Agriculture Committee on April 2nd, 2012

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Brahmi, you have five minutes.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be asking my questions in French.

My first question is for Mr. Holmes.

I would like to give you an opportunity to react to the budget that was tabled last week.

I have in front of me a press release from the Union des consommateurs expressing concern and denouncing the continuation of the outrageous tax privileges granted to big corporations. They are worried about the impact of the cuts on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

How do you and your members react to the cuts that are certain to occur?

[Matthew Holmes]

I think everyone is watching that right now. We don't know exactly what it means. Are there some backroom efficiencies to be realized? I'm quite sure that there are. CFIA works closely with Agriculture Canada. They report to the same minister. I'm sure that there are some ways they can find some savings in that relationship.

We feel that consumers increasingly want to trust their food system, the traceability of the food system, and the marketing claims that are made. We've all seen instances when marketers and advertisers walk up to the line and then take a big jump. We want to know, and our consumers often want to know, that somebody who has third-party or government involvement, or from our perspective, preferably both, is watching those sorts of claims and is inspecting or reviewing how something is done and what is said about it.

That said, I don't think the budget is clear on the exact implications of these cuts yet. We will be watching that very closely.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

On a more practical level, if there were fewer inspectors and therefore less enforcement, could this harm the reputation which brings value to the work you do? That reputation is one of high quality products, a better quality than that of other products.

[Matthew Holmes]

I think the Canada brand and the reputation of Canadian food products is very important to my members. They use it in both their domestic sales and their export sales.

Where we do see an issue, however, is that at times, in the inspection regime in Canada, we will see a regional inspector, an Ottawa inspector, or the central office have different interpretations of a government regulation or rule. Again, it's how that's implemented and how it's done that's really important. It's not necessarily about the numbers; it's about the integrity of the inspection. Ensuring that the CFIA remains rigorous and still has teeth and enforcement powers is very important to consumers and to my members in Canada.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Holmes.

I have a question for Mr. Chambers. This issue is more of a personal and local nature in my riding. Last fall, I was faced with a clandestine slaughter of sheep, as a matter of religious practice, in two municipalities of my riding. I called the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, asking them what one was supposed to do in such a case and whether this was a threat to food safety, and I was told that this was not within their jurisdiction.

Within your coalition, do you see this type of event occurring frequently or is it a new trend? Do you have any comments on that type of practice?

[Albert Chambers]

It's an interesting question, and it's not one that's been brought to my attention and concern. From the coalition's perspective, no. Clearly our view would be, as we stated in our presentation today, that Canadians, no matter where they are, are entitled to have food that's produced at the same safe standard. In circumstances where it's happening clandestinely, and I take it illegally, they don't usually produce safe food, so we would be concerned from that perspective. But it's not an issue we've been seized with.

We are aware that there are increasing concerns globally about counterfeit food moving in international trade. These are food products that are not genuine in the can or in the package, although the label says that they have been produced by...etc. I don't believe it's yet a serious problem in Canada, but it's something I know the global food industry is very concerned about. It happens at both ends—in the international field as well as potentially at the local level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemieux, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Just to follow up on some of Mr. Brahmi's questioning, I'm actually looking at the budget on page 168. You will be happy to know, Tarik, that the budget is proposing a $50 million increase for food safety. That's what's in the budget. It's a $50 million increase. That's, of course, in addition to the $100 million increase we announced in the last budget.

I just want to encourage my colleagues across the way, of course, to vote in favour of this excellent budget. It does raise the question of food safety.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

This has the feeling of a press conference.

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

Mr. Chambers, in your presentation you brought up food safety as it pertains to the supply chain. We're going to be looking at a number of different supply chains, but we'd like a supply chain that is efficient and effective, and that exercises due diligence for important things like food safety. What I want to do is present a few things to you, and then have you comment.

The first is that we had some discussion on this committee about how much incoming food CFIA inspects, and it's not 100%. In the supply chain, there are inspections done by U.S. inspectors that we accept as legitimate. We don't see the need for duplication, because duplication has financial cost as well as a time-and-resource cost for people trying to move food products through the food chain.

The other thing I wanted to get is your thoughts on risk-based food inspection processes. If something is low risk, fewer resources might go to inspections. If it's medium- or high-risk, then more resources would go to it.

I'm wondering if you might be able to comment on supply chain food inspection from some of the comments I've made.

[Albert Chambers]

There are a number of interesting questions in there, and I'm glad you didn't ask me any more about the budget.

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

I wouldn't put you on the spot.

[Albert Chambers]

The coalition's position is that imports should be meeting the same standards that we have in Canada. It's a real challenge to achieve this in a marketplace where we all enjoy food that comes from someplace else.

It's a challenge even in the domestic sense. We have inspectors, but they are primarily functioning in the registered establishments, which represent a significant portion of the Canadian supply but not all of it. We have to achieve results with our imports if we're going to meet WTO requirements that are balanced with our domestic measures. We need to have a discussion about what our domestic measures are going to be, so that we can, as fairly as possible, enforce those measures on our suppliers from the rest of the world.

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

Isn't it possible to align what we expect to see in imports with what food inspectors in the United States, for example, are inspecting in their exports?

CFIA inspects 100% of exports. They inspect a lower percentage of imports. When our food goes to the U.S., the U.S. accepts our export certificate. They consider that the food has been duly inspected, and we would do the same with food coming from the U.S. These are the types of agreements that help facilitate the supply chain.

[Albert Chambers]

The coalition is quite supportive of eliminating re-inspection. This discussion is now going on at the Regulatory Cooperation Council, as is the broader discussion about how we can harmonize our approaches to imports. But we still have to have a regime in Canada that allows us to make sure we treat imports the same. We have that challenge to deal with.

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

I had a second question on your thoughts regarding risk-based use of resources, meaning that lower-risk commodities might receive fewer resources than higher-risk commodities.

[Albert Chambers]

My understanding is that members of the coalition are very supportive of that idea. They're also supportive of another idea that's happening in the world around us, which the British would call “earned recognition”. In registered establishments where we have an ongoing presence, perhaps there could be a system where the success of companies meeting the requirements should be taken into account through a lower level of inspection. This way the resources saved could be diverted to other companies.

Even within a high-risk category, you can have performance as a measure of whether or not you should be devoting more or less attention to that particular food business. We have it. There are a lot of lessons that we can learn, some of which we've been experimenting with, but some of which our major trading partners have been experimenting with as well. We could integrate those in a national strategy.

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

Right.

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay.

Mr. Payne, you have five minutes.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

I just want to do some follow-up, Mr. Chambers, if I might, through the chair.

We've been talking about food safety and inspection, and my colleague, Mr. Lemieux, was talking about inspections north and south. My question is going to go beyond that in terms of international trade agreements. As you're aware, Canada is working on quite a number of international trade agreements, and obviously some of these will include foodstuffs that will be coming to Canada.

What do you see or what would your organization recommend, in terms of food safety, with the various organizations? When we're looking at China, we're looking at India, and we're looking at a number of other counties, what protections should we be looking at? Are there some international regulations that we should be following to ensure that food safety happens here for Canadians?

[Albert Chambers]

In my initial answer to your colleague, obviously, I went over part of the ground, in terms of what our WTO obligations are. We have to have a system in place here that we can defend if we're going to impose those requirements on others. So we need to have a first look at our domestic system. We do not have a mandatory requirement for preventative controls, whether those are HACCP-based, or HACCP, or some other variant. Moving onto that plateau where we can make that claim is something we need to have a very serious discussion about, or maybe we won't be able to demand that of the products that are coming into the country. We've seen the Americans and the Europeans and others move in that direction. We need to have that discussion.

We need to have the discussion as to what our expectations are around what kind of inspection or audit should be behind those claims that they have preventative controls in place. Is it going to be a demand that they be government inspected, when we don't have government inspection of all of our facilities here in Canada? We have the power to do that, but we don't quite practically have that power, and don't exercise it on a regular basis in every food business in Canada. So we have to have a look at those kinds of things and ask ourselves, as we've developed our on-farm programs and some of these other industry-based programs, are we expecting similar programs to those to be in place in the supply chains that are providing us with imports? And if so, how do we work that out and recognize those?

So that's a couple of areas we need to have a close look at, as we then move out with new initiatives in terms of import controls.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

What you're talking about is the WTO regulations also applying to any bilateral agreements that are worked out between Canada and other countries. Is that the—

[Albert Chambers]

Put it this way, I'm no longer a trade expert. I dabbled in the field back in the Uruguay Round. I'm not in a position to answer whether it applies to all of our relationships, but clearly it's a fundamental of how our trading relationships are built—that we apply to others that which we have applied to ourselves, to put it in very simple terms.