Agriculture Committee on May 6th, 2008

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

But it gets back to what Mr. Doering said and what Mr. Miller said. It has to be simple and it has to be truth in labelling. In other words, let's say you had a stamp of the Canadian flag on there and that made it whatever the target is, 95% Canadian. I could go in there and I wouldn't even have to think about it. If I see the flag, boom, it's Canadian, I'm having it. That's the one I have. Maybe the other one has a U.S. flag or whatever, but I could very quickly make that choice without having to think about it, without having to go and read the back, or as Larry says, read the little booklet that comes with the can. We have to make it simple and we have to make it Canadian. Would your organization buy into that?

[Jeanne Cruikshank]

I certainly would hope so, that that's what Canadians would support. It's certainly what we strive for now.

I hope we could get you into the grocery stores a little more, to comment, than you are now, and you'll see more of that and be inclined to purchase it.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Well, don't worry. Obviously I don't suffer from malnutrition or anything; somebody buys the share of food for me. But the truth of the matter is that what we're trying to do here is look after the Canadian consumer, as I said in the beginning, and the Canadian farmer, the Canadian producer. If we were to follow that, would the Canadian producer not win, and would the Canadian consumer not have a simpler method of buying his or her food?

[Jeanne Cruikshank]

Absolutely. It's a win for everybody. Canadian companies are addressing what Canadian consumers want--

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you. I don't need to hear anything else. Once you said it's a win for everybody, I think that's great.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Good.

Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, and thank you all for coming.

Ron, in your response to a question from Ms. Thi Lac, you basically said this “Product of Canada” issue was never designed for food. Do you mean to say that in this country we are continuing to use product definitions--well, we are, there's no question about it--that were designed for industry and not for food?

[Ronald Doering]

Yes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We're not at this committee looking at the labelling issue as such. We're hearing lots on it, and we're learning some things we're amazed by.

There's no question that I like the idea of your quick solution. However, I think the problem we have with it--and I think we're all on relatively the same wavelength on the committee--is that we're trying to get to a definition that defines the product itself. When somebody buys a product of Canada, you assume in your head that it means what is in the package, not the costs related to all the peripheral issues around that product packaging.

So from your perspective, how do we get there? I understand exactly what you're saying. This could be done quickly by putting up the definition to 80% or 100%, or whatever. However, from your perspective, what would have to be done, and how complicated and lengthy is the process to change the definition to target specifically the content?

[Ronald Doering]

Thank you.

First of all, on those 35,000 SKUs, we're only talking about a few hundred SKUs out of that vast array of what you'll get in a supermarket that actually deals with this “Product of Canada” issue.

So let's drill down now to where this is really relevant. Let's take juice. You have a really good Canadian company reasonably close to that lady's riding, I believe. That's a good Canadian company; they do apple juice. To the extent they can, they're using Canadian product as much as possible; however, during the wintertime there may not be enough apples. So they need the ability to access concentrate or juice from other countries and still be able to keep on producing. We don't want to put that good Canadian juice processor out of business. That's why you don't want to go with 100%. A lot of juices, in fact, are accessed from a mixture of various fruit juices. There aren't a whole lot of other products other than apples that you can make juice from, so that's why my point about the law of unintended consequences. Be careful.

If you say it was made at 80%, that it had to be Canadian content--let's say that--then for that good Canadian juice company, they may be able to keep on being a product of Canada and buying Canadian apples. As you know, most Canadian apple growers have gone out of business because you can't make a profit with it. It would be a shame if your actions resulted in putting even more people out of business.

So let's say it was 80%. They may be able to do apples and still be a product of Canada, because they don't want to be in the position of saying, well, during January we access some apple juice from another country and now we can't call it a product of Canada. So they would then be on the same footing as a product that was completely produced in China and shipped here, and there were no Canadian jobs related to it.

So if you pick a number like 80% or 90%, you can deal with those few cases where people are relying on the old Industry Canada rule to say this is a product of Canada, because basically if you look at our costs, after the transformation, we meet it. These people couldn't any longer.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

The problem there, though, Ron, is that we're still dealing with the percentage of costs. I won't quibble with your argument that sometimes you have to put another product in. But what we're seeing here, especially in the apple industry, is that our producers are being driven out of business. We're seeing the tender fruit industry--and we have that microclimate in only a few places in Canada--basically go out of business to a certain extent because our plants can't compete. We don't want to lose that production base or those producers. So we had to weigh off that factor that you talked about.

I don't like the definition because it's dealing with costs. How do we get the actual product in the package or in the can or whatever it may be? What do we have to do there?

[Ronald Doering]

If the rule was that it had to be 100% Canadian product—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I don't want to get into a discussion on whether it's 100%, 80%, 60%. I want to move away from percentage of costs of the total package and content. What do we have to do to define what exactly the contents are? We will deal with the percentages on that when we get there, but what do we have to recommend to get to the content itself?

We may have to go to two steps. One is that we do what you were saying in the short term--go to 80% under the Industry Canada rule.

The second is in the long term, because it's going to take two years to do it. We may have to recommend to get to specific content itself.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'd just ask that you provide a very brief response.

[Ronald Doering]

This juice company I'm talking about is a good Canadian company, a longstanding Canadian company, with headquarters in Quebec. A product of Canada is any product that is entirely Canadian or whose main ingredients, 80%, are of Canadian origin and for which all process or manufacturing conditions and packing are carried out in Canada. If you're not using 80% Canadian content, then it is prepared in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Storseth.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm tempted to share my time with Mr. Easter. Talk about four to five years being a long time to do anything; it's taken 13 years, but he's finally starting to come around on a few of these issues.

Mr. Doering, I really appreciated a lot of what was said here today at the committee.

Mr. Loney, our hearts go out to you in the frustration you've experienced through all of this. NAFTA labelling seems to be something that we're moving towards, and it seems it would take care of a lot of these issues.

If we had NAFTA labelling, do you think that would be one of the ultimate solutions to the problem you're experiencing?

[Mark Loney]

To me, a simple solution regarding labelling would be to let the Canadian government make this NFT up. I think the United States is moving towards it, and I think Mexico already has it. It could be done. You could just copy and paste off....

I know when I do the lab analysis that the calories are 60 and the total fat is zero. Let them plug all that stuff in. I don't have to worry about leading or fonts or all that stuff.

This system is made for big business, not small.

[Ronald Doering]

The big business/little business thing is really complicated. You'd have to take another whole session on that. Let me say, though, don't hold your breath for harmonization. It's not going to happen anytime soon. I can tell you, from the five years I was president of the food inspection agency, what the Americans mean by harmonization. It means do it their way. In the United States, they have no interest in changing their labelling regime to accommodate Canada in some way. Let's face that.

There's not going to be any harmonization anytime soon, period.

[Mark Loney]

How come they let me put all this French on here, then, and the metric volume? The only thing the CFIA is upset about, basically, is the 20 grams.

[Ronald Doering]

That's because in the U.S. they don't have pre-market approval for these things. The solution is easy; the analysis is complicated.

[Mark Loney]

But the FDA samples this product. They've sampled it twice and they've said 100%. It's FDA approved, right? I think someone should be talking to them. It was a lady in Minneapolis at FDA who said, “You can put all the French on it you want.”

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Just remember this is Mr. Storseth's time.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Mr. Doering, I do agree with what you're saying and the fact that we don't need more laws and more regulations to tie the hands. There are always unintended consequences when you start changing these things. That's the reason it takes four or five years to get anything done, because you're trying to flesh out as many of these unintended consequences as you can. I believe we need to make it simpler.

We've talked to many witnesses who have come before us, through industry and all other aspects of life here, and one of the things that keeps coming up is that we need to work within what we already have. “Product of Canada” is something that does have a brand. Maybe we need to change, as you said, some of the aspects of it--whether you make it 80% or 70% or whatever. That's the quickest way to actually get something done on it.

I want to go back to this whole “Grown in Canada” issue. I was a little surprised. It's the first time we've really heard it, but what you said absolutely makes sense. You can use “Grown in Canada” if you want to right now. There's nothing prohibiting you from doing it, and you would have to have truth in labelling if you wanted to use “Grown in Canada”.

Do you really see the need for the government to get involved and intervene any more in the discussion on “Grown in Canada” versus “Product of Canada”?

[Ronald Doering]

I do not at all. In fact, I read what the Federation of Agriculture said. They seemed to be saying we should leave “Product of Canada” alone, but we should have “Grown in Canada”, and they're seeking funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. That's what I saw. I don't want to be unkind, but if you look at the National Farmers Union, they passed a resolution that we should have a “Grown in Canada” arrangement here. They recommended it to the National Farmers Union, not to the Government of Canada.

The Foodland Ontario arrangement with Ontario is not regulated. The people in Ontario got together on what they wanted to have for promoting Ontario product.

Where you'll have a problem is with things like meat, for example, and this is the problem about the local supplier. No meat can cross a provincial boundary or a federal boundary without it being federally registered; therefore, you're stuck with hundreds of pages of the manual of procedure, etc. That's why a guy south of Saskatoon can't sell his meat into the supermarket in Saskatoon. There's a good reason for that, though. As you probably know, if you're in Saskatchewan, there's no meat inspection. You can raise an animal, slaughter it, sell it, and there's no government role whatsoever. Ontario doesn't want that, so we can't have Saskatchewan uninspected meat going into Ontario. That's a whole other issue. You have to segregate these issues out and not get them mixed up together.