Agriculture Committee on April 8th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Miller, you have two minutes.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks to all of our witnesses here today. This is an issue that has been wanted for a long time. It is, as somebody pointed out, good to see that everybody basically is on the same page.

I have a private member's bill that's being debated at another committee as we sit here. After my questions I'm going to go, so I do apologize for having to leave.

I've been in support of having something--you can call it truth in labelling, call it what you want. But as Mr. Robertson, Mr. Friesen, and I believe others have pointed out, the laws we have now on our “Product of Canada” and what can come under that are definitely deceiving the consumer. I'm in full support, and since my early days on some local farm groups, including the Bruce County cattlemen, I've been pushing for this. Here we are almost 30 years later, and we're still fighting that same battle.

We have asked the minister.... And when I say “we”, that's all of us together. I think it's on all of us here to keep pushing for that. He has agreed to look at it. I think that's good. We have to make sure that it follows through.

I want to point out, too, that I'm not going to get hung up on whether it's “Product of Canada” or what the exact term is at the end of the day. However, it must be clear, concise, and there should be no deception to the consumer, and it certainly should not include the package.

I have two questions, Mr. Friesen, and I thank you for your comments earlier on my article. One question is on the “Grown in Canada” label. I understand that your organization--and I need you to answer this--indicated that you wanted to patent this. If that is the case, do you hope to sell the use of this to producers afterward? Can you comment on that?

It is out there in the public, and I'd just like to have you clear the air on it, if you wouldn't mind.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Friesen.

[Bob Friesen]

First of all, yes, we have submitted a trademark application for “Grown in Canada”. We don't envision that the CFA would administer it; rather, it would be a non-profit organization--including whatever organizations to do it--including downstream. It wouldn't so much be selling it to farmers. Until the whole process and initiative is on its feet, we would have to rely on a level of government funding to do that positive marketing campaign. We see it eventually being self-sustaining. It would require that whoever labelled the product would perhaps have to pay a minimal licence fee, and in that way keep it a self-sustaining initiative.

It's certainly not meant to be a CFA process where CFA tries to make money from that trademark application. It would be a joint industry effort, including downstream, and certainly not tied to any one organization.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

The time has expired.

We're going to move to Mr. Atamanenko.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

I'd like to take a minute to talk about food security and food sovereignty.

We've seen, and we're seeing it across Canada, that the movement is growing. We know that UPA is supporting this in Quebec. At the meeting in Russell, we saw representatives from Quebec and the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture underlining the importance of this. We saw it at the convention of the National Farmers Union. In my riding in British Columbia there are pockets of people who are getting food charters and even going to the extent of once again growing wheat in an area so we can have local wheat.

Our committee, in the report we made after our cross-Canada tour--I believe it was Larry's recommendation--emphasized food security in Canada.

By doing what we're doing, by revisiting product-of-Canada claims, and by ensuring that this really reflects what it's supposed to, could this be a necessary first step as we look at the whole issue of food sovereignty and food security?

Second, I've heard the words “voluntary” and “mandatory”. I'm wondering how you folks see that. Should there be certain criteria that make it mandatory? Should there be some that leave it voluntary?

For example, in the area of meat, we know that our cattle producers, and I guess the pork producers, are not happy with the COOL regulations in the United States. But if we then turn around and put in the same kinds of regulations here, how does that affect that industry, when we know that meat goes back and forth across the border? Should they be separate from fruit and vegetables and grains and oilseeds? That's a question I have.

And my last question

is to you, Mr. Monty.

Could you give us some details and concrete examples about the rules that are not favourable to Canadian producers?

So maybe we'll start here. We haven't heard from Nigel, who's a young farmer. Do you have any comments on this? You've just been sitting and taking this in. Then maybe we can just go around the table.

[Nigel Smith, Youth President, National Farmers Union]

Thank you.

Well, on your first comment regarding food sovereignty and food security, I think that positively, labelling can really do a lot to encourage the development of a more secure and sustainable food supply within Canada. These aren't heavy-handed regulations we're asking for. This is simply making the consumer fully aware. We're advocating for full disclosure of where food comes from. We think that Canadian consumers are concerned about this. And if they are informed, then we will be developing a more secure domestic food supply.

I'm sorry, what was your second question?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Should it be mandatory or voluntary? And there's the whole question of meat and meat regulations.

[Nigel Smith]

Well, I think mandatory labelling is what the National Farmers Union is asking for. These are muddy waters right now, and we're looking to clarify things. Adding more labels and different criteria by which these products are going to be defined doesn't do anything to clear things up. That's why we'd like to see full disclosure on these labels.

[Grant Robertson]

If I could just follow up on what Mr. Smith had to say, the farmer members of the NFU have looked at this option. There are basically two options that have to be followed. One is that if it's a product that's coming into this country and being sold on our shelves, it should be meeting our labour standards, our environmental standards, our food safety standards, and so on.

If you want to go the optional route for this kind of stuff, you have to enforce those regulations through other means. The only other way to make sure that Canadian farmers are on a level playing field with these products that are coming across our border, which don't meet our standards yet are sold on our shelves and competing on our shelves with our products, is mandatory labelling. You have to do one or the other, and we think the easiest one to do is mandatory labelling.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

How would you answer the question, Mr. Monty?

[Robert Monty]

I'm pleased to answer your question on the rules of the game. We're talking about properly labelled products. With regard to domestic production conditions, as I've indicated in my speech a little earlier, we have to wash whiter than white. In other words, environmental standards for production in Canada have become very strict, very severe.

In pork production in Canada, feed that contain residue has been removed, whereas we know that such products exist elsewhere. As my colleague indicated earlier, standards have been established in the past 10 years. The quality and production standards throughout Canada are such that we know our pork products are the best in the world, in terms of food safety as well. In fact, we are not competitors to our next-door neighbours or any other country. That's what sets up apart the most. We require methods and production criteria for our domestic producers in order to ensure that the public, the consumers, get a high-quality product. However, we often get the rug pulled from under us with products that come from abroad that are not subject to the same criteria. We have difficulty getting recognition for what we do; the government and the people who support us have trouble with this.

Let me get back to labelling. We must understand that if we let companies do what they like, they'll do absolutely nothing because they profit from the fact that the labelling is not compulsory. The present labelling rules benefit the food sector, but not the producers.

We're talking about food. Rules were put in place and they have to be reviewed. We are all fair-minded, we want to show respect for ourselves and show the population that we are people who want to go further and protect the quality of our food. At the same time, labelling is being allowed that has no teeth and that means that the population is misled because the products do not respect our production standards and criteria. This doesn't work. We must be careful, as I said earlier. The labelling must apply to the actual product being consumed by the consumer, not just the packaging. That's fundamental to my mind. We need adequate labelling and there will have to be regulations to achieve that. If you give free reign to companies, you should know that they profit from this today and they want that to continue. They're there to make money.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Merci.

Mr. Doyle, perhaps your response could be a very quick one. We're out of time and we have to move to our five-minute rounds.

[Richard Doyle, Executive Director, Dairy Farmers of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll be quick. I just have two points that I want to make.

First of all, this is all about branding Canada. There's a value in marketing. I was interested in Mr. Atamanenko's remarks about the relationship with food sovereignty, because there is one.

I want to read out a sentence about a survey we did on the importance of the term “Canada” or “Canadian” for Canadian consumers when choosing or buying dairy products. This is in the context of the logo we have for identifying Canadian dairy products. It's a blue cow. Many of you are familiar with it.

The single biggest attribute or driver for consumers is the following:

The primary driver remains an insular belief in the Canadian government food standards relative to other countries rather than specific product-related attributes.

That's the strength of “Canada” or “Canadian”. That's why consumers buy it.

With regard to the issue of voluntary versus mandatory, we're all against COOL. Let's not make the same mistake; it has many complications. The difficulty we're having now is that you have a voluntary system but it's not regulated. It's subject to guidelines. What you need to do, if somebody uses “Product of Canada”, is regulate those conditions and make them much more stringent than they currently are.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

For the information of all the witnesses, we're now kicking off our five-minute rounds. I am going to hold members to five minutes, because we have five members lined up already on the sheet and we have less than 30 minutes to go. Let's keep it precise and to the point so that everybody gets a chance to get their questions in.

Mr. Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is kind of a practical situation. In the next few weeks we're going to have a grocer and entrepreneur, whose name is Mark Loney, come to us and explain his experience and frustration of getting a product identified and labelled in Canada. The problem is that the product has already been sold for about 50 years under a different name. Last year he received approval by the United States government to sell it in the United States.

The issue is very interesting. We talk about “100%-grown”. His is 100%-grown in Saskatchewan. The product is assembled here, and it's obviously something we can sell a lot of, not only domestically but as an export. The issue is—and I'll ask if any of your members have had similar experiences and frustrations with the CFIA—that it took 46 days just to change a capital “T“ back to a small “t“.

Right now, in Canada—and it would be hard for any of us not to share Mr. Loney's frustration—the major jam companies are non-compliant because they have the error on their product, but he has been held back. He points out very clearly that imports from China do not have to be registered; they don't have to have French or any nutritional guidelines. To me, it's a national disgrace.

So I'm going to ask this question to you. How many of your members have come to you, in your various associations, with similar frustrations; and should it be that any imported foods should be subjected to the same rules, regulations, testing, inspection, and labelling as Canadian producers have to follow?

Maybe we should conduct one of our meetings as a standing committee in a grocery store and just reach back and take a look at some of these things.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Who wants to go first? Mr. Friesen.

[Bob Friesen]

I'll lead.

On making it mandatory whether our imports have the same standards as our products do in Canada, we have always advocated that we wanted to keep our on-farm food safety programs voluntary. To do that, or if we wanted to stop imports coming in that didn't have the same on-farm food safety standards, we would have to make our farm safety programs mandatory. So we've decided to take this route and do a positive marketing campaign on Canadian products.

For the same reason that we don't want a huge amount of push-back from food processors and grocery distributors, we've said let's make it voluntary rather than have them enter some sort of mandatory labelling regime.

[Pierre Lemieux]

The answer to the question is yes. However, that means labelling. The label will be the first signal of this implementation. It will be the first step. We can go back to what this gentleman said earlier about food sovereignty. The regulations that will be put in place will be a first step toward food sovereignty, toward the recognition of the power of peoples to at least regulate part of their production and trade.

With regard to regulation, I would remind the Competition Bureau of what it says itself. In the Guide to "Made in Canada" labelling, the Competition Bureau even recommends using restrictive indicators. That can only be done voluntarily; people have to be forced to go further. Moreover, the health of consumers has to be protected. One mustn't forget that the basis for regulations is to protect the health of consumers.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Robertson.

[Grant Robertson]

I certainly can speak to another number of anecdotes of people who have faced barriers trying to value-add here in this country, and beyond just labelling. But I want to come back to this issue of whether it's mandatory.

We have a certain set of laws in this country that we follow, that we put in place for very good reasons, around labour standards, environmental standards, and health standards. Those go well beyond or are the basis of what might be happening on any particular farm following farm safety programs.

Even with those laws in place here, we allow products into this country on a regular daily basis, thousands and thousands of tonnes of them coming into the country, that don't follow those basic laws. So it's not just the voluntary stuff we do to add on top of that; it's the basic laws. We have to at least begin stopping those and we have to be protecting Canadian farmers and Canadian consumers, because we're all in this together.

We know that food is a determinant of health, and the quality of that food is a determinant of health, way beyond just if you don't eat it, you fall over. This is an important issue for our consumers. We produce the highest quality, safest food in this country, and we have to stop being embarrassed about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

[Grant Robertson]

Mrs. Skelton, you have the floor.

[Carol Skelton, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, everyone; I really appreciate it.

Mr. Boshcoff, I was strolling through an Independent grocery store here in Ottawa last evening, buying some produce and checking the labels. I think Mr. Friesen was in the same grocery store. I didn't see what he had in his cart, but it was very interesting. At home in my small grocery store in Saskatchewan we don't have the choices they have here. I bought some wonderful little cucumbers from a farm here in Ontario and I checked them out on the website because they had their website listed on it. Then I checked the canned goods. It disturbs me to see what they say is Canadian produce, and we know for sure it isn't.

Mrs. Binnie, we didn't hear from you about your voluntary labelling. I'd like to know your opinion on that, and why the Canadian Pork Council has set voluntary labelling instead of mandatory.

[Mary Ann Binnie]

Thank you for the opportunity. A couple of other times there wasn't enough time.

We do support a voluntary versus mandatory system. We certainly wouldn't want to impose on imports any standards we're not in favour of, given the fact that we export so much pork.

A voluntary system also will work, in that the marketplace will drive the program. If consumers see it in one store, as Bob mentioned earlier, then they will be asking why our products aren't labelled accordingly.

We are definitely in support of labelling Canadian pork products in the meat case as being from Canadians, so they're able to identify. Give them that choice. This is Canadian, this may be U.S., another country of origin, but at least they're given the choice as to what they want to purchase. That's what we're in favour of, a voluntary program that gives them the tools to make that purchasing decision.