Agriculture Committee on Feb. 15th, 2012

[Dr. Evan Fraser]

I feel a little nervous stepping into an argument about regulation and inspection in this particular millieu.

The point I would like to make is a more general one, and it's that we need to think more flexibly about what sort of mid-size processing infrastructure would allow for better marketing opportunities for small and medium-size farms to enter the market in a bigger way.

The conversation Frank and I had a moment ago about food hubs is one of those sort of mechanisms, and I have been led to believe that there are a number of different processing infrastructures that can be brought to bear, including mobile abattoirs or the individual quick-freezing facilities, which offer a degree of flexibility.

But you're right, they are struggling to find their place in the market, and they are struggling to be appropriately evaluated in terms of the regulatory framework. That's where I think in general—not being an expert on mobile abattoirs—the Growing Forward 2 program could invest effort and show a leadership role in investigating how that mid-size infrastructure could be developed. Finding the right role and the right regulatory environment for a mobile abattoir would be the sort of thing I would encourage you to seriously consider examining.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'll move to Mr. Atamanenko for five minutes.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thanks to all of you for being here.

Bob, I have just a couple of questions for you.

I remember years ago I used to work as an interpreter, and one of my missions was to accompany a Russian veterinarian when he came to inspect Canadian meat-processing plants—pork plants, actually, 17 pork slaughterhouses—that I had to visit in a span of two weeks. His task was to ensure that our standards met their standards. I remember we were at one plant, and it was effectively shut down because it didn't meet his country's standards.

I was told, and it was my understanding, that we do the same thing in other countries. Yet in your document here it says that CFI is not able to ensure equivalency with Canadian standards in the food safety systems of countries that export food to Canada. Does that mean we are not doing that now, that we are not sending our inspectors to a slaughterhouse facility in Brazil or to some of these countries we import food from? You know, there are things in plants like crossover of the waste, and all that kind of stuff. We're not doing that, is that what this document is saying?

[Bob Kingston]

Yes, that is what it's saying. We have an equivalency arrangement to do reciprocal audits with the Americans, but we send people to other countries on an issue-by-issue basis, a crisis-by-crisis basis. Usually if shipments are held up, or there's some emerging legal problem with respect to a particular commodity, we might send a mission over there to deal with the one issue. We do not have a routine equivalency evaluation going on with countries other than the United States.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

There was a CFI inspector along with the Russian, and they were going together and just looking at things and doing a checklist.

Theoretically, we could be importing food from a country that violates all the health safety standards that we have because we don't do that annual inspection that, in my understanding, we had been doing in the past. Is that a correct assessment?

[Bob Kingston]

That's correct. For example, I mentioned Asian pears. We sent somebody over there because there was a very strong lobby from the Chinese to admit that produce into Canada. So we sent somebody over to figure out why they could not produce these pears without them being infested. Again, that wasn't a human health issue; that was a plant health issue.

At the end of the day, we come back from a mission and we determine whether or not they can produce these products pest-free and whether or not they come over covered in chemicals.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

You also mentioned that 79% of food imports come from ten countries, and you list them. We don't inspect for human health concerns; we inspect 2% of the food that comes in, but only for other concerns. Theoretically, then, we could be buying or looking at food on the shelves in our stores that has very high levels of pesticides, which could contain some poisonous powder—arsenic or something like that—that nobody has really inspected, and nothing will happen unless they can link somebody getting sick to that. Yet even if it's inspected, it takes.... Explain that to me. This is alarming. I'd just like some more clarification on this.

[Bob Kingston]

Well, it's just not looked at. That's all there is to it. As I said, it's done on a survey basis, a very small amount, and the results come back long after. So you're absolutely correct; it could be happening that way.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

So in the U.S., then, we inspect 100% of what goes to the U.S., but not for health concerns; we inspect it for other concerns. To your knowledge, do the Americans inspect only 2% of what comes in from our country, or do they have more of an extensive inspection system?

[Bob Kingston]

Well, the Americans do inspect more than we do. That's why they have their inspection stations across the border, right from one end of the country to the other. We dabbled with that. We had a facility established, for example, at Pacific Highway border crossing, but that was abandoned for cost reasons several years ago and then never came to fruition. So we do not have equivalent inspection stations anywhere in this country.

Between the Americans and us, when I talk about countries that don't regulate substantively for chemical applications, I wouldn't put the United States in that category. Produce going back and forth between the United States and us is generally considered pretty safe. The biggest problem we have is contaminated wash water, which is why I mentioned the potable water issue. There isn't a requirement. They don't have to declare that it's been used to wash a product. As you know, there have been several instances when contamination has happened to that product coming from the States.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lizon, you have five minutes.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming here this afternoon.

I'm not a regular on the committee, but I have some questions, first to Professor Fraser and Mr. Cranfield. Both of you mentioned in your presentations the fact of the aging population of farmers. You also mentioned that we rely as a country on immigration and maybe some can fill that void and go into farming.

Do you have any specific recommendations on how this should be done? In Canadian history, there was the immigration policy whereby Canada brought farmers to many places in Canada to farm. How would you suggest we do it now? These farms are owned by someone. Do you suggest that the government or someone buy them back and give them to the immigrants? Most of the immigrants or newcomers would not have financial resources to start that kind of business right away.

If you could maybe elaborate....

[Dr. Evan Fraser]

Okay, I'll take the first stab and let John think about his response while I fluster away.

My own personal experience with this is through this NGO called FarmStart, which has worked actively to link farmers at the end of their life, who don't have an obvious heir—and there is a significant number of people who fall into that category—with new and aspiring farmers, many of whom are new immigrant Canadians.

The FarmStart model, which is in the process of expanding quite rapidly through a big grant it has just received from a private foundation, is to set up incubator farms where new and aspiring farmers—as I said, many of whom are new Canadians—can develop the agronomic and marketing skills to access markets and establish their business plan in a fairly secure, low-risk environment for a two- to five-year period. From that, the FarmStart NGO attempts to create links between these aspiring farmers and farmers who are in the process of winding down their operations.

It's that sort of model that I think represents a good success story that we should be able to build on in some regard. There are some critical bottlenecks. For example, the new aspiring farmers, whether they're new Canadians or not, as you rightly note, often don't have access to financial resources. Even if they've got a good business plan, it's hard for them to qualify for government programs and it's hard for them to qualify for business loans.

Also, often these relationships that are forged between exiting farmers and entering farmers are quite informal. The aspiring farmer doesn't have what would be considered the required level of farm assets to qualify for government programs. This sort of issue represents a peculiar regulatory loophole that a potentially large number of people are actually falling into. A re-evaluation of what a farm asset is and some sort of pump-priming money to help establish new farms and build up the capital while they embark on new enterprises represents a serious bottleneck. I think it's something that's probably.... I would urge the committee to consider building it into the Growing Forward 2 program.

[John Cranfield]

I don't think government should ever own land. I think state involvement in any kind of agriculture and food production is fundamentally flawed. I would point to things like Mao's Great Famine, where he managed to kill 25 million people with some social re-engineering, and also to the impact that Stalin had on the Ukraine. All of those are examples of how state involvement in food can lead to very disastrous consequences. I fundamentally think that's the wrong thing.

I think what you need to find is a way of transitioning the ownership from the older generation to that new generation. You do need to have some programs that allow for access to capital for those new immigrants.

Another thing to think about would be that we do see some processing facilities and some processors in value chains for a lot of these ethnic foods already, and it may be a way of linking backwards vertically from those further processing and retail operations through the ethnic communities into a shared responsibility or a shared ownership of that farm. Again, you need to be careful with how the contracts and those arrangements are sorted out to avoid opportunism, but you could certainly imagine a situation where if the appropriate contractor incentive mechanism were designed, you could actually have some shared responsibility in terms of accessing capital and the transfer of the ownership from the old generation to the new.

The one thing I will say is we do see this. I am fortunate enough to teach a large class here at Guelph to all the agricultural students, and every year I get to teach microeconomics to about 120 of these kids. Increasingly you see a lot of kids with Dutch and German names and Dutch and German accents. One of them said to me the other day, the reason why you see so many of us here is because our parents moved here. We have started to see this, not just in Ontario, but we've seen it in Manitoba and we've seen it in other parts of the country. It's not to say that this doesn't happen. It does happen, and I think perhaps it might be worth investigating why some of these other communities seem to be making a go of it in this respect, and how we can learn from those examples in terms of structuring some kind of a program in the future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You're out of time, Mr. Lizon.

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I wanted to explore the inspection of incoming products and products that we're exporting.

I know on the committee in the many different studies we've done we've had a number of witnesses--associations, groups, farmers--come in front of us and they are really looking for harmonization. They want to see harmonization at the border. It moves product, especially I'll say with the United States, where I think we do the bulk of our trade. Certainly I think this committee has received the message loud and clear that it is better, it is more efficient, it is more effective to harmonize, and what that means is not doing the work twice.

I want to follow up on what Mr. Storseth was saying and what Mr. Allen was saying, in that Canada inspects 100% of the product being exported, you're saying, so there is an inspection certificate. If we're harmonizing with, for example, the United States and if they accept our certificates, and they're doing 100% inspection of their exports to us, and we're accepting their certificates, I'm wondering if you can comment on that.

The other thing I'd like you to comment on too is the idea of high risk versus low risk. You made a comment on it previously, but I think we should explore that, because I think it's valid. There is a vast quantity of low-risk materials that come in that aren't inspected at all. When you're talking about this 2%, I'm taking it that for the 98% a portion of that is falling into the low-risk category and we don't need to inspect those. Could you comment on that as well?

[Bob Kingston]

Some of that would be also things like cantaloupe, which is considered generally low risk, but, as you know, can incur problems.

I agree with everything you said about the harmonization and getting away from duplication of work. Ideally you would probably have them working together at a border inspection station, and that would work well, because that picks up the infractions that happen in the shipping and movement process, which actually exceed the infractions that are happening at the production stage. I think that would probably be a good idea.

What's happened is that CBSA has taken over that responsibility, so CFIA is not even involved in border inspections any more. For those who cross the border--and I'm sure most people here have--ask yourself whether you were even asked the questions by them concerning agricultural goods, because it's not their priority, and it won't be. That's a bit of a concern. We would have to try to link the two.

When the Department of Homeland Security enveloped agriculture inspection, they maintained them as a separate unit. They still have their separate shoulder flashes: they're agriculture, and they are trained inspection staff. They're biologists, zoologists, etc.

In Canada, when CBSA absorbed the inspectors from CFIA, they chose to put them in customs uniforms, give them guns, and rotate them through like everyone else, and they have no longer the expertise.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

When I'm talking about harmonization, I mean accepting U.S. inspection certificates as valid for inspections done at the plant. I understand that you're saying there's a risk associated with car tires, perhaps, but I would imagine that the occurrence of that is probably fairly low.

I want to ask another question about harmonization. One of my colleagues asked about harmonization between federal and provincial responsibilities and the impact this would have on inspectors. In certain provinces--Manitoba, Saskatchewan, B.C.--we are actually, I guess, relegating back to the provinces responsibility for inspecting their own provincial slaughterhouses. What that means is that the federal inspectors won't be doing it any more, which could ultimately mean that we won't need the inspectors who were doing those specific jobs. It has been relegated back to the provinces. Perhaps they will increase their inspection forces, but there will be a decrease, perhaps, in the number of federal inspectors. You might criticize that as a decrease and say that the health of Canadians is at risk, but actually it just makes good sense. Why is the federal government inspecting provincial slaughterhouses?

I want to ask you about that, because some of these decreases you might be worried about could probably be very well explained by things like that. What do you think about that?

[Bob Kingston]

Of course, as an organization that is supposed to support the work of its members, obviously we try to fight that. But we also accept it. We understand that the devolution of a program to the province carries with it those jobs. We've been through many exercises like that. That is not our focal point here. What we've pointed out to those provinces is what they will need to do to make sure that they maintain a level of safety for their consumers. Unfortunately, CFIA has delivered that service without adjusting the fees over the last 20 years. What happened was that they were delivering that service for about a third of what it actually cost. Then you have the overhead, and the overhead has to do with the lab structure, the management structure--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Really, I'm just talking about inspector positions. It could be seen that we have fewer inspectors and we're jeopardizing Canadians' health--

[Bob Kingston]

Yes, we accept that.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

--but no, we have fewer inspectors because the provinces are now taking over the inspection of provincial slaughterhouses.

This touches on baselines. I don't want to get fixated on one number, but since 2006 more than 700 new inspectors have been hired into the CFIA. You floated a number of 1,000. So what is this baseline when there's criticism about the number of inspectors? Is it 1,000, because that's what you think it should be? Is it that we've already increased it by 700, and that's pretty good? Should it be back to what it was in 2006?

What I'm saying is that sometimes there's a need and inspectors are added, but if circumstances change, for example, with respect to provincial slaughterhouses, circumstances change again.

[Bob Kingston]

Fair enough. When the increases you're talking about happened, unfortunately, they never showed up at the front line. That's the problem. When I talk about an increase in inspectors, I'm talking about front-line people who are actually making their presence known in the industry. They're actually seeing things that are going on in the industry and are evaluating products and evaluating processes.

What happened was that the growth happened primarily in headquarters. When CFIA pulls out the numbers they have been presenting to the committee over the years--and they've admitted this--take a look at what they're including. If they hire somebody as part of their operations directorate, for example, such as a mail clerk at headquarters, that person is called part of the inspection staff.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm talking about inspectors. There were 700 new inspectors, net new inspectors.

[Bob Kingston]

Well, that's simply not true. We've had those talks with them internally, and they've conceded the point.