Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Regrettably, the Prime Minister didn't appoint me as president of the CFIA last week, so I really can't provide you with a good answer on your initial question about the relocation of a CFIA office. To get to the broader question, Canada has a really good

Finance committee  I'm just about to finish, Mr. Chair. To meet these challenges we believe the next budget should provide for the development of a national food safety strategy and set out a five-year plan for food safety funding. This would involve providing financial incentives for food busines

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us. It's not our first submission, but it was our first time asking to come before you. The coalition was formed 16 years ago. Our membership is composed of 32 national, provincial, a

Agriculture committee  In my initial answer to your colleague, obviously, I went over part of the ground, in terms of what our WTO obligations are. We have to have a system in place here that we can defend if we're going to impose those requirements on others. So we need to have a first look at our dom

Agriculture committee  Put it this way, I'm no longer a trade expert. I dabbled in the field back in the Uruguay Round. I'm not in a position to answer whether it applies to all of our relationships, but clearly it's a fundamental of how our trading relationships are built—that we apply to others that

Agriculture committee  We see more and more of them having a role in, what we would call, an audit function, as opposed to an on-the-line inspection function. Whether the title of their job changes or not, we see that happening. As that happens, there will be requirements for new competencies, new skil

Agriculture committee  There are a number of interesting questions in there, and I'm glad you didn't ask me any more about the budget.

Agriculture committee  The coalition's position is that imports should be meeting the same standards that we have in Canada. It's a real challenge to achieve this in a marketplace where we all enjoy food that comes from someplace else. It's a challenge even in the domestic sense. We have inspectors, b

Agriculture committee  The coalition is quite supportive of eliminating re-inspection. This discussion is now going on at the Regulatory Cooperation Council, as is the broader discussion about how we can harmonize our approaches to imports. But we still have to have a regime in Canada that allows us to

Agriculture committee  My understanding is that members of the coalition are very supportive of that idea. They're also supportive of another idea that's happening in the world around us, which the British would call “earned recognition”. In registered establishments where we have an ongoing presence,

Agriculture committee  It's an interesting question, and it's not one that's been brought to my attention and concern. From the coalition's perspective, no. Clearly our view would be, as we stated in our presentation today, that Canadians, no matter where they are, are entitled to have food that's prod

Agriculture committee  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 els

Agriculture committee  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

Agriculture committee  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 proc

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