Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To our witnesses this morning, I'm very interested in your comments, many of which I very much support.
The reason we are together, of course, is to come to some understanding of terms of labelling and the practice of enforcement. I think it's becoming very clear to all of us here that the enforcement body we have, the CFIA--and perhaps others--is not doing its job, for whatever reason. Perhaps it's the fact that they don't have large numbers of people. I question that, because we know they have a high number of people working in their departments. I think some of those people could perhaps best use their energies and efforts in areas other than enforcement.
I'm also very much concerned about the fact that there seems to be no mechanism to hold the importers accountable. I think that's something we need to look at very seriously in terms of going forward, that we close that gap, because certainly there should be no product from the United States or anywhere else in the world coming into Canada that doesn't clearly indicate it's an imported product.
We have a multiplicity of logos and labels and notions of what labels mean. We do not quite have an understanding of what they mean.
I think, going forward, we need to put a clear understanding on “Product of Canada” and indicate whether it refers to the product that's in the can or in the containment of that product. It should be on the content, not on the value, because water hasn't got a lot of value, but you could put value to it artificially. I think we need to very clearly denote that it's the content. Personally, I believe it should be no less than 75%.
I believe there should also be a clear label that denotes a product being Canadian. “Canadian Grown” would be my preferred label, because you could label it with “Canadian Grown” and a maple leaf, perhaps. Those who grow products here--and “grown” is better than “Made in Canada” for food items, because we don't make food items. We manufacture, remanufacture, process, but we don't make--we grow all of the things basically that we consume.
How would you feel about a label that denotes a Canadian product being solely Canadian, maybe 98% or whatever? There is always a margin, but that item comes from Canada. That apple is grown in Canada. That piece of pork, that tenderloin, is a Canadian-grown pork product, and people know that when they buy it. They don't have to ask any other questions. They don't need to look at any other labels, because that says it all.
If we had a clear label, we could promote that as a country, as a nation. The provinces could, of course, put their own logos on, promoting their products, which I think is fair, but Canadians need to understand, and I think that's pretty simple.
When we go to the other products, then we need this “Product of Canada”, and it needs to be clearly understood that 75% of that product is a product that came from Canada.
Then you might have another submarginal indicator that says “import blended”, because there may be beans in the product and there might be 15 different things. It's pretty hard to know. It might have 10 different countries represented in that can. I don't know whether we'd use a broad term like “import blended” or something like that, but let's keep it simple. Let's give people a clear understanding when they go in--that's Canadian, and this may not be Canadian.
How do you feel about that?
