Agriculture Committee on Aug. 19th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I call this meeting to order.

We are continuing with our study on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's strategic review document. This is meeting number 44. We had a late night last night and we're going to continue with our witnesses this morning, whom we're welcoming to the table.

From the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, we have Michèle Demers, who is the president; and Chris Roberts, a research officer.

With that, I'll turn it over to you for your opening comments.

Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, before we start with witnesses, I don't know if everybody is aware, but the minister issued a press statement last night attacking the opposition parties for basically doing their job. I don't know whether we want to challenge the minister to the Speaker or not, but it was a fairly brutal press release, going after me personally. I don't mind that; it doesn't bother me much. If you fire a stone into a pig pen and hear a squeal, you know you've hit something.

But the fact of the matter is that we, as an agriculture committee, are doing our job. It was reported, and a scientist was fired for it, that there is a secret document on major cutbacks to CFIA that we believe could endanger our food security system and that is in fact something the committee ought to look into. So I just want to put on the record that I'm not exactly impressed with the minister's press release.

In his press release as well, he does mention the impact of carbon taxes. There is a document from Environment Canada, entitled Turning the Corner, that clearly mentions the $65-per-tonne carbon tax that the Conservative government is going to implement in secret, and not be open and transparent about, as Mr. Dion has been. I wonder if it's possible for us to ask the clerk to get a copy of that document talking about the Government of Canada's $65-a-tonne carbon tax, and distribute it to committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay, I don't see a problem with that, since it's on our work schedule anyway. The committee will be studying the carbon tax in the fall session, so it falls in line with the work schedule that we've already committed to.

Are there any comments?

Mr. Storseth.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I do have a copy of the minister's press release, and it's far from brutal, especially as it sets the record straight on the Liberal press release that Mr. Easter signed off on, which basically called our food inspection agency a game of Russian roulette. It was really quite inappropriate, and I hope that after the committee meetings of yesterday and today, maybe Mr. Easter will find it within himself to apologize to the CFIA and the minister for those quite inappropriate comments he made in his own press release.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I just have a quick comment.

I was at the meeting yesterday hearing from the CFIA. Many of the allegations made by the member from Malpeque simply have no basis in fact, and the witness was quite clear to point that out in a number of points in his testimony. I think it's fair to say that many of the items attributed to the CFIA and on food safety were absolutely incorrect and that the testimony of the officials showed it was quite the opposite. So I'm quite surprised that the member would raise this, given the fact that he made statements that just didn't bear out with reality and the facts as they are on the ground. I think the officials were quite clear in stating that food safety was a primary consideration and was enhanced by the actions that were taken, which were not negative.

So the member is trying to give a false impression to the public that just does not square with reality.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Are there any other comments?

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I did read with interest the press release of the minister. I just have to say, for the record, Mr. Chair, that after hearing from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which I listened to carefully, and after asking them about their plans or changes, they indeed confirmed that the changes were being implemented. But when I asked for specific details on how they're being implemented, they couldn't give me an answer, Mr. Chair. I don't think it's outrageous to say that these are dangerous plans afoot when you don't even have the details from the people who implement them.

So the minister can say whatever he wants, but Canadians will judge us and this government for their pathway to changing and deregulating food safety in this country. So for the record, from what we heard from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency yesterday, there was not a lot of detail about the direction in which we're going. There are a lot of concerns from this side about the unanswered questions, and hopefully we'll find out more today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. St. Amand.

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

The best defence is a good offence, Mr. Chair, as has been proven by this government time and time again. I find it quite troubling that the minister would have the time to issue a press release commenting on the workings of this committee halfway through our session but would not take the time to comply with the order of the committee to release the report. He should have taken his time last night to provide us with the report and complied with the committee's motion—which passed—rather than issuing a press release halfway through the game.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

It's my understanding that the press release and statement from the minister were put out yesterday afternoon before we met—or about halfway through the game.

Are there any other comments you guys need to put on the record so you can do your press releases? Nothing? Okay, let's turn it over to our witnesses, then.

Madame Demers, if you'll kick us off, keep it under 10 minutes, please.

[Michèle Demers, President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of this committee.

On behalf of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, I am very pleased to be called upon to appear before you this morning, despite the short notice I received for that purpose.

I listened to the audio recording of yesterday's meeting. The question under study by the committee yesterday and today is extremely important. You have a critical role to play in reviewing the processes and food safety in Canada. Regardless of your party, you have all been elected to represent and defend the interests of Canadians. What happened after a secret document—which I have read—was sent to the union by a union steward must be a major concern for both politicians and the public, which is the direct client of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Mr. Luc Pomerleau was dismissed for doing his job. The Canadian government hires scientists to issue opinions and analyze all matters pertaining, in the case of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to safety of the food in this country and the food we export. The document in question, which was issued in November 2007 and was secret at the time because it was to be announced in the February 2008 budget, was sent to the union because it had been negligently left in the computer system of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to obtain opinions and advice on the impact of what was proposed regarding the jobs and safety of Canadians.

Canadians, on every occasion, demand that the government be transparent and accountable.

I'm asking the members of this committee not to take my word for the contents of the document and the impact of the document, not to take Brian Evans' word for the contents of the document. Get the document and see for yourselves. It's your responsibility. You cannot make a judgment call on the impact of these changes at CFIA without seeing first-hand the details of this document that leads towards deregulation, privatization, and delegation to industry of the responsibility for food inspection.

It is not industry's mandate to monitor the safety of the foods in this country; it is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's mandate. It is your role, as the government of this country and as the elected officials of this country, to ensure that the food is safe and to ensure that what I'm saying and what Brian Evans said is cohesive, true, and valid.

With the fact that these changes are being qualified and portrayed as being forward-thinking, modernizing food inspection processes, and improving the security of the systems that are in place at CFIA, if that is the case, why is there such a fear to go public with the document? Why is there such resistance to making it public, long after it has been announced through the budget speech last February? We're now in mid-August, and this document is still secret or is supposed to be secret.

We've been accused of fear-mongering because of statements that have been made in the press and the media. You know that scientists are everything but fear-mongers. They base their decisions, their analyses, and their recommendations on facts, and they are the antithesis of fear-mongering. That is not the essence of scientists,

to spread panic. Pardon me, I'm forgetting my English. Their purpose is critical and essential. It is extremely important that you understand that the scientists of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency—with whom you should speak, moreover—are experts in this field. It is they who deliver the food safety programs.

After what happened to Luc Pomerleau, there should be iron-clad security for these people to agree to come and outline to you the problems they are facing, whether it be a lack of resources and equipment or the direction the agency intends to take, based on this document, in order to delegate more of its powers to a third party.

We will help the committee as much as possible, in the context of its proceedings, by suggesting witnesses and preparing a proper brief, as we are used to doing, which will contain the arguments that we want to advance. However, we need more time. We hope we will be called upon to appear again to give more detailed information on our concerns in this saga, which has repercussions not only for Luc Pomerleau and his family, but also for the Canadian public, the credibility of the Canadian government and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

In the few minutes left to me, I would like to turn the floor over to Chris Roberts, who will talk to you about the European and American food inspection models, compared to what we do and to the trend that has been emerging in Canada in recent years.

[Chris Roberts, Research Officer, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada]

Thank you to the committee for inviting us here today.

I commend the decision of the committee to inquire into the goings-on at CFIA and the state of the food safety system in Canada. I encourage you to seek out the document in question, and I encourage you in your deliberations to hear from the scientists and regulatory professionals who have been telling the institute for many years about their concerns for their capacity to do their work and live up to the expectations placed on them as public service employees serving the public good.

I'm not going to take a lot of time to explore food systems abroad. I simply want to point to the irony that the direction suggested in this recent CFIA document, the direction that Canada is headed in, comes at a time when the United States is emerging from a long experiment in industry self-regulation and minimal government oversight, not just in the area of food safety but, in fact, consumer product safety as well. There have been recent efforts to strengthen dramatically the capacity and authority of the federal government in the United States to act on behalf of the interests of consumers, whether in regard to toys or food and drugs.

Speaking of the Food and Drug Administration alone, between 1994 and 2008 the agency lost over 1,300 employees and nearly $300 million in appropriations to inflation. The agency's field inspection force suffered in particular in the area of food. In 1973, the FDA undertook nearly 35,000 food inspections; by 2006, that number had dropped to under 8,000. This was as the share of imported food, drugs, and medical devices soared. At the same time, the number of import inspectors had plunged, from 530 in 2003, to under 400 just three years later.

Just recently, last year, a former FDA associate commissioner admitted that, as he put it, “The FDA has so few resources, all it can do is target high-risk things, give a pass to everything else and hope it is okay.”

Importantly, for our purposes, the FDA's own science board pointed out that the FDA had lost the scientific capacity to fulfill its mission because the workforce didn't have the resources and the means to undertake its work. It had recruitment and retention challenges, and there was inadequate funding for professional development and the like.

In the wake of some recent food-borne illness outbreaks in the United States in spinach and in jalapeno peppers and tomatoes, sickening more than a thousand people across 41 or 42 states, Congress has moved to introduce legislation—and I'll speak to the FDA in particular—to reinject $775 million to strengthen food safety efforts, including increasing the number of inspections and addressing their food traceability system, which is generally agreed to be in disrepair.

I'll just leave it there and entertain any questions that the committee might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We'll open up to a seven-minute round.

Mr. Easter, you have the floor.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, folks, for coming on short notice and for being as direct as you can be before a committee. We certainly express our thanks to you for that, and to the scientist, who we certainly hope gets his job back, because he did the public a service by indicating there was a secret document.

We did pass a motion yesterday at this committee requesting the document from the Government of Canada, but it does seem, according to the chair's comments yesterday, that there is concern that we might still be denied it. But certainly the committee has passed a motion, and we will see whether we're denied by the Government of Canada what should now be public information.

I want to make it clear in the beginning that our concern about this document and what might take place at the CFIA is not with the CFIA itself. You've heard the comments from the government members; they do a tremendous job to try to make it look like we're attacking the regulatory authority. We're not; we're expressing our concerns about a government whose Prime Minister is really a Prime Minister in charge of governing but doesn't believe in government, and who believes in taking away many of the national authorities of the federal government and decentralizing and deregulating and turning everything over to the provinces and markets. So this document, in our view, fits his mould. So we're concerned and the questions we're expressing are for the people who direct and allocate funding to the CFIA, that is, the Government of Canada.

To the so-called document, I take from what you said, Ms. Demers, that when we heard from the CFIA yesterday...they're in a funny position in which they can't really answer any of our questions because they can't talk about the document. They didn't deny there was a secret document. So their answers mainly went to the past, to past budgets, and not to future directions. We understand that.

My question specifically to you is, does this now alleged secret document exist, and have you seen it?

[Michèle Demers]

As I said in my opening comments, I did see the document; I read the document, and I gave the document back to the CFIA when I realized it was a secret document. But I did read it, and I am very concerned about its contents. I understand that the CFIA officials who were here yesterday could not speak to it because they would be turfed in the same way as Luc Pomerleau was turfed if they spoke to it. So they're in a catch-22 situation: they can't speak on the document or on its contents, but they can't turf me.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We know they're pretty good at turfing people who are doing their job—the nuclear regulatory authority, and they're attacking Elections Canada, etc. So they can't turf you, and you did make a few comments about what was in the document: deregulation and transferring responsibility to industry.

Can you specifically state any other issues that you're concerned about that were in that document so that we can investigate further?

[Michèle Demers]

As I said, I think you should have the document in front of you, but there were references to seed certification; there were references to diminishing the direct meat inspection and conveying that responsibility to industry; there were a number of initiatives with respect to ceasing the financial incentives to cattle farmers for the sampling of cattle in the BSE program; and there were a number of other issues. It was a multi-page document.

What was most disturbing, I think, was the covering letter by Wayne Wouters, which stated approval for the proposals of the CFIA for the modification of their processes, but which also stated very clearly, please defer the implementation because of the severe communication risks associated with it, and please work in close cooperation with the Treasury Board and the Privy Council in establishing your communication plan.

So, you know—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

So from what you've seen in the document, this secret document obviously supported by the current Government of Canada, do you believe there are implications on, one, our international reputation abroad in terms of food safety, and two, directly to food safety of Canadians?

[Michèle Demers]

In my layperson's read on this, I would answer yes. I am not a scientist. I understand that people who work in industry are not necessarily scientists and they are not there to monitor the safety of the food but to make a profit. I do not want to diminish the role of industry, but I think the mandate of the CFIA cannot be diluted and we cannot move towards this type of deregulation without some kind of impact on the safety.

What all this means is that the scientists, the veterinarians, the biologists, the chemists, the people who work at CFIA, will have more the role of auditors versus the role of actual inspectors, and they will do spot-check controls versus more in-depth monitoring. That will apply to the labels and to the inspection processes and all that.

As I said, I'm not a scientist, but what I read and what I heard from the members that I represent, over and over again, is that the direction the CFIA is taking will allow them to continue to do crisis management—that is, there will have to be an outbreak of some kind somewhere for them to intervene, and that's where they will focus their energies. On the rest, they're going to hope that everything is okay and that everything stays still, because that's where they're intending to go.

Is this a purely financial, fiscal initiative? Is it motivated by the fact that they have to have economies of scale in their processes and their operations? I don't know. If it is the case, it's a sorry state of affairs.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

In interest of time and being fair to all members, we want to make sure that we keep our questions and answers fairly brief so that everybody can get their chance at the table.

With that, I'll turn it over to Monsieur Bellavance.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your testimony. It must not have been easy to come and testify on such short notice, but the situation demands that you assist us at least in understanding this matter which has arisen in recent months.

If there had not been any controversy following what was discussed in the context of the inspection system review, the document in question would very soon have been made public, no one would have been dismissed and we would not be here today to discuss it. There is probably something fishy here since the agency and the government feel compelled to say that people from the opposition are trying to establish a regime of terror.

It is an old reflex of governments, particularly of the Conservative government—Mr. Easter mentioned this—to shoot the messenger the moment a controversy arises. Yesterday, the agency people said that what came out in the media was full of falsehoods and that an employee had been dismissed for informing not the public, but his union, that a document was circulating, to which he moreover had access. He didn't break open a filing cabinet or safe to take the documentation and make it public. He had access to a document and he informed his union that changes might be occurring within the agency. In dismissing him, it was the government that introduced a regime of terror.

You are right to say that we were unable to obtain all the information yesterday because the people who testified were employees. Obviously, from the moment they say something, they have a sword of Damocles over their heads. They know the fate that was reserved for one of their co-workers. The best way to muzzle people is to make them lose their jobs. That's what's being done. To mitigate all these consequences, Mr. Pomerleau should first be reinstated in his duties, then the review of the plan and priorities should be disclosed.

Ms. Demers, you said you had examined the document and heard the testimony of Mr. Evans. I asked Mr. Evans what parts of the plan had circulated in the media, enumerating a few of them for him. We then witnessed some figure skating, even though it's the summer Olympic Games that are currently taking place.

I don't know what you can tell us. Whatever the case may be, feel free to tell us what you can. Based on what you read in the plan, even though you are not a scientist, was there any question of delegating responsibilities to the industry, of recovering 5% of the agency's operating budget and cancelling assistance to producers for BSE, mad cow disease? We're talking about recovering $24 million over three years. It was also apparently mentioned that inspectors would henceforth play a general oversight role and that the industry would verify everything pertaining to food safety. These are points that were reported over the summer. Are we right to be concerned? Do these points appear in the plan that was tabled in November 2007?

[Michèle Demers]

All these points appear in the document in question, which also contains a spreadsheet showing how many millions of dollars would be saved if such and such a thing were done. That's the proposal that was sent to Cabinet for approval, together with the bottom line, the savings that would be realized. This is the document that was approved in November, according to the letter from the Secretary of the Treasury Board, Mr. Wayne Wouters.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

That was the problem yesterday: it was said that there were no changes. We're talking about the past. That's the difference.

[Michèle Demers]

You have to be careful. There were no changes because the brakes were put on after there was a leak and information was published in the newspapers. So these people have to be extremely careful and prepare their spin. The intention from the outset was to adopt a communications plan and strategy that would reassure the public. With regard to the changes that are about to be implemented, Mr. Evans says this is an improvement to the system, that it will improve safety and the processes implemented will be better. You'll allow me to doubt that.