I'm here today in my own personal capacity at the invitation of the clerk, so I'm not representing anyone. I assume that part of the reason I'm here is because my primary practice in law is agriculture and food law. I write widely on issues of food law, and I'm a former president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
I was reminded by Jean-Denis this morning, before we started, Mr. Chair, that he was actually here when we were creating the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in 1995-96. He remembered that I had a bad back then. I still do, Jean-Denis.
The only other people who I think were here at that time we were creating it--I was the only government witness--were Mr. Easter and I think Mr. Steckle. I think you were here then. So this is 12 years later, back in this room, on related issues of the Food Inspection Agency.
I'm going to make three points in my introductory remarks. I think they may be different from what my colleagues are saying today or from what you have heard.
In my opinion, this is not a particularly complicated issue. It's widely discussed and described as complicated. I don't think it's that complicated. There are some fairly easy solutions. That's my first point.
My second point is that I'm going to urge you not to recommend solutions that involve regulatory change. I think that would be a mistake. In the course of this, instead of talking about the law of food and drugs or packaging law or packaging and labelling, I'm going to make reference to another law, which doesn't get enough attention up here, in my opinion. And that is the law of unintended consequences. It seems to me that a regulatory change in this area could have significant unintended consequences that would be hurtful to the industry and to Canadian consumers.
My third point is that on the matter of “Grown in Canada”, on this idea of having another expression, as far as I can see, there's absolutely no reason it can't be done right now. Just do it. In fact, it's remarkable that it hasn't been done before now.
I'll just elaborate on those three points.
It's not a complicated issue. While it's been around for a while, with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and others being concerned about trying to help Canadian producers and so on, there are actually, as we've heard from the Food Inspection Agency, very few complaints about this issue. If you review your transcript, you'll see a remarkably few number of examples. There's the famous jar of garlic, and there are others that people will trot out. But in many cases, these are labelling issues not directly related to the “Product of Canada” issue.
If a 51% guideline established by Industry Canada many years ago--not with food in mind--is a problem, then all you have to do is change it. It could be done immediately. It requires no regulatory change. The Food Inspection Agency is studying this issue at the direction of the Prime Minister. My assumption is that if people are persuaded that the number should be higher than 51% but less than 100%, then that could be done immediately. It could be done a week after your report is finished. It's simply a direction, a decision. The Food Inspection Agency makes decisions every day to alter the guide to food labelling. They can do that immediately.
Although it's very important to understand that this could be done quickly, it should remain voluntary, not mandatory. One of the things we should keep in perspective here is that in a typical large supermarket there are tens of thousands of SKUs. In fact, Jeanne, you may know. Would there be 40,000 or 50,000 SKUs in a typical large supermarket?