Connor for five minutes.

[Gordon O'Connor, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC]

Good morning, gentlemen.

There are all kinds of standards. There are standards for individual consumers, for governments, for products. There are standards for services.

I guess my question is for all of you. Is there anything unique that the CGSB does that other people don't do? I'll start with that one first.

[Gilles Morel]

Thanks for the question.

On things that are unique to Canada, I think it's probably geography. With regard to the about 32 different set of standards that we work closely with CGSB in partnership on, they are essentially fuel standards. They are the standards that assure the safety of the fuel, that assure that the fuel is fit for purposes across Canada.

Because Canada is such a large country, with such a varied climate, it's very specific. It's one of the coldest places to live in the world in the winter. Essentially the standard identifies those attributes that are specific to Canadian conditions, whether it is the fuel we use in our aviation, for example, the fuel that we need to heat our northern communities, to provide diesel in our coal mines, or to provide gasoline for our vehicles as they travel huge distances in climates that vary from day to day and week to week.

That's why CGSB is good. It essentially helps in adapting the standards, which are probably 90% to 95% standardized between Canada and the U.S. But it's that 5% or 10% that's specific to the particular climatic conditions of Canada that CGSB helps us to address.

Having been in fuel quality for over 35 years, I can assure you that those standards have addressed the performance expectations of the customers extremely well in Canada, despite all of the different conditions. Our consumers can be comforted that when they go to the station to buy a product, or when DND buys product for the Department of National Defence, or when Public Works buys product for the Arctic, for example, it meets those standards and the product quality is fit for all Canadians.

[Peter Boag]

I would just add one more point. I think Gilles has covered the unique requirement within Canada very well.

There are organizations in the United States, like ASTM or SAE, but there is no other organization in Canada that is doing this kind of work, other than CGSB.

[Michel Comtois]

Well, there are different ways in which they are unique. It could be done somewhere else, but, first of all, they drive a third-party standards writing process. They will make sure that the committees are balanced, including users, those with general interest—and we fall in the general interest category—and industry. As I said before, for instance, I sit on the BIFMA standards association in the U.S., which truly provides an industry standard.

Because they're all manufacturers, you can see that they all face the same problems. They will make technical decisions based on their industry bias, if you will. It's not that they do that with malice. However, because they face the same general problems on a day-to-day basis, they will agree among them what makes sense for the industry. However, what makes sense for the industry doesn't necessarily make sense for the users, or for a lab like us, for instance.

They write a standard, and one of my main contributions, if I may say so, to their standards, is that I need to decide when I'm done with my test whether it passes or it fails. The way they're writing the standard right now, it leaves me in a grey zone. I'm caught between the end user and the manufacturer. I want to make sure that the end user won't have problems, and the manufacturer says, “Well, you can interpret the standard by meaning this, so you have to let me off the hook”.

It's important to have a balanced structure so that everybody looks at it from a different perspective.

[Gordon O'Connor]

Mr. Dauphin.

[Philippe Dauphin]

The unique features that I see in the work of the CGSB include the application of norms and standards to a national standard. In the U.S., certification of non-destructive technologists is left to individual companies. I'm not sure that Canadians would feel very strongly about a company doing inspections of pipeline welds and leaving the certification of those technologists to the individual company that just won a bid to carry out that inspection.

The tests we administer can be failed. In a given year, typically between 25% and 30% of individuals trying to get certified will miss something and have to be retested. To us, this is the ultimate test of a national standard that is applied by an independent organization. I believe that the CGSB is putting us in a position to do that.

[Gordon O'Connor]

Mr. Jenkins, go ahead.

[Randy Jenkins]

Thank you.

Our engagement with the CGSB is more in the qualification process. We prefer the CGSB over private companies largely because they're not profit-driven and they are an arm of the government, although independent from DFO. They provide us with a quality service at a reasonable cost, and we don't have to go through the competitive nature of private companies who may also be engaged with the industry in other dealings that may or may not be conflicting, and so it resolves that dilemma for us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. O'Connor.

Now to Mr. Byrne, for five minutes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing.

I'm trying to get a handle on this. There seems to be a consensus that there's value to the Canadian General Standards Board. In fact, one of the arguments presented to us this morning is that there's value to it but it's inconsistently applied. I think, Michel, that would be somewhat your point of view on this.

If it is to be valued and it is to be adopted as a best practice, could I get your respective comments on whether this should be a voluntary process? If I understand this correctly, the creation of a standard is a product of a regulation at some point but the actual standard itself is not a regulation, normally. Would it be a positive for the furtherance of establishment and adherence to standards, to prescribe in regulation the actual standard prescribed by the Canadian General Standards Boards in each of the activities?

Mr. Jenkins, I'll start with you because of course DFO is a big user of regulation to manage its affairs.

We'll just go down the line if we could.

[Randy Jenkins]

Thank you, Mr. Byrne.

One of the drawbacks to inscribing everything in regulation is that it is a very time-consuming process. If you want to amend or modify anything later, based on new evidence or new data, it's a very laborious process to go through to effect the regulatory change. Not counting the time it takes for an act, but just a regulation, it often takes about two years.

One of the things I alluded to is that when it comes to the observer programs, the foundation for what the requirements are to be an observer company or an observer are already subscribed in a regulation. The broad, overarching piece is already there. We use the CGSB qualification process on our own DFO policies to interpret how this will be carried out to achieve the goals that were envisioned by legislation.

In short, knowing that we make changes annually—we review things, we try to improve things, we communicate it with the industry—I think inscribing all the qualification programs into regulation would be challenging and may not meet our end goal. My comments might be slightly different from the others’ because of the way we use the program.

The other piece is that it's not black and white. Regulations are often black and white. If you fail to abide by a regulation, there's a punitive side to it. There's some action taken that's usually very abrupt and very succinct, and you must do what's prescribed in law. The way the qualification program works now, the goal is not to say that you're doing a good job, or you're not doing a good job and get out. The goal is that if you are not up to par, we want to work with you, and the CGSB wants to work with you, to identify what the deficiency is and get you to correct it.

Our ultimate goal is not to try to keep only certain individuals in; it's to keep whoever wants to be in the program there and allow them to participate, but to make sure that they all deliver a program of the same quality and standard, and that they're all playing in the same ballpark, I guess.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

In the interest of time, Mr. Chair, could Michel intervene? I want to get his perspective here.

[Michel Comtois]

Yes and no. It depends on which products or services it covers, and I'll give you two quick examples.

Transport Canada has a haz-mat regulation for transporting hazardous materials and packaging. There used to be a CGSB standard. It's still there. For some reason, Transport Canada has decided to go on its own and write its own standard. We worked closely with Transport Canada on that regulation, and we got some feedback from them recently, saying that writing a standard is a pain. They decided that next time they were going to get CGSB to do that, because writing a standard is a different mindset. It's managing a group of stakeholders and stuff like that and they've decided that it's not their core business.

On the other hand, if we go back to the furniture, for example, the government is in a very different position from the private sector. For a lot of the products the government buys, you award the contract to the lowest compliant bidder, or the least expensive compliant bidder. So I look at this as jumping a bar,saut en hauteur. Somebody has to fix the height of the bar; otherwise, you're just going to end up buying everything in China and you're going to have no quality. So you have to make sure the quality is at a certain level to set up a level playing field for the companies to compete. I wouldn't see that as part of regulation, because it would apply to every business in Canada. As a private enterprise, I wouldn't want the government to tell me which furniture I'm allowed to buy. So from that perspective, for furniture, for instance, it's a procurement issue that is specific to all governments, which are tied to go to the lowest bidder.

Haz-mat, for Transport Canada, is another story.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Aspin for five minutes.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome, gentlemen, to our committee, and thank you for your contributions.

Mr. Boag, with Canadian Fuels Association, on your website it states that “Regulated standards should focus on the environmental performance of fuels. Fuel specifications that relate to vehicle performance should be developed through the multi-stakeholder process of the Canadian General Standards Board”.

I have a few questions on that. Why do you prefer fuel specifications developed by this board?

[Peter Boag]

I'll start, and I'm sure Monsieur Morel will add some comments.

We agree there is a role for government to regulate some aspects, principally in the area of health, safety, and the environment. For example, the federal government regulates sulphur content and benzene levels in fuel. Also, of course, many years ago it regulated lead out of gasoline. So there are good examples and appropriate examples for where there is a role for government to regulate, and when the health and safety of Canadians and the environment are specifically involved. For other areas, you start to get into the areas around vehicle performance in particular, and what we would see more as performance quality as opposed to environmental quality.

For some of the same reasons that Michel just spoke of, we think a regulated approach is perhaps not the most effective and efficient. There's an opportunity for a broader range of stakeholders to look at what can be a very complex set of variables that need to be considered.

Our view is that the CGSB standards process works very well. It has withstood the test of time for more than 60 years now, and we think that process offers a higher degree of flexibility and response, because as you will know in government, developing, preparing, and then ultimately implementing regulations is a very slow process. It's very difficult to get a new regulation in place. It's very time-consuming to amend a regulation, so I think for us that's another reason why this CGSB process is a more responsive process. Quite frankly when we look at those 32 standards areas, I don't think government would want to continue to grow its regulatory burden with another 32 standards it would need to enforce with a broad range of stakeholders.

Gilles, I don't know whether you have any additional comments.

[Gilles Morel]

Yes.

I would add that some of those standards could be quite complex. These are standards that could directly impact health and safety and the environment. Those are the ones that Peter mentioned, but there are a lot of other elements, for example, that deal with the performance, that deal with the point of view, or that deal with the customer's expectation.

Essentially, there are three reasons why they're in the standards. The first is to try to facilitate trade. As we mentioned earlier, we have a very, very large country. A product that is manufactured in one province could move across Canada, quite frankly, from east to west and from north to south. It's important that there is at least a proper reference so that the manufacturer knows what is the expected use of the product, and as well the user in Manitoba knows and is assured, whether the product was made in Edmonton or in Sarnia, that the standards are the same.

So the standard is there to facilitate trade. It also helps to level the playing field. If we do not have an appropriate set of standards that are protective, then you open either provincial borders or the international border, for example, to the dumping of a lower-quality product, or you have a product that is not fit for a particular condition. This is especially important when you look at fuels for airplanes, for example. If a car stops working on the road, generally you can park it. But there's no parking lot up there; you need to have very tight standards when it comes to airplanes.

When it comes to marine shipping, well, they travel from country to country, so it's important that we have a good standard that is anchored with the international standard but that reflects the specific conditions when those ships go to the north shore of Quebec, for example, or Lake Superior, or the coast of B.C.

So you have all those different levels of performance and levels of importance, I guess, or relevance of the various standards. As you mentioned earlier, essentially we do encourage regulation when it is relevant. We also encourage provinces to refer to those standards across their own regulations, because it helps the movement of product, it helps the trade of product, and it helps the security of supply.

Finally, when it comes to performance, cars, trucks, and equipment change continuously, so those standards change regularly. It would not be reasonable for people to expect a very cumbersome process that would not be adaptable to the ongoing changes, obviously, for the millions of cars that are on the road.