Agriculture Committee on April 17th, 2008

[Christopher Kyte]

There were 151 recalls on domestic production; there were 95 on imports. So there was a disproportionate share of imports that were recalled. That concerns me a little.

What that says is that those products probably weren't processed under the same terms and conditions as we have in this country. We do a marvellous job inside this country, but again, we don't have the ability to survey other plants outside the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr. Boshcoff.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

This is in keeping with your theme of consumer friendliness. When you see the back of a package, there is no uniformity in terms of how an individual can gauge between a cup, ounce, millilitre, gram, tablespoon, solid, liquid, volume, or weight.

On any given bag of chips, on any given box of cereal, on any given breakfast bar, on something like a Triscuit, “salt-free” will have as its quantity four biscuits, while “low fat” will have it as five biscuits. The bag of chips will say that you can figure all this stuff out “per serving”, which is five potato chips. Well, I don't know anybody who just eats five potato chips, except for Mr. Bellavance. He's the only one.

[A voice]

And Joe Preston.

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

Oh, Joe, okay.

The other day we had someone passing around a ring of kielbasa, and the measurement—grams of fat, cholesterol, nitrates, all that stuff—was for five centimetres of kielbasa. We also had two slices of very thinly sliced ham, or two slices of bacon. The breakfast bars are in “units”—fortunately, they're not in “bites”.

Basically we have to find a way for everybody to have the same measure, so that taco chips are the same as potato chips, so that everybody can figure out exactly what they're getting.

Really the question, Mr. Chairman, is that we're trying to define and know, on any product that a human would possibly eat, how much damage you're going to do to your body by eating it, or how much good you're going to get from eating it. It's great to see grams of fat, all that kind of stuff, but it's a question of the way we have to compute it.

The only way you could do it is by measuring brand against brand and hoping they both have a five-potato-chip standard, to see what “potato chip light” will give you compared with other things. I think this quantitative standardization is very important, and it is literally all over the map. Even the same products by the same company will use different measurements.

Thank you.

[Christopher Kyte]

I don't eat potato chips; I mean, I have to watch the waist.

I don't disagree with you, as a shopper; I have the same challenges. It might be very complex. I don't know enough about that subject. You should probably have the snacking food industry in, or something like that, and ask them those questions, because I can't answer them. But I do know as a consumer that it's very difficult to figure out whether I am getting less salt in one place than another, especially in the cookie aisle, where I can eat four cookies here and five cookies there and ten there. It's difficult; I agree.

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

As I mentioned in the examples, we had meat products, processed meats. I don't think it applies simply to snack products. I think with a bag of frozen peas or a can of corn, it's the same thing: each company decides what they're going to use as a serving.

Would it be more practical if it defined what the package had in it, if you ate the whole thing, or have we somewhere along the line decided that a “serving” would be the measurement? Sometimes when you see what a serving is, you'd say that what is in Mr. Steckle's glass is called a serving of orange juice, and you'd ask yourself, who's going to have one-eighth of a glass of orange juice?

The measurements are beyond reality, so it comes down to the truth in advertising question.

[Christopher Kyte]

My staff have had the same kinds of issues, and we're trying to discuss them with Health Canada and with the label approval people at CFIA, where—you're quite right—the product is 250 millilitres and it's a full serving, and then there's 500 millilitres and it's considered a full serving. You're quite right, I think this is something that should be looked at. The consumer has the right to be able to make informed decisions.

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

When you say “looked at”, what would your recommendation be as to how it would not just be looked at but be acted upon?

[Christopher Kyte]

I think what you have to do is give a directive to Health Canada or to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and say, look, we would like somebody to come back and explain why it's like this, and then work from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Preston.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much. It's nice to be visiting today.

I can maybe point out, by being here only just for what we're talking about today and not having been involved in some of the other thought processes, that this is a confusing issue for consumers. It's certainly a confusing issue for parliamentarians and for where we're trying to move it.

Mr. Kyte, in your original statement, you talked a lot about how certainly there are consumers out there who have low interest in what we're talking about today. They're driven by the price tag on the shelf or the fanciness of the display or whatever it might be. But I will give to you, and I hope Mr. Fruitman will agree with me, that those who do care about it care about it very deeply. That marking of products as to what country they came from, what ingredients are in them, is very dear to those who read labels.

I don't know if you could tell, but I love to cook and I do all of my own shopping too, and love to. I've gotten very much lately into certainly watching product of origin, or where things come from. I find, as Mr. Boshcoff was saying, that certainly by measurement, by size, by type of ingredient, it's different on every label that we read. It has to be fixed. We clearly have to look at how we do this.

The other problem, of course, is that our food products are global in nature. We're buying from around the world--that's a given--and I think we always will. I think back to my youth, and there are a couple of people near my age on the committee, so I think you'll know that sometimes bananas were a treat, for example. Now, as a bit of a gourmet chef, I can buy almost any ingredient at any time because it's grown somewhere in the world and can be delivered to Canada. But I do want to know where it was grown. I do want to know where it came from. I do want to know that if it's a processed item, who processed it or what country did the processing.

I am as confused as anybody by “Made in Canada”, ”Grown in Canada”, “Product of Canada”, “Canada Grade”, or whatever else, and what they mean. As someone who's now looking to do that type of research as I shop, it's more confusing than it's maybe ever been. The “Canada Choice” or “Canada Grade” thing certainly confused people, I think, into believing that these are somehow automatically a product of Canada, when they're not.

So Mr. Kyte, I disagree with you. I love the thought and the couple of examples you gave of the fellow who's trying to buy as many Canadian apples as he can because he's a good Canadian and he wants to do that product. But I disagree that he somehow should get some sort of special thought as to his product being a “Made in Canada” product just because he couldn't find enough Canadian apples and had to add something else to it. I think it's important from a consumer point of view to know what's in there. You're right, we're going to argue about what percentages make it a “Made in Canada” thing.

Mr. Fruitman, can I get just a bit more from you from a consumer perspective? I think that's the side I'd like to err on, if we're ever going to err. What is the consumer looking for? I just read out four or five different ways of saying it was made in Canada, grown in Canada, raised in Canada, whatever you want to call it. It made me want just a little more thought from you. How do we straighten this out, from your point of view?

[Mel Fruitman]

I think it is relatively simple when we are talking about a product of Canada, again, as I have said many times now, as long as we separate the origin of the content from the economic value to Canada. We are talking, from a consumer perspective, about the origin of the product, in which case then we are looking simply at that, not the value-added, not how much money was spent in Canada. It simply remains to agree on whether we are talking 100% or something nominally less than that of the product that would have to have been grown or raised in Canada to qualify for that designation.

It's simple, I think. If it's a one- or two- or three-ingredient product, when they can be separated, we should be talking pretty close to 100%. If we're talking about a processed food product that may include half a dozen or a dozen ingredients sometimes, then it becomes more problematic. Obviously that's going to be very difficult to be near 100%. Should it be 51%? Should it be 71%? I don't know.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we went through that debate 20 years ago and couldn't resolve it. So it's been on the table for a long time.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Agreed, but I think under today's media scrutiny and under today's consumer awareness, consumers seem to be a lot more aware that this is what they're asking for and this is where they're headed.

Mr. Steckle brought up the fact that there is an advantage. I think there is an advantage to saying that this is a Canadian product. I went out of my way as a manufacturer, as a packager, as a purveyor of goods to hunt only good Canadian products, and I think putting some sort of labelling on it that says this is a Canadian product would inspire me as a consumer to purchase it, and I think it would inspire other consumers to purchase it.

I recognize that it gets harder when it's a processed product. A frozen pizza has many ingredients to it, but as a manufacturer I may want to take the extra steps to look for only Canadian-made products to go on my frozen pizza so that I could wear the maple leaf, so that I could say this is made of made-in-Canada products. I can't think of a product that's in a frozen pizza that isn't available in Canada. So why would I not want, if the opportunity is there, to do it?

Can I have you comment on that, Mr. Kyte?

[Christopher Kyte]

I agree with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Preston.

The last time I looked, the pineapple doesn't grow in Canada and olives don't grow in Canada. We already put that one to rest, that there are “Product of Canada” olives, but they're not from Canada.

Anyway, moving right along, Mr. St. Amand.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Steckle.

Mr. Kyte and Mr. Fruitman, I think it's beyond dispute that Canadian consumers want more information rather than less. They want more information about what they and their families are consuming, in my view, in terms of content, proportions of contents, and yes, where the product comes from.

With that in mind, we've heard from others--and you've both alluded to it this morning--that Canadians are also wanting simplicity in labelling. Frankly, I don't see it that way. I think they're wanting more information rather than less. Mr. Storseth talks about potentially having his lawyer come with him to the grocery store, and he says that facetiously, obviously. Why is it that the labelling has to be reduced or dumbed down to three words or less? I don't think Canadians want it dumbed down to that extent.

[Christopher Kyte]

No, I think they want to be able to make informed decisions about what they're buying, so I agree with you. How much information they need I don't know. Certainly we heard about the serving sizes and things like that. Maybe it's time to take a good look at what's on the label. Again, I agree, you can't boil it down so that it doesn't mean anything.

On the other hand, to go back to my good member who processes apples, you don't want to put a skull and crossbones on his product just because he has to take one-third of his crop out of New York state.

[Mel Fruitman]

I think, ideally, if manufacturers could do it and if consumers had the time to read all the labels, it would be nice to have very, very specific information, which would mean that every label probably would have to be about that big.

In practical terms, when we're running through the grocery stores maybe picking up 40 or 50 items sometimes, we want to be able to do that with some ease. This means that we want to be able to interpret the labels that we get quickly, to be able to read them and not be confused by a multiplicity of labels. I think that's a danger when we talk about trying to give information.

We want information and we want it to be clear. We want it to be understandable, and it's the understandable element that starts coming into play. Without getting into discussions of literacy and all that sort of thing, it's simply a matter of not overloading the consumer as well.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

I understand that, but your comments presuppose that the only time a consumer would actually trouble himself or herself to read a label is at the point of purchase. Frankly, everything is taken to one's home. There's abundant time to read even extensive labelling at home and perhaps to alter shopping patterns in the future.

I don't see, frankly, a downside to imposing on manufacturers an obligation to be rather fulsome, to use that tired word, more fulsome or detailed in their labelling, rather than compressing it into something that can be read in one or two seconds only. People, I think, will be curious after they've purchased exactly what it is that they and their families are eating and they'll have abundant time to read the label very, very carefully once they're home.

[Mel Fruitman]

I'd like to think that, but I'm not too sure it happens, unfortunately. It may happen more at a subconscious level. When using that can of something, as you are opening it or holding it, you may be reading it. I don't think people are very likely to sit down and read all of the labels the way they read the box of cereal as it's sitting in front of them on the table at breakfast time. We just don't have the time to do that, unfortunately. Time pressure is one of the greatest problems we face these days.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Wordsmithing is a wonderful thing. What's your interpretation of “equivalent” or “equal”? When we talk about equivalent standards or equal standards—and we have those kinds of terms bandied about from time to time—we take a sort of comfort in the fact that because we have “equivalent” standards, everything is equal. Do they both mean the same? I don't think they do, but in many cases I think we use that term.

Before I conclude, I want to ask you if you could indicate the most important thing we could recommend as a committee. We talk about truth in advertising, and “butter” in popcorn, “cream” in ice cream, and all of those dairy terms that are not being adhered to. We're in default of exercising our jurisdiction to guard the public trust. We're not doing that.

Is that the greater issue? Or is it seeking greater clarity in our labelling?

[Mel Fruitman]

You've just introduced a whole bunch of topics there, unfortunately. As we've said, we want the information that is provided to be accurate. Right now we are talking about “Product of Canada”. We are not asking for specifications on how a product shall be made, or anything like that.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Is it the fact that we're not clear on the understanding of our labelling, or is it that we have adequate labelling, perhaps, but are not enforcing, in many cases? Is the enforcement or lack thereof a greater issue than the misunderstanding of our labelling?

[Mel Fruitman]

I think they go hand in hand. One is that we have a “Product of Canada” designation that is being misused and is not clear, because there really is no proper definition. So to start with, just what does it mean? The second is that there are apparently products getting on the shelf that clearly should not even have that label on them, which is the enforcement problem. So we have the problem at both levels.