Evidence of meeting #31 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was product.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
In your discussion with the Saskatchewan farm operation, had they conveyed to you similar experiences that other entrepreneurs had?
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
They told me that registration was a nightmare, and I had a hard time believing it, but it was. I expected, when I dealt with the FDA, that my own government would be facilitative, and they're not. It's like I come here and expect to see people in 16th century wigs. That's what I get from my own government. I didn't like it.
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
You had shown me a letter you received from CFIA that would not have passed grade 6 grammar.
Liberal
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
Yes, but I'd rather not get into names. It's the process.
Liberal
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
The question is, could an American have produced the same jam and exported it to Canada without going through this?
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
I asked the CFIA if I could do this here. But if I took this can of jam, made in southeast Saskatchewan, and exported it, say, across the border to Minneapolis and then imported it, it would have been fine. I could have sold this here 10 months ago in Canada, believe it or not.
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
But I have the letter here, if you want me to read it.
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
If you could just leave it, I'll give it to the clerk.
On the issue, then, in terms of process, your experience of having someone assigned to you who walks you through it, if the CFIA had a similar process to the American process, how long do you think it would have taken for approval?
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
I would have been selling this in Canada 10 months ago, and I still think it should be compatible to sell in Canada. As compared to some of these other labels, this is compliant, other than the fact that they don't want me to put the “20 grams” and the nutritional facts table.
To me, 20 grams is probably a better measurement, because if you look down the whole table...if you said that one tablespoon equals 15 millilitres, how much of that is sugar? Sugar is 12 grams. With “15 millilitres”, no one knows. But if you say, “Well, one tablespoon is 20 grams”, and you know that 13 grams of it is sugar, you say, “Holy cow, over half of what's there is sugar.” But “15 millilitres” tells you nothing.
One tablespoon is 20 grams and one tablespoon is 15 millilitres, so it is fact. The lab analysis, which I paid $800 for, came back, and one tablespoon equals 15 millilitres, equals 20 grams. It's very truthful that 20 grams is actually 15 millilitres. So why not let it in there?
It has nothing to do with the truth.
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
On that question of what is the equivalency, so that consumers can understand, you've actually provided that by explaining how much that is so they can interpret it. Do you think that should be a standard?
Manager and Owner, Cloverleaf Grocery Ltd.
That should be a standard, and it would allow me to sell it, other than the thicker lines. If you look at it, the FDA has thicker lines than the Canadian lines, and I think you could probably talk the Americans into the thinner lines. As I said, they've allowed all the French on here, they've allowed the metric on here, they've allowed the volume measurement on here. This is so close to the Canadian one.
I don't know if you guys can tell the difference. It doesn't sound like you can. But if you guys can't tell the difference and you're looking at it, then I'd like to be able to sell with this. It would save me tens of thousands of dollars.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for your presentations. For those of you who do not understand French, I invite you to avail yourselves of the interpretation.
Mr. Doering, you are correct in saying that you have sounded a discordant note. That is not uninteresting, far from it in fact. However, your testimony does raise several questions.
You argue that the legislation must not be amended because doing so would have some dramatic repercussions. Of course, you mentioned the potential domino effect of more stringent guidelines governing the use of the “Product of Canada” designation.
You spoke of some thirty regulations arising from the Competition Bureau guideline. Can you give us some examples of the repercussions that amending the act could have?
Partner, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP
Sure. You don't have all morning, but I could spend all morning, because I do this for a living--help people work their way through this maze. Maybe I'll build on the one the gentleman just mentioned.
The real solution to that problem is to not have pre-label approval for jams. Of 100 products in a grocery store, all of the meat labels have to be approved prior to marketing. The label registration unit--Dr. Mark Bielby's group in Ottawa--has to approve every meat label and every jam label. None of their labels is subject to pre-market approval, simply because it's a product of historical reality that nobody is exactly sure where it all comes from.
If you have a cereal, if you were doing any kind of product that's not under supply management—and that's another story—for thousands of other food products, you'd simply sell it, and if somebody complains that it's a defective label, then they take action. They have to work on competitor complaint, because they get thousands of these a year.
The solution to the problem, for example, of the jams is to say why would jams be any different from all kinds of other food products? Simply, don't have pre-market label registration, so you get rid of all that detailed...my work.
I warned you not to go there, all this regulatory stuff. But here's an example of where, if you tried to have a regulatory change, it would be quite different for meat and jams than it would be for all other food products, because these are already pre-approved. You would take the JPEG, go through it in detail, and look at every little thing, whereas with all these other food products you don't.
So that's another example of where the law of unintended consequences could create trouble for you if you tried to deal with all products as though some were pre-market approved and some were not.
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Sometimes when we try to simplify matters, we complicate them even further. What about the consumer's right to know exactly the provenance of the product he wants to buy? You stated that you read the committee transcripts. This isn't the first time that the committee has examined this particular issue. You even said that you yourself testified before the committee 12 years ago and this very subject was already being discussed then.
The first goal is very simple, namely ensuring that very clear guidelines are drafted respecting the use of the “Product of Canada” designation. First of all, consumers have the right to know what they are buying. And secondly, we are convinced that this designation will help farmers market their products. People want to buy home-grown products. Both consumers and producers would be affected by the amendment to the guidelines.
If the status quo is maintained, the consumer will continue to be confused by all of the information found on labels. Because of the 51% total cost rule in particular, products labelled “Product of Canada” may not necessarily be from Canada. In my opinion, if the guidelines are not amended, consumers will continue to be misled.
Partner, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP
I didn't argue for no changes; I argued for no regulatory change.
If you recommend regulatory change to the Government of Canada, you won't see it for a couple of years from now, minimum. You won't have had an impact on Canadian consumers, because the regulatory change process is so slow and sporadic. It happens, though. This is a solution you could achieve without regulatory change. All you have to do is recommend to the government that the 51% rule developed by Industry Canada years ago, which is incorporated into the guide to food labelling, be changed so that it would be 80% or 90% or something like that. If they accept your recommendation, it will be changed. Then no company could say they used “Product of Canada” because the bulk of the cost of the production of this, even though the last transformation was in Canada, was spent in Canada, and therefore they could rely on that. They couldn't any longer.
The companies we're talking about here, which are relying on the 51% rule, were actually living up to the law that we now have. So what do we mean by mislabelling? Well, there was some guidance about “Product of Canada”. I didn't say “no changes”; I said “I recommend”. It would be good for my business if you tampered with the regulatory system, because you would just create another whole mess. I make my living doing that, in part.
My recommendation, if you want to make a difference, is that the existing guideline--it's not a regulation--of Industry Canada be higher than 51%. Make it 80% or 90%. It's there. You've stopped that problem for the jar of garlic that came in from another country, for which the bulk of the costs were actually spent on packing and processing rather than on the product. Therefore, if it were higher, then you couldn't bring that famous jar of garlic in and call it “Product of Canada”.
On the other side, regarding “Grown in Canada” and the issue that Canadians should be able to distinguish between pears grown in Canada and pears grown in China, in terms of the actual pear, that law is very clear. If you import pears from China, they're a product of China, and they won't get into this country unless they're described that way. I guarantee it. The law is clear. It's right there in the processed product regulations. The difference arises when you can those pears in China. If we want to distinguish that product, which you cannot legally bring in and call “Product of Canada” now, if it's produced there.... Whereas, if a Canadian company processed those pears and, say, had some Canadian pears and some Chinese pears, depending on the source, they would still be able to make that distinction.
I'm not arguing, sir, that you shouldn't make changes. I'm saying that the “Grown in Canada” can be done right now, and you don't need to make any regulatory changes whatsoever. Let's get off our butts and start really promoting “Grown in Canada” the way they promote “Australian grown” or “Foodland Ontario”. That's a really good program for Ontario. Why wouldn't we have a national program for this?
It's amazing to me that the farm community has not done this before now. It's interesting that Mr. Easter's old organization, the National Farmers Union, passed a major resolution at their last meeting. Who did they direct it to? It was to the National Farmers Union, not to the Government of Canada.
Conservative
Conservative
Larry Miller Conservative Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks very much to the witnesses for coming here today.
Truth in labelling, which is really what this is all about in a roundabout way, is something I've personally being involved in fighting for, I guess you could say, through local farm organizations for years.
Mr. Chairman, everyone here--the committee anyway--has heard me talk about the proverbial jug of grapefruit juice, which seems to have no problem in this country being labelled “Product of Canada”. But Mr. Loney is talking about a product here that comes from Canada, is grown in Canada, and is packaged in Canada, and he's having a hell of a time getting it through. It just shows that one of the reasons this committee is reviewing this is that it's long overdue. I know the minister is reviewing this right now, and he knows there's a problem. Finally, we're getting some action on this after years.
Ms. Cruikshank, you made a statement that this is not about food safety; it's about country of origin. Would you agree that the consumers today are more educated? I find that there's definitely a move out there. People want to know where their food is coming from. It isn't just that. I get people--and I'm talking about people from the urban parts of my riding--phoning me up. They read the papers, and they know the problems in agriculture. Not very long ago it was in the grains and oilseeds, and right now it's in the livestock sector. They say they want to be able to do their part to support agriculture. They say that if I tell them where our food comes from, they'll spend the little extra to buy that. I guess, in a way, I'm disagreeing a little bit with your statement.
Do you want to enlarge on that or agree or disagree with me?
Vice-President, Atlantic Office, Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors
Absolutely. I'd like to enlarge on it.
The point is, when I looked at the previous witnesses, there was sometimes an indication that this was a food safety issue. We at CCGD think it's a quality issue.
One of the things I deal with nationally on behalf of the members is meat issues. We know the concern and the interest in purchasing local product. We're the only country in the world that, following BSE, purchased more beef than before. I think that's because of the alliance with and the intent to support the local community and our Canadian product.
The point was to emphasize that there are a great many things that consumers take into consideration when making their choices. We have a rigorous regulatory system in this country that addresses food safety. On this particular point, we're really talking about country of origin. That may translate to some consumers into supporting local, into a better assurance of their own country's safeguards, but it really shouldn't be confused with the food safety issue.
