Evidence of meeting #13 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cfia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Owner, Northbank Potato Farms Ltd.
Something like a public exoneration for us would probably be very helpful in that situation.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Richards.
From what I gather from you, I'll ask you this question. Moving forward, if your lands were opened up and the restrictions were taken off, do you feel you'd be able to work within the programs that exist right now, with some minor changes, perhaps?
11:55 a.m.
Owner, Northbank Potato Farms Ltd.
We think there would probably have to be some alterations. If you're talking about something like AgriStability, there would have to be some alterations and special conditions applied to it, because we all know how AgriStability works, and obviously our revenues have dropped and would remain dropped for quite a number of years. If some alterations and conditions could be applied to AgriStability, we think there are some possibilities that we could maybe work with that.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
If some changes were made to that on your individual farm, because of the unique situation, do you think you could work within the current programs?
11:55 a.m.
Owner, Northbank Potato Farms Ltd.
It would have to be longer than three years.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you. That concludes half of our committee here.
I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today with your presentations. You're welcome to stay for the second hour in the audience. We're going to bring in government officials and the Auditor General.
We're going to break for just four or five minutes, and then we're going to go right back to questioning.
I have one question for our committee. Do you want to continue with the line of questioning we had or start over? Okay, we'll just continue the round.
Thank you.
Noon
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
I'd like to welcome everybody here again and welcome the new panel and the Auditor General. Thanks for coming.
We're going to continue. In the previous hour, we heard from many of the farmers and farm organizations about what they went through and about the situation they have. Right now, we're going to have two 10-minute presentations. I'm going to start off with Ms. Fraser, and then we'll go to CFIA. Then we're going to open it up to questions.
Thank you, Ms. Fraser. You have the floor.
12:05 p.m.
Sheila Fraser Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Thank you, Chair. We thank you for this opportunity to discuss our chapter on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's efforts to manage risks to Canada's plant resources. Joining me today at the table are the Assistant Auditor General, Neil Maxwell, and principal Dale Shier, who are responsible for this audit.
This is an audit of CFIA's efforts to keep invasive alien plants, seeds, plant pests, and plant diseases out of Canada. The agency's efforts are important for two key reasons. The first is to protect Canada's economy. In 2005, the value of Canada's forest and agricultural commodities was about $100 billion. The second and equally important reason is to protect Canada's environment. According to experts, invasive species are the second most serious threat to biodiversity after habitat loss.
Invasive species can cause costly plant health emergencies, such as the emerald ash borer, an insect that is killing ash trees in Ontario and Quebec, and the golden potato nematode, which is present in Quebec and Alberta and can reduce potato yields. However, even though plant health emergencies are important in our report, they were not audited. Our report focused on measures taken by the agency to prevent the introduction of invasive species into Canada. Most people agree that it costs less to fight invasive plants, plant pests and plant diseases before they become established.
The agency takes measures to prevent invasive species from entering Canada depending on the degree of risk because there are far too many imports to inspect them all. We looked into whether the agency was managing risk appropriately when it came to invasive exotic plants, their seeds, plant pests and plant diseases that could enter the country and become established.
Our audit identified a number of serious issues. We therefore looked to some of the underlying causes of the problems, and we have identified four key issues.
First, there is a lack of appropriate coordination among branches. For example, the policy branch sets inspection standards, but field staff and the operations branch do not always have the current version of the standards.
Second, the plant health program does not have adequate quality management systems. We looked at CFIA's efforts to inspect shipments of plants and plant products. We looked at a small sample of plant shipments, in February 2008, for which the agency's desk review had determined that 100% of the shipment required inspection. Of the 27 shipments we examined, we found that only about 40% of the required inspections had actually taken place. For the others, some shipments were simply released without inspection. In other cases, the office that was supposed to do the inspection had no record of receiving the related import documents.
Third, there is a lack of information management and information technology support. For example, many of the import approval and inspection activities are still paper based, and the agency needs to send thousands of faxes between its offices annually, which perhaps contributes to the missing documents we observed in our testing.
Fourth, import volumes are increasing. In fact, the volume of regulated plant imports more than doubled between 2000-01 and 2007-08.
Overall, we concluded that the agency does not have an effective, integrated, risk-based plant and imported plant product management strategy. We issued a number of recommendations to correct the shortfalls we observed. The agency accepted our recommendations and made a number of commitments in its response. The committee may want to study progress achieved up to this point and ask the agency if it has developed action plans and timelines to address the problems raised in the audit.
Mr. Chair, that concludes my opening statement. My colleagues and I will be happy to answer committee members' questions.
Thank you.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser.
Next we have Mr. Prince from CFIA for 10 minutes.
April 2nd, 2009 / 12:10 p.m.
Cameron Prince Vice-President, Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. My name is Cameron Prince, I am the vice-president of operations at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Today I will be speaking about potato cyst nematodes, PCNs. There are more than 4,800 species of nematodes that can attack plants. Potato cyst nematodes are specific cyst-forming nematodes that attack a limited range of plants, principally potatoes, which are a very important food crop for Canadians. They can cause extensive damage to host crops, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants.
PCNs do not pose a risk to human health. However, they are a serious risk to the international trade of commodities associated with soil. So every precaution must be taken to prevent their introduction and spread.
These pests are extremely small, infest the soil, and are very difficult to eradicate because they can persist dormant in the soil for several decades. While the land is still usable for most crops, it can be unusable for years for such crops as potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants.
PCNs have been confirmed in 65 countries worldwide, including the United States. They were first discovered in Canada in 1962 in Newfoundland. In Canada, nematodes are present in limited areas of Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, Quebec, and Alberta. The CFIA has national responsibility for the regulatory control of PCNs.
They are considered quarantine pests because their distribution throughout Canada is limited and they can have major economic repercussions and reduce yields by up to 80%. Because they have been in Canada for a long time, they are not considered a new phenomenon here.
As you know, protection from invasive species was one of the points raised in the Auditor General of Canada's recent report. The CFIA welcomes the report and has begun to implement recommendations in order to develop an integrated, effective risk-management strategy for vegetable imports and processed products. As import volumes increase, the CFIA must continually review and assess its scientific, strategic and operational requirements, as well as its information systems in order to keep its plant protection strategies up to date.
Confirmation and validation of PCNs are based on internationally accepted procedures that include physical identification of specimens at the microscopic level by highly trained specialists, followed by DNA analysis. Once PCNs have been detected, control and eradication of them require a combination of approaches over the long term. One such measure is prohibiting the planting of susceptible host plants for 20 to 30 years after a field has been confirmed as infested with the pest, as well as controlling soil movement from that location.
PCNs propagate themselves through the movement of soil associated with potato tubers, agricultural machinery, flower bulbs, other propagation material, and shoes. Because of soil-inhabiting pests, such as PCNs, Canada prohibits the importation of soil and host crops from overseas sources, including potatoes from all countries but the United States.
The CFIA has a surveillance program in place to detect PCNs. Our surveillance and testing strategy has been developed in accordance with international science-based standards. In fiscal year 2008-09, the surveillance program cost $8.6 million out of the CFIA's emergency fund. In total, the CFIA, with the support of Canadian seed potato growers and other stakeholders, tested approximately 44,500 soil samples related to the 2008 surveys. Since 2006, the CFIA has tested approximately 110,000 PCN samples.
On February 6, 2009, the CFIA completed the required testing of all Canada's seed potato fields from the 2008 crop intended for export, including all seed fields in provinces with PCN-regulated areas. PCN was not detected. This indicates strong scientific support for isolated occurrences of PCN in Canada.
On August 15, 2006, the CFIA confirmed the detection of a PCN, the golden nematode, in a 30-acre field on a farm 20 kilometres east of Montreal. The CFIA immediately started an investigation with the participation of the Government of Quebec and industry. Strict quarantine measures were implemented on the affected property to prevent further spread. Extensive root and soil sampling was also conducted. By October 6, 2006, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food was able to announce that Canada and the United States had reached an agreement to lift virtually all the temporary U.S. import restrictions that were implemented on certain agricultural products from Quebec after the detection of golden nematode.
The most recent instance of a PCN detection dates back to the 2007 crop of potatoes, when two Alberta farms tested positive for the pest. Seed potatoes produced by the two affected farms were disposed of to prevent any further PCN spread. Subsequent investigation and follow-up testing on PCN-exposed fields has indicated that PCNs are not present in any other fields on the two affected Alberta farms.
I'd now like to talk about the proposed new revised guidelines with the United States. Revised Canada-U.S. PCN guidelines are now in the final stages of review on both sides of the border. These guidelines reflect the recommendations of an independent international science panel. The proposed guidelines harmonize surveillance and regulatory actions to create a level playing field on both sides of the border. This will lead to fewer restrictions on the movement of agricultural products. For example, entire state- and province-wide based controls are now eliminated; suspect finds will not automatically lead to market closures; fields, not farms, will be the focus of regulatory actions; and regulatory action in a field will end after two negative test results from two separate intensive surveys. Industry is currently reviewing these proposals.
Establishing these criteria for regulated areas will allow for more free movement and trade of agricultural products from all production fields located outside the affected areas. Commodities beyond these specified areas would no longer be subject to PCN-related trade restrictions. All potato shipments between the two countries now include a phytosanitary certificate with an additional declaration confirming that the seed potatoes originated from fields tested and found free of potato cyst nematodes. The new guidelines also call for more extensive field surveys for seed potatoes in both the United States and Canada starting in the 2007 production year.
The CFIA is committed to working with stakeholders to screen for PCNs and to harmonize regulations with the United States to stabilize trade and increase producers' ability to plan in order to minimize repercussions of future discoveries and to enable Canadian potatoes and other targeted products to reach the markets.
Thank you very much for your time today. My CFIA colleagues and I would be pleased to take any questions.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you very much, Mr. Prince.
We're going to go to the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, with Mr. Meredith.
12:15 p.m.
Greg Meredith Assistant Deputy Minister, Farm Financial Programs Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I'll keep my remarks short.
My name is Greg Meredith and I am the assistant deputy minister of the farm financial programs at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Today I wanted to speak to you about the financial assistance to producers in Quebec and Alberta affected by golden nematode. From the start, producers were assisted with their income losses through our core business risk programs. You've heard them referred as AgriStability, formerly CAlS, but there are other pieces of the business risk management suite, including AgriRecovery, the disaster recovery component; AgriInsurance, crop insurance; and AgriInvest, which is a savings account that is shared between the government and producers. These programs ensured, at least in the short run, that producers were treated the same as any other producer in the country facing similar income losses, as compared to previous margins they were experiencing.
We also recognized that their situation is different. We therefore set up programs to help them cover certain unexpected costs they incurred to deal with the crisis, whether to destroy potatoes that could not be sold or to clean and disinfect warehouses and equipment. We also helped them to cover immediate costs related to switching to other crops. Measures offered differed from province to province and from situation to situation, and they varied depending on specific expenses and any transitions that had to be made.
I'll turn to the Quebec situation. In Quebec the federal government put in place a program to aid in the case of the disaster caused by the nematode and offered additional assistance through CFIA's Plant Protection Act to help affected farmers with the extraordinary costs. The province also implemented specific programming to assist the immediate needs of producers.
In total, government assistance for the 2006 crop year, the year the nematode was discovered, amounted to approximately $6.6 million for the 21 affected producers. Subsequently, in the 2007 crop year, special provisions were implemented under our existing AgriStability program to maintain coverage at historic levels, and that provided an additional $1.3 million to producers.
In the case of the Alberta situation, a similar response was implemented, but again, tailored to the specific situation the producers faced. In total, 39 farms were affected, by regulation, with two farms of those 39 with infested fields. And the total compensation was $16 million between the federal and provincial governments. AgriStability payments are currently being calculated for those producers on the same basis as they were for the Quebec producers.
We then switched from immediate assistance, based on our existing programs, to help with transition to the longer term. And having dealt with that immediate recovery, we are working with the producers to try to get a fix on their transition needs. The producers' land, as you've heard, is still able to produce some crops, and our initiatives are aimed at assisting with the transition to these alternative uses. We are not aiming to compensate producers for future lost revenue due the fact that they can't grow potatoes. And you may have heard that some of the alternative crops are just not as lucrative as the potato crop.
In Quebec both levels of government offered producers a lump-sum payment of $5 million to the 21 farms to assist in that transition. Together with the province, we believe these sums will help producers, on an individual basis, make the transition decisions they have to make. Together with the previous funding I mentioned, that brings the total funding to almost $13 million for the 21, roughly a little more than $600,000 each.
We are now in discussions with the Alberta farmers on their transition needs, and right now there are a number of complications. Until decisions on the regulatory status--my colleague Cameron Prince was referring to this--of the farms is finalized, it'll be difficult to come to a final number.
In terms of the longer-term perspective on how we help farmers in transition, we're dealing with that through an industry and government task force on the potato cyst nematode. We have a body, including the Canadian Horticultural Council, and that forum serves to coordinate the development of PCN surveillance guidelines, communication to producers on these issues, identification of research needs, and development of transition approaches for future incidents or outbreaks. Of course, discussions with the affected producers in Alberta and Quebec were held on a different track to get assistance to them quickly.
To conclude, Mr. Chair, we've dealt with the immediate needs of the producers through core programs and specific measures to assist in their recovery. We have a formal process in place to look at how we're going to deal with potato cyst nematode issues going forward. And finally, we're trying to work with those folks who were so badly hit in Alberta and Quebec to provide assistance with making the transition so they can continue farming operations.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you very much, Mr. Meredith.
We're going to start with five-minute questioning. I'll ask the witnesses to keep it tight so we can get it under the five minutes. And we'll try to make sure every party asks a question.
We're going to start with the Bloc, for five minutes. Mr. Malo.
12:20 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Fraser, in your December 2008 audit report, you talked about the appearance of plant health emergencies. One of the tables shows that the golden potato nematode appeared in Quebec in 2006. In 1996, your office reviewed plant protection, just as it did in 2008. At the time, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency accepted your recommendations and agreed that there were things that had to be done.
In 1996, the department was supposed to undertake a thorough review of the economic repercussions of these threats. Between the first and second reports, the golden nematode appeared in Quebec. In your 2006 report, you said that the agency's analyses were focused exclusively on what was happening in the country and less on threats from other countries, an issue you noted in 1996 as well. At the time, you noted that the program's priorities and resource allocation were not based on scientific risk assessment. Both reports state that the information is not reliable enough.
Between 1996 and 2008, even though your recommendations were acknowledged as being important and the government entities recognized the need for action, a new invasive species was found where it had never been before. Until 1987, the agency had a program dedicated to nematode risk assessment.
Do you agree that the agency failed and that it must bear some of the blame for the appearance of the golden nematode?
12:25 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, as I stated in my opening remarks, we did not study emergencies specifically. We studied the agency's risk assessment process and its program administration.
The member is right in saying that questions raised in 1996 are being repeated 12 years later. These questions relate primarily to the agency's administration and information systems. As I said, everything is still being done on paper. As it says in the report, 84,000 shipments enter the country each year. Everything is done on paper, and offices exchange faxes. As you can imagine, that creates a huge challenge for the agency. That was the subject of one of our recommendations 12 years ago. We believe that the agency must have a computerized system that can produce information more quickly and provide access to a Canada-wide database.
When there is a problem like the one we mentioned—I remember a problematic incident where it took five people five days to find the right documents.
12:25 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
In your 2008 report, you noted that quality assurance issues with respect to import-related activities were critical to preventing exotic invasive species from entering the country and becoming established. The golden nematode was not detected in the area before. It appeared, and that may be because there was no thorough process to prevent the introduction of invasive species.
12:25 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
In the report, we also pointed out that the agency is conducting scientific studies on possible threats, that the studies are way behind, and that they have to be updated. Agents within the agency have asked for these studies. There has to be a thorough scientific basis. When the agency conducts these studies, they do a good job, but they do not do enough of them.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you, Ms. Fraser, and thank you, Mr. Malo.
We'll go to Mr. Storseth for five minutes.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Thank you very much to the witnesses for coming forward today.
Mr. Meredith, from talking to producers in the Alberta region who were affected, I can tell you that they're very anxious to continue to deal with the department. They've had nothing bad to say about the process there, but of course they're still hung up on some problems with the CFIA.
I'm going to direct my questions today to Mr. Prince and Mr. Mayers, but predominantly Mr. Prince. I'm here today to talk about Northbank Potato Farms. You're obviously aware of this case.
One deteriorated sample was identified on the Northbank Potato Farms. As briefly as possible, can you tell me the actions CFIA took once you had an identified sample of PCN?
12:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Yes. Once we found that sample, we assessed it and validated it. Obviously we have international obligations that we must abide by, and we followed up with notifications through the appropriate channels, particularly to the U.S.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
That action effectively shut this potato farm down for the year. CFIA took very quick steps with this matter. I haven't heard any complaints from my producers about the quick action that CFIA took, but you did effectively shut this farm down.
You took more samples at that point in time, correct? You took tens of thousands more samples from this farm. Did you find any further positive test results from this farm or this location?
