Agriculture Committee on Oct. 30th, 2012

[Robert de Valk]

Yes. That's certainly one of the difficulties we have with the current approach.

The training has been very commodity-specific. As a result, the food industry in Canada and I think Canadians in general are starting to realize that we need to treat all food the same, and that is a bit of a problem because of the structure we've developed. This bill would put a whole new umbrella—a whole new framework, as we've referred to it—over food safety in Canada.

Perhaps it's easier to think about this in terms of a specific example. I'm thinking of the word “natural”. Many of you probably have seen the word “natural” on some products, more so in the U.S. than in Canada. In Canada we took a position a long time ago that the word “natural” belongs naturally where it is, and it shouldn't be on products. As a result, we've avoided a lot of the difficulties that the United States have had with that word.

However, consumers are looking more and more for natural products, or cleaner products. We've asked the CFIA's labelling section to take a look at the word “natural”, because currently it's being denied to the meat industry. We can't use that word. It's considered that meat is not naturally produced because we have men and women growing meat, and therefore they've said that's not natural.

We've said that's a bit of a problem for us, because when it's yogourt, for example—and there's someone here who's in the dairy business, so maybe they can explain this—it could be natural, but that's still an animal product. Therefore, we said, “Why don't we level the playing field? Why don't we use the word “natural” right across the board? If anybody can use it, then everybody can use it, and let's define it.”

That's the way we'd like to see the new act go, so that the regulations don't apply to just meat and poultry but to all food products. That's the genesis behind that comment and where we think this bill can take us. I think that's a much fairer way to regulate the food industry.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Actually, you went exactly where I was going to go from my first question, which was the labelling terminology and how involved CFIA should be in the labelling process. I know that in the new act there are penalties for tampering with labels, and additional information on labels will be required.

When we look at traceability, do you think the labelling has to encompass some of that traceability going right back to the packing plant or the facility where the product came from? I always wonder how it works. I wish I'd had a chance to talk to the Retail Council. When a slab of beef goes to a Costco, for example, and is cut up, how do we know exactly how that traces back?

When you look at the situation at facility 38, I think it was, with all the product being thrown away, it makes me wonder, if they'd had proper traceability from the plant going forward—not back to the farmer, but going the other way—if a lot of that product wouldn't have been thrown away.

Do you have any comment on that?

[Robert de Valk]

You're right on; you're thinking in the right direction.

I can tell you that I was in a plant in Europe, in Holland actually, not so long ago. There I saw technology work really well. They could trace the chicken that came into that plant from the grower who produced that chicken all the way through to the part that was sold in the supermarket. They kept control of it all the way through the plant.

It's almost like the plant had something like a flight control tower that airports have. There were windows and computers. They were able to see exactly where the chicken was going.

I think we're lucky in this generation. Consumers today can benefit from all this technology. This bill sets the framework so that we can incorporate that technology, so that we as an industry can make this technology available and work with it. The legislation can keep up. Then we can say to the whole food industry across the board, and not just to a meat plant, that we know that traceability is economically achievable, that the technology is here and we want the industry to implement it.

I think this bill allows us to keep up with those kinds of changes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Valeriote.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for coming today.

This is for Robert and Sukhdeep.

In your opening remarks you said that imported food is regulated to a lesser extent. This confirms testimony that was given before this committee a year or so ago. That testimony suggested that only 2% of the food coming into the country is actually inspected, meat to a much greater extent, which you also said. As a result, a lot of Canadians have concerns about imported food when they hear about melamine in milk from China. I'm not trying to discredit; I'm just trying to clear up some of this, okay?

Bill S-11 will include provisions to register and license importers, and it will require them to maintain a written preventative food safety control plan, so it sounds like the government is downloading responsibility for food inspection to the importing industry. If there's still a lack of inspection of this food that is coming into our country, can you tell me how being licensed and adopting a preventative food safety control plan will indeed assure Canadians that their imported food will be any safer than it is now?

[Robert de Valk]

Yes, that's well put, I think, but we need to back up to your starting point. That is the idea that imported food coming into Canada right now is not inspected as much or is somehow under less control. That's not accurate. And we didn't say that either. I'll try to explain it to you.

What is happening is that the CFIA has for years had a regular program of inspecting all kinds of food coming into Canada. These are parameters set using science and saying that if we inspect x number of loads of imported food, we'll have a pretty good understanding of what's coming into Canada. It's not unlike the vote polling that goes on. If you access 1,200 Canadians, there's a pretty good chance—95%—you'll get pretty close to what Canadians are thinking. This is the same type of principle they use at the border.

That was going on. What was missing, and what we're talking about, is that when you found the violation, the only thing you could really do was take a product off the shelf and hope it didn't come in again. You didn't have the tool that you now have, which is you could actually prosecute an importer. You could identify the importer. Right now, we know that the food is coming in, and we don't like what's coming in. We found it and we tested it. We send it back, or we do something with it, but we can't really legally hold someone responsible. That's what changes.

In meat and poultry, of course, all the plants are registered, and we can only import from registered plants around the country that have been approved by the CFIA. That was in place. If something was wrong with meat and poultry imports, you had an address. You had a component that you could address and legally take action against. We did not have that in a lot of food imports. That's going to change. The CFIA is going to register all food importers.

In talking about labelling, if we also insist—and we can, under this bill—that all labels should be registered before they come into Canada, then we'll have total control over those imports. We can then stand up, the minister can stand up, and you in Parliament can stand up and say that imports are controlled as well as any other product in Canada.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay, and I appreciate your comments about tracing it back to who the importer is, but again I'm going to ask you, do you think we should dedicate more inspectors to conduct inspections on the food coming in?

Sukhdeep, you're nodding your head.

[Sukhdeep Bilkhu]

Right now, every load that comes into the country can cross from any border. One out of every ten loads goes for CFIA inspection. If there are any issues found with the material or with the plant, the CFIA puts on an intensified inspection. We also have pre-clearance for the U.S. and Brazil, so anybody who's going to import a product would have to first obtain pre-clearance from the CFIA before the product entered.

To answer your question on whether there are more inspectors required, Bob probably can help me out with this, but right now we don't have any issue with that, right?

[Robert de Valk]

No.

[Sukhdeep Bilkhu]

Any loads that are randomly going for inspection are checked. If there is any need for further inspection, that is flagged, and then further inspections are done.

[Robert de Valk]

What Lucky is talking about is the current meat inspection regime, and we definitely have a very strong protocol in place to deal with that.

What this bill tries to address is how we should deal with imports other than meat and poultry. I don't think it would be appropriate, and science would tell us that, to take the same approach as we do with meat and poultry.

Do we need more resources to do that properly? It's not unlike a question that was asked before we sat down here: do we have enough inspectors in meat plants and so on? Well, this whole question of whether we have enough inspectors hinges a heck of a lot on what we would like to do with our food industry and where we would like to go. Hence, a national food strategy is going to help us answer that question.

The other thing that will help us answer that question is the amendment that was made in the Senate, relating to a study that needs to be done every five years to see if the resources are actually in place.

When the CFIA was created over 10 years ago, we in the food industry supported its creation. We think the idea of an agency focusing on food safety is the right way to go. Canada has been a leader in this aspect and is an example. What we did at that time was to bring all the legislation together under the agency. One of the things that was promised at the time, which we would do, is go over that legislation and get rid of the quality stuff and all the other prescriptive things and focus on food safety.

That's what this bill is starting to do. It's really redoing that and focusing on food safety. If we do that successfully, then the question obviously is: if we had 5,000 inspectors under the old approach, how many inspectors would we need under the new approach and a new act? That's a question we need to answer. We need to do the work to study that.

I am not in a position to tell you whether it's less or more. If we have a good handle on what this new bill wants to do and what the regulations are, we should be able to study and determine, on a good science-based approach, what the number of inspectors required is. It could be less or more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Payne, go ahead.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming today. It's important that we hear your testimony on Bill S-11. We have heard a lot of positive comments from witnesses that this is a good bill. It's moving forward, and it's something that will help Canadians' confidence in our food system.

I have a couple of questions I want to ask Mr. de Valk or Ms. Bilkhu. You made some comments in your statement about access to computers and you had some concerns. What are those concerns? My understanding is that CFIA inspectors wouldn't be asking for this if they didn't have any good rationale. Here is an opportunity for you to describe that. As I understand it, if you do have concerns, there's also an opportunity to take those back to CFIA as well.

[Robert de Valk]

This is certainly not clear in the bill, and that's why we're asking you to look at it.

First of all, the way the bill is written, certainly in the French version, it seems like an inspector, on his own, can make a decision whether he needs to access a company computer. He simply walks around the plant, looks at things, and says, “I think there's something wrong here. Can I please look at your computer?” Well, we think that is just a little too easy.

We think it should require at least the inspector sitting down at his computer that he has available to him in the plant and writing up what his reasons to believe are and submitting them to someone at CFIA, who then would look at them and say that the inspector is right and he should go ahead and access those computers. The document would be in place and the CFIA would have made the decision that there is reason to believe there's non-compliance.

We're just cautioning you that the way it's written is a little sloppy. It allows one individual, one inspector, to make a decision to use these additional access powers. The additional powers being asked for in this act are significant. Don't belittle what's happening here. Do we need those powers? Yes, we agree as an industry that this is a step forward. We need them, but as we said in the statement, I worked for the Competition Bureau and I know how that worked. We could not access company documents without first going to a judge and saying that there's a reason to believe and we documented it.

All we're asking is that at least one other person in the CFIA look at this reasons to believe, and then they can go ahead and access those additional powers, whether it be with respect to a computer or whatever else they may need. It's just a little bit of a check on the powers. I don't think that's an unreasonable request to make.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

It's my understanding that CFIA inspectors already must have reasonable grounds in order to go into a facility, look at documentation, and photograph or whatever. That's the understanding I have, that those rules apply to them at this point in time.

Anyway, I do have some other questions. I want to follow up in terms of inspections of food that comes in from other countries. I believe you talked about high risk and low risk, particularly in terms of meat inspection. Do you know what the process is for products coming in from other countries? Does CFIA already need to have an agreement with that country, having reviewed their systems?

[Robert de Valk]

That particular approach is in place for meat and poultry. In other words, we cannot import any meat or poultry products from any other country unless the CFIA has approved their inspection system. In some cases, if the system gives them some cause for problems in certain areas, the plant also would have to be inspected by CFIA before it can be done. For instance, from Thailand, we can bring in cooked chicken, but we can't bring in uncooked chicken, because they still have an animal health issue over there.

That type of approval of the system is not in place for other food imports. The way we handle the other food imports is pretty well at the border. We do random inspections and we hope that the rules for Canada are being followed through those random inspections.

What was missing, as I indicated earlier, is that when we do those random inspections we often run into a situation where we can't identify the importer in a legal way. Therefore, even though we may find problems, we have trouble enforcing, in going back and doing something about it. That's what this bill will fix up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses.

Mr. de Valk, if I may, I'll follow up with your comment around clause 24. You talked about an inspector generating some sort of piece of paper that he sends or she sends—we'll use the generic term “inspector” before we decide if it's a he or a she. The inspector would send that and get something back, and then present it. If we have now generated this additional layer asking, who is actually informing that inspector to go ahead with the request? Who would that be? Is it going upward, where they're sending it to a supervisor who then okays it, with the requester then saying, “Well, I need it signed off by someone above you for that”?

I understand the concern, I think, of clause 24, because it's now the second time that it's been mentioned. What I am concerned about is, are we now creating additional layers to get a request fulfilled by an inspector who is making a direct request?

[Robert de Valk]

In industry we're not interested in layering, bureaucracy and paperwork, so don't think that this is a request to do that. All we're asking is that the inspector, who obviously already has some thoughts in his mind, put those thoughts on paper and make them available, probably to his supervisor in the office at headquarters, so that they're filed there. He doesn't necessarily need permission to proceed at that point. All we're saying is to document it so that if afterwards the firm says that the whole thing was a wash, both the inspector and the CFIA are protected and everybody is protected because it's on paper. That's all we're asking, really.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I appreciate the clarification because initially it sounded as if we would be layering. I wanted to make sure that we weren't doing that.

I agree, by the way, that your clients have a right to ask what the request was. If you have a process where there was a complaint about something, you will then have something to point to on paper and say that this is what was requested. Then you can go ahead and go through the process. I really appreciate that clarification, Mr. de Valk. I think it's important that we understand that for clause 24 and don't start thinking, “My goodness, now where are we headed?”

The other side of it is, you talked earlier about the review process. You pointed to the Senate amendment, the five-year step, as being a good one. One of the things we've asked for is to benchmark so that in five years, we’ll know what we have marked from. I agree with you. We don't know what the number is; it could be less, it could be more. It's always assumed that when this side asks a question that we're looking for more. That's not necessarily true. We're actually looking for the number that it should be, whatever that number is. Quite frankly, I really don't know what it should be. It's not for me to determine the number. I think that's what an independent audit would do.

If we benchmarked the number now, is that really the benchmark? My argument has been to figure out what it should be now, and then review it so we know what we've got in five years. I still maintain that if you don't do it now, you'll know something in five years, but you'll know a heck of a lot more in 10 years because you'll measure it against the five.

[Robert de Valk]

Industry is very high on benchmarking. I don't think we would have any problem at all with doing something we should have done five years ago, which is to figure out how many resources we need to ensure safety of our food products here in Canada. The sooner that's done, the better. This idea of waiting two, three, four years to do this review because the amendment was added doesn't make us comfortable.

You're right. If we do it four or five years from now and find out that we were under by 1,000, that's not very comforting to find out five years from now. Let's find out what the number should be. But I caution you that you have to understand what you're trying to do in order to assess this number.

With the new bill, it's going to take us probably a little while to tell the consultants who's going to be hired to do this. I doubt if anybody in the CFIA should do this. I think it's better to have an independent body do it. You have to set out some criteria for them. If we can get agreement on those criteria, which I think industry and CFIA are working toward, then sooner rather than later we can get this assessment done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Lemieux, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Once again, I'd like to thank both organizations for being here today and for expressing your support for Bill S-11. I think it is important legislation. I think that there are a lot things going very right in food safety, but there are always improvements to be made. It's never a completely perfect system.

On some of the wording, particularly in clause 24, Ms. Bilkhu made a suggestion on changing the word “they” to “CFIA”. Right now, it says that “an inspector may, for a purpose related to verifying compliance or preventing non-compliance with this Act, enter a place, including a conveyance, in which they have reasonable grounds...”. A suggestion was made that the word “they” should be changed to “CFIA”.

My concern is that the inspector is acting on behalf of CFIA, with the authority of CFIA. To put it back to the institution to somehow have to sanction his presence there I think runs counter to what the inspector is trying to achieve, which is a timely response to what he sees as a concern based on reasonable grounds.

What we just saw with the XL situation was that being able to respond quickly is very important. My concern with changing the word “they” to “CFIA” is that it institutionalizes a decision-making process that has already been vested in the inspector himself or herself and that the inspector is there to respond quickly. But it must be based on reasonable grounds. In fact, if a company were displeased with the way in which an inspector had conducted himself or herself, it now has recourse, not back to the inspector, but back to a tribunal that would look at the situation and consider both the arguments made by the inspector and the concerns of industry.

Could you comment on that? Do you agree with what I'm saying? My worry is that it's going to slow things down for the inspector trying to do his work with the authorities, with which he's already vested through legislation. He is an inspector of the CFIA.

[Robert de Valk]

Yes, he's an inspector of the CFIA, and he's recognized as that. We're not trying to slow it down. I think the answer we gave to Mr. Allen has already addressed some of that.

To more specifically address your concern, you are saying that the inspector has reason to believe he's part of the CFIA and that, therefore, he can act. The reason to believe is in his mind, and that's the way it works. What we're asking for is that what he's thinking be put down on a piece of paper, so that when this tribunal situation arises, or when someone questions him, it won't be, “Well, that's what I was thinking at the time.” It would be, “Here's the piece of paper I created at the time.” He can put it in his computer. He's not asking permission. He's simply documenting his thinking, and that's the piece that's missing here.

When you put CFIA in here, all it means is that it is documented. The CFIA has documented it.

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

I'm not so sure about that.

My point is that if you change the word, there are two things going on. There are two suggestions you made.

If you replace the word “they” by “CFIA”, then what you're saying is that the CFIA—not the inspector, but the CFIA—as an institution must have reasonable grounds. That's very different from the inspector who has been vested with certain authorities through legislation and through the CFIA having reasonable grounds. It is institutionalizing that portion of the decision. That was my main comment. I think that will slow it down because now the CFIA, as an institution, must have reasonable grounds. They must communicate that to the company, document or no document.

Your second point, though, is that the reasonable grounds must be documented. I appreciate your clarification, but I think just inserting the word “document” doesn't necessarily achieve what you want it to achieve. When you look at some of the things the inspector is doing, this will grant the ability for the inspector to examine, or test, or take samples of anything that is in the place, or open a package that is in the place, or examine a document that is in the place.

Again, you are asking the inspector, who must have reasonable grounds—it can't just be on a whim, but there must be reasonable grounds for doing so—to write it out, submit it back into the institutional CFIA, have the institutional CFIA allow him to do these rather reasonable inspection-type activities.

I do find that onerous. I understand that you're saying you don't want it to be onerous. I get it. But I actually think it will be onerous because when you read it and start thinking about how this would work, it would become onerous. It would become slow, and the response time of inspectors would drop dramatically.