Agriculture Committee on June 11th, 2009

[Carl Norg]

Basically, I would suggest that there be a different set of licences for different operations. If you're just selling out of your own location, you'd probably be dealt with totally differently from how you'd be dealt with if you were shipping all over the province. And somewhere in between, that has to be broken up. How exactly I have no idea, but that can be done through dialogue.

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

Right now there are three systems, and it seems to have worked fine for years and years and years. If you ship outside your province, you are federally inspected under the restrictions of the United States, basically. If you do it within your province, it's done provincially. And if you just stay within your shop, you're municipal. It seems to work fine.

[Louis Roesch]

I'm in agreement with what they say.

I have a little bit more entertainment in my place. I have the Department of Health, I have OMAFRA, and I have CFIA. I have all three of them, even though we are contained. The regulations stipulate that as each one goes through, they're supposed to look for different things. So I kind of get hammered all the time. I've not had a poor or bad report yet, as far as that goes. But that's what happens.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I think members need to know that this is truly a full-service business Mr. Roesch has. You talk about farm to fork; that's clearly the business they're in.

Basically, the regulations you're under, and I'll maybe touch a little more on that, are all provincial right now, except for you, and you have CFIA. Have you been invited to meet, or have you met, with the provincial agriculture committee to raise your issues?

[Louis Roesch]

They don't want to touch it.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You may want to watch what they're doing and make the request, because—and this isn't a pick on anyone—we're doing a competitive issue right now. This is one of the issues that have come up, and so I'm glad you've been a part of the discussion.

You mentioned the paperwork. You talk about the regulations. I can't speak provincially, but federally we've said we want to reduce it by 20%. I don't know how they measure that. I'm hoping that when we actually do it, it's not just something we do here, that it actually translates down to people who work with our agencies and ministries, to know that the forms, the applications, or whatever are not as burdensome or onerous as they've been. What you're saying right now is that in fact there seems to be a directive, but actually it hasn't happened with what you're seeing in terms of a reduction in the burden.

[Louis Roesch]

No.

[Carl Norg]

I think that's maybe on the federal level, but at our level it's only increasing.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I guess we've done it too, but it may be happening provincially. But I don't want us to say we're doing it and not see it follow through. I think what you're talking about is provincial. This is about lessons learned, too, for us.

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

For me, there was no provincial. I'd never heard of them before.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

But you're on your provincial licence.

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

I've never had a licence, never heard of provincial—

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

But you must have been certified as a provincial—

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

Never certified, nothing. I was municipal. Mine was the store where you went to buy your steaks.

[Louis Roesch]

This all came about with the stand-alones now under the same regulations as abattoirs.

[Carl Norg]

That took place about a year and a half or two years ago.

[Louis Roesch]

I'll give you a simple example of paperwork. At the end of the day when I wash my saw, I have to fill out a form that I washed a saw. Before I walk out and turn the lights off, I have to go back and check that saw and write on that paper that I checked it. When I come back in the morning, I have to take a form and check that saw again and fill it out that I checked it and made sure it was clean before I assemble that saw again. You have to do it with every piece of equipment.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'll just leave it now. I think I've run out of time.

Thank you so much. I apologize for having to leave.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Just before we go to the next round, just briefly, grocery stores in Ontario here have a policy in their own stores, plus the independent stores that they supply with wholesale products. They have a policy that none of their stores—and including the independent ones that I mentioned—can sell provincially inspected meat. It's all federally inspected. That always baffles me. It ticked me off as a beef farmer. It seemed we were almost excluding a market that was pretty reputable, when we know our Ontario-inspected meat is safe.

But my question would be, do you agree with that policy? Has it affected any of your businesses in any way or other businesses similar to yours? What could or should we do about it? Can I hear some comments on that?

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

I think that is the corporations turning the screws. We have that same problem in the bottom end of Grey County with West Grey Premium Beef, a brand new company that just opened up maybe five years ago.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

One of the owners of that, as you probably know, has his own independent grocery store and is not even allowed to sell his own product in his own store.

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

That's right, and unfortunately they've sunk a pile of money into that place. They have had some grants from the government. When the BSE came by, they gave them $1 million or $1.5 million so that they would slaughter cows, because nobody wanted to touch cows anymore because of BSE.

I've always wondered why that had an effect on the beef industry, because a cow has never crossed the door of my shop or any shop I've ever worked in. We sell beef; we don't sell cows.

They were a regular, full-standing abattoir and they've been cut down to a part-time operation now. They're allowed to work three days a week.

The reason for that was that the inspector from OMAFRA came in and said they had done well all these years and had slowly met their regulations.... And that's how it is: you can be compliant this year, but next year you are not in compliance, because now they are focusing on the receiving doors, or now they're focusing on the brand of detergent you're using, or focusing on whether you have enough sinks in your shop—you need four here, and now, if you are cooking, you need four over there.

The inspector told them he needed an office. They told him he could take the corner of the trailer they used, and they supplied a brand new phone and computer that they said they were not using because they were not busy enough. The inspector told them he needed a private office. He also told them he needed a private washroom. There are four washrooms in the plant, but he needed a private washroom. And just in case there was a female inspector the next week, if he was on holidays, a private washroom was needed for her; it can't be coed.

He also told them he needed a lunch room. Now, this plant has 20 people, and they eat lunch in a certain place. He told them he could not eat lunch there; he needed his own lunch room. He also told them that he might want to get washed up at the end of the day, so he needed a shower. It couldn't be just one shower, in case that woman was there the next week when he was on holidays; they needed two showers.

They figured out that it would cost about $75,000 to build this extra building for them, and so they said they had had enough and couldn't do it; they were not doing any more. So they were told, okay, now you are working just part-time. And they laid off two-thirds of their staff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

It's that kind of thing.... I've long been of the belief that the grocery chains are using that policy of selling only federally inspected beef as a way of eliminating the competition, which is businesses like yours and the one you just described.

I won't use up any more of our time with that.

Mr. Valeriote, you have five minutes.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Following on Chairman Miller's question, is the standard that you have to follow in your own shop different from that of a grocery store because they sell federally inspected meat? Is there is a difference in standards that have to be met and in protocols and paperwork between you and a grocery store?

[Kevin Soady-Easton]

I've never had to do paperwork. These are new tasks they are forcing me to do. I've never had to do paperwork before.