Agriculture Committee on Feb. 15th, 2012

[Dr. Evan Fraser]

Yes, there are tested and viable models based on this notion of a food hub. It allows a group of farmers to come together into some centralized infrastructure, not unlike the Toronto Food Terminal, and provide a degree of collective action for small amounts of processing, aggregation, and some food inspection opportunities. This creates a centralized opportunity for economies of scale. A group of farmers who come together in a food hub collectively wash, package, bag their food, and meet the demands of a large institutionalized buyer like a St. Joseph's Hospital or even a Loblaws.

It's this mid-scale infrastructure, slightly above the farmer but below the retailer, that is conspicuously lacking in our landscape. This sort of model is emerging at the grassroots level through the actions of all sorts of NGOs, farm organizations, and cooperative organizations. There's an Eastern Ontario group that's quite far ahead on this, the Eastern Ontario Local Food Co-op. There's the Oklahoma one, which is the model on which much of this discussion about food hubs is based.

If you like, I'd be happy to direct you to more concrete, articulate, and specific research on this issue.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I'd ask you to send those to the committee, if you would, so that they can be referenced in the report that the committee will be completing.

[Dr. Evan Fraser]

I'd be happy to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser.

Mr. Lobb, for five minutes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank all the witnesses for attending today.

Mr. Kingston, I have a couple of questions for you.

Galen Weston, the chief executive of Loblaws, made some comments at the Canadian Food Summit recently about farmers' markets and about how somebody is going to eventually die from buying produce at a farmers' market. What is your position on his comments?

[Bob Kingston]

It's funny you mention that, because we followed up on that with Mr. Weston, and I believe you've probably already read in the press what one of his aides said. They were simply indicating that food inspection, as an activity, should be happening everywhere--not just at major chains and major manufacturers, but also at farmers' markets, etc.

We agree. It's preventive. I've heard comments that you can't see bacteria. It's true, but you can certainly see the conditions that lead to problems, and it just so happens that the people who work at CFIA, both in my union and in PIPSC, are experts at determining those situations that can lead to problems. I believe the more inspection, the more preventive measures you're taking and the safer it is.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

In your position, do you make it an annual habit of submitting budget consultations to either Minister Ritz or Minister Flaherty on where, from your standpoint, the vision of CFIA should be heading?

[Bob Kingston]

No, we haven't. That's probably an idea that we should.... We do have consultations with the departments we work with, and we certainly talk about where they're going in terms of proposed funding and proposed programs. That's an ongoing practice, but it's not with the minister.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

That would be something, seeing how you could focus on next years. It might be something good to look at.

Certainly, as Mr. Lemieux pointed out, we did hear some critiques, and fair enough, no one would expect you to think everything is 100%. But what suggestions do you have for us for improvements? We're all curious. If you had the crystal ball and a wallet full of money, what would you like to see happen?

[Bob Kingston]

What I would like to see is design of programs made with a realistic view of human resources available, and quite frankly, they're not. I've made the same presentation to industry leaders at one of the North American food safety summits when they were talking about HACCP design and quality management programs. Consumers expect that this is going on.

Unfortunately, the way it often works is that smaller producers buy off-the-shelf programs and they're touted by the folks designing them but they're not realistic for the size of their operation. We have many small operations in the country, and they need to start thinking about what best suits their operations from a true food safety perspective, not buy a Cadillac model that at the end of the day they don't really have the resources to make work properly.

I would suggest that the same goes for inspection models.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Just on that, I think in your presentation you talked about reduced inspection compliance. Is that what you said?

[Bob Kingston]

What was happening was that when CVS, the compliance verification system, was first being introduced there was an original attempt by CFIA to evaluate the process and do some comparison of a daily presence versus what they were doing at the time for their domestic facilities, which only required a weekly presence in process plants. They got about halfway through the study and then they had questions about some legal issues around what they were looking at, so they stopped the study. But the data they had collected to that point had clearly illustrated to them that the level of compliance within any facility rose in direct relation to the frequency of inspection presence. We've likened it to the cop in the rear-view mirror situation, where it's when you're mostly likely to obey the speeding laws.

Human nature is what it is. If you're going to show up only once a week and they know that, the manager and owner of the plant may have the absolute best intentions in the world, but they might have a staff of a couple of hundred, and in some cases a couple of thousand, like Lakeside Packers, etc., and you can't always control them. Inspection presence makes a huge difference.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I have one quick last question, if I have time.

You mentioned the 2% versus the 100%. From your perspective, what percentage of imported goods would you like to see inspected? For every increase in percentage point, do you have a rough idea of what that would cost the taxpayer in increased cost?

I know it's probably tricky, but what would you like to see there?

[Bob Kingston]

Well, it's a little more than tricky; it's probably impossible.

What I would say is that the percentages should be based on—I don't think CFIA would disagree with me on this—a sector-by-sector risk evaluation, a true risk evaluation, as well as on statistical models that would, at least statistically, ensure adherence to whatever the goals were.

Unfortunately, what usually happens is that when we put together the models and do the statistical evaluation and figure out what the bottom line risk is below which we can't go and still maintain statistical integrity, we're told, “Sorry folks, you don't have enough to do that; drop it by half.”

There's a lot of inspection activity that takes place that goes exactly like that. Everybody agrees on what would be the minimum—not the best—required in order for inspection to maintain statistical integrity, and they say cut it in half or less.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

I'll now move to Mr. Rousseau for five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have a question for Mr. Fraser and Mr. Cranfield.

Demand is on the rise for local products and for products that come from cultural communities. Immigration, too, is on the rise, and these people have their own way of life and culture. How can we satisfy that demand because it is indeed burgeoning? Demand far outweighs supply. Could we not open up Canada's major grocery stores and superstores to small local producers? What could we do to that end? In addition, should we not have a greater number of small public markets that reflect this reality?

My question is for Mr. Fraser and Mr. Cranfield.

[Dr. Evan Fraser]

Thank you very much for the question.

In my opinion, the critical bottleneck in meeting this rising demand for ethnocultural foods sits at both the farm and the processing level. Specifically, having the farmers who are tooled up and prepared and able to meet these markets—even aware of these markets—is a critical first step.

I think the best way of overcoming this bottleneck is to encourage new immigrants to Canada, who come often with a background in farming, and to develop policies and tools to encourage them to set up farm enterprises to meet this demand. I think there is a logical continuum between the new immigrant coming to Canada with a background in farming and the aging rural population of the current generation of farmers. But as I said in my opening remarks, there are a number of barriers that prevent this from happening, including the question how on earth a new Canadian gets access to or becomes aware of a farmer who is retiring and is thinking of passing on the farm.

I think there are a number of things we can learn, and there are a number of models out there based on the idea of having an incubator farm set up by a third party—some sort of NGO—that can help bridge this gap.

Then there is the issue, which I have referred to already, of the need for a local processing industry. To turn the peppers into the chutneys or what not requires a level of local processing industry that at present is very difficult to set up because of the regulatory environment and the cost of set-up. That's another area in which I think there is a bottleneck that some sort of federal-level incentive could help overcome.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Cranfield.

[John Cranfield]

Thank you. You have a couple of very good questions.

To some extent, I guess I disagree with Evan on the new immigrant story. Often immigrants come to Canada to get away from agriculture, and they don't necessarily want to get into agriculture once they're here. So I'm not convinced that's the only model or the best model. I think the issue of demand being greater than supply is just basically the economics that not enough producers are actually growing these things.

So why is that happening? I think part of the story there is that for producers to switch the crop mix that they're currently growing requires learning new technologies, having access to new technologies. Frankly, doing something different from what they may have been doing for 30 years is a very difficult thing for a lot of producers to get over. It's not just older producers. It's even younger producers who see the way their parents farmed, and they're stuck in that rut. So trying to have mechanisms or support to help nudge those producers in the right direction is going to be important.

The other thing that's important in that aspect is a lot of times when farmers do things differently they're viewed in the rural countryside as a bit odd. It used to be that people who practised no-till farming were looked at as being very out to lunch and really crazy. Then all of a sudden it was realized, well, wait a minute, this no-till thing is on to something. So there has to be some acceptance socially, I think, to that conversion and to doing something different.

With respect to opening markets to smaller producers, I think some of the points Evan has raised on regional hubs are very important. I think this boils down to issues like distribution channels and recognizing that it may not be the distribution channel that gets it into the larger national grocery chains, but it may be smaller regional chains or independent chains or getting it into the ethnic villages that exist within larger metropolitan areas and making sure that you actually have the right supply chain. So it's connecting those producers with the ethnic community that has the demand for that product.

On the processing side of things, I think Evan has raised some points. The one point I would raise on the lack of processing capacity is actually that it's also about risk. Banks may be looking at people who are looking to set up these types of facilities--processing for a particular ethnic market--and thinking this is very risky, both from the perspective of, well, the market is growing quickly, but it's still very small, and we don't necessarily have a lot of evidence to suggest that those markets are going to be successful. So from that perspective, having some programs that might backstop or mitigate some of those risks that people face when they're trying to access the credit market to actually do that kind of transition could become very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Storseth, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kingston, first of all, I have to admit that I don't know a lot about your background. I assume you're an expert in some field. Are you an accountant? Are you a lawyer? What's your specialty, so I know the vein of questions I should be asking?

[Bob Kingston]

I was an inspector with CFIA, and prior to that with Agriculture for 25 years. I was a supervisor at the two largest ports in the country; that's Vancouver and Fraser Surrey. Prior to that, I went to Simon Fraser University, where I spent every summer working for the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, so I know exactly what Evan Fraser was talking about in terms of the diminishing production there.

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

With reference to inspecting, you're an inspector by trade, originally.

[Bob Kingston]

Yes.

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

You are obviously aware, as president of the union, that the 2006-07 CFIA budget was $662 million and the 2008-09 CFIA budget was $697 million. What's a win for you? In the CFIA budget, what do you want to see? You've talked about the budget. You've talked about the negatives that you see in it. What's a win for you in this? What are you looking for?