Thank you, Mr. Bezan.
My name is Jennifer Hillard, and I'm the research director for the Consumer Interest Alliance, which is actually a fancy title for a volunteer job with a lot of work. I have another member with me, Florence Watson, who is also from Winnipeg.
I'd really like to thank all the members for coming to our wonderful province and letting us present to you without having to travel to Ottawa. It's a huge advantage.
The Consumer Interest Alliance Incorporated--we call ourselves CIAI--is a national, member-based, volunteer organization, and we work primarily in the areas of food and agriculture, financial services, and standards. Our objective is to represent the long-term interests of Canadian consumers based on science and research. We operate primarily through participation in consultative processes. We don't picket, boycott, or operate in an advocacy mode.
The first point we would like to raise is that we're disappointed in the failure of Agriculture Canada to specifically include consumers as stakeholders in this round of the APF consultations. In the consultations for APF I, we were a significant stakeholder throughout, and this time we haven't been invited to meetings. We've had to push ourselves forward, and I think that's a shame, because we are part of the market chain.
A statement was made this morning by Mr. Steckle that suggested that consumers and producers are not on the same side. That always disappoints me, because in my opinion, consumers and producers are at the two ends of the market chain, and we're both victims. We're victims of a processor-distributor-retailer chain that is heavily vertically integrated, and the system has failed to maintain adequate competition for an effective and fair marketplace.
Another point raised this morning by the gentleman from the Manitoba Pork Council was that consumers should be paying more for products in the grocery store. I maybe don't disagree with that, but that's not going to help producers. If you look at the price spread, a decrease in farmer pricing doesn't result in a decrease in consumer price, and an increase in consumer price doesn't result in an increase in producer price. It gets gobbled up in the chain in between, and the system has to find a way to fix that.
There are two areas of the APF that are of particular interest to CIAI. We've slipped into the environment area, but we would like to comment on environment, food safety and quality, innovation and science, and market development and trade. It's a fairly short presentation, despite its spread.
CIAI is not an environmental group. We limit our involvement in environmental issues. We believe that there are lots of active NGOs out there. Basically, we are a consumer group. However, we don't believe that the picture being presented to the public of the agricultural impact on the environment is necessarily supported by the facts. Most producers are good stewards of the land--it is their capital, and it makes good business sense for them to take care of it.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy a sector on which to report back on environmental activities as heavy industry, which measures imports and measures releases into the atmosphere. It's much more difficult for the agricultural sector to do that.
APF I created some great opportunities for agriculture through the environment pillar, particularly the environmental farm planning systems. This opened doors to ways of collecting some aggregated data that would support claims of good stewardship. Unfortunately, the provincial programs that are operating EFP programs are currently in a state of limbo. Nobody knows whether they're going to continue beyond March of next year. At a time when we would like to be reviewing these programs, taking the next step, and maybe putting a little more rigour into them, we are working on wind-down plans. I would like to urge this committee to maintain some continuity in these programs in APF II so they can continue to grow and deliver better possibilities for actually measuring continual improvements in the sector, rather than just give a snapshot of what agriculture's activities are in the environmental area.
Moving on to food safety and quality, this is obviously a key area of interest and concern for a group that represents consumer interests. We would like to begin by saying that we believe that Canada's agricultural sector produces food that is of very high quality and that Canada has a good mix of regulatory and voluntary systems that should ensure wonderful food safety. We support wholeheartedly the concept of branding Canada. We don't think Canadians pat themselves on the back as frequently as we should. However, there are some weaknesses in the enforcement system that are actually undermining confidence in the system and making it difficult for consumers to acquire the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.
In many cases, we have not adopted Codex standards for the composition of food; yogourt is a prime example. In other cases, we have compositional standards, but processors are ignoring them and the CFIA is failing to enforce; cheese is a prime example of this.
CIAI fully supports the concept of quality being an issue for the industry and an area where competition and the marketplace should drive improvements. However, compositional standards of processed food can affect the nutritional quality. Some of these are important food items, and destroying their nutritional quality has long-term negative impacts on the health of Canadians.
During a recent CIAI study on cheese standards, one focus group member said this problem is contributing to our population being "overfed and undernourished".
At the retail level, the lack of competition is creating problems with getting new, innovative, and local products onto the shelves of the majority of grocery stores. This is driving more and more consumers to farmers' markets and other forms of direct buying. Much of the food sold this way has bypassed the food safety regulatory systems that the government has put in place to protect Canadians, and while voluntary on-farm food safety programs are generally wonderful for taking food safety protection back beyond the gate, we're not convinced that they're adequate without the regulatory layer.
CIAI would like to see the food quality and safety section of the next APF address the issue of enforcement of existing standards, including more efforts to harmonize with some of our major trading partners on standards, regulations, and enforcement systems where such harmonization of standards maintains protection of Canadians and does not result in settling for the lowest common denominator.
In the area of innovation and science, science is moving very fast, and the food and agricultural sector is very innovative. Functional foods and nutriceuticals, biotechnology, and nanotechnology are all moving at lightning speed.
CIAI has two key areas of concern relating to the new technologies. First, can accurate, science-based consumer information be disseminated in a way that enables Canadian consumers to reap any benefits available through informed choice? Informed choice is one of the WTO's internationally recognized consumer rights. The second question is, can the regulatory system keep pace with science, both to ensure adequate protection of consumers and to enable industry innovation?
CIAI believes that poorly presented information, failure to identify realistic and appropriate consumer benefits, and a paternalistic attitude taken by government and industry with regard to the science opened the door for misinformation and scare tactics relating to food and agricultural applications of biotechnology.
Add to that the failure of government to recognize that there were issues of ethics involved that went beyond science, and the inability of the regulatory system to adapt fast enough to handle a new technology, and we ended up with almost an international consumer revolt against "GE food" that is hindering applications that may offer consumer benefits.
We had an example of that raised this morning, with the issue of trying to register a high-phytate barley, which is stuck under the novel food regulations that were put in place to protect consumers from biotechnology.
CIAI is concerned that the fast-growing area of nanotechnology should be handled differently. We hope this committee will consider ways of addressing commercialization and regulation of this technology and any other new technologies in APF II, so that Canadian consumers can access the possible benefits of these technologies.
The last item we'd like to touch on is market development and trade. We believe that consumers should benefit from freer trade through access to a greater variety of product choices and more marketplace competition. We do not believe that Canadian consumers are reaping the benefits expected under NAFTA, particularly in the area of food and agriculture. Some of the regulatory systems of Canada and the U.S. could, in our opinion, move much faster towards harmonization without having a negative impact on the health of Canadians or the environment, and with a positive impact on the Canadian economy.
Agricultural inputs, both pesticides and veterinary drugs, are put through very thorough and high-cost processes on both sides of the border; however, the size of the Canadian market limits the number of products that are prepared to go through our system. This often prevents producer access to newer and better products with fewer negative impacts, while not preventing those that would not pass the Canadian system from showing up in imported food. This does nothing to benefit consumers and prevents Canadian import products from competing on a level playing field.
CIAI would like to see APF II support more harmonization in areas where there is a net benefit to Canadian consumers and the Canadian economy.
In an effort to circumvent the processor-distributor-retailer monopoly in the agrifood sector, much work had been done in the name of “value chains”. We don't believe a lot of this work is truly “value chain”, as it fails to recognize that it must result in something of value to the consumer, who is also part of that chain. Too often the thrust is to see what can be developed, and then see if they can market it to consumers.
CIAI believes that the true value chain would identify consumer needs and then seek to create products that fill those needs. And we'd like to see APF II continue support for value chains, provided they really are truly a value chain.
Finally, on the whole, we believe that regulations should be science-based, not political science-based. We agree with you on that one. But it's also incredibly important that they be integrated, that in terms of what's going on in Health Canada and in Environment Canada and Agriculture Canada, when it comes to these regulations, everybody needs to know what everybody else is doing.
Thank you very much for your time.