Agriculture Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our witnesses.

Just before I go into my five minutes of questions, I'll remind Madam Brosseau and Mr. Eyking that this is about interprovincial trade, not international trade or temporary foreign workers. We've been extremely polite and have allowed the questions to stand, because it is an issue important to our witnesses, but we do need to stick to the subject at hand.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

You see, I didn't call a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

If the government side continues to bring up neonics for some reason, which I don't see as the big issue when you're trading from border to border—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I don't think that's a point of order, and actually, we haven't brought up the neonics—

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

No, but my question, Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I'll now go to Mr. Keddy.

Thank you. It's not a point of order.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Actually, on interprovincial trade, if one province has an advantage over another, it becomes a real problem.

Welcome again to our witnesses. There are a couple of issues that I have questions on. The first one is on the red meat sector.

I listened very carefully to what you had to say about the challenges you face. I don't think I ever really thought about eliminating the provincial inspection system and allowing the federal inspection system to simply be the primary system for the entire country—and, obviously, upgrading the skills, if need be, of the provincial inspectors and putting them in. There is also the fact that provincial inspection has been free, so you can understand why a number of processors are clinging to it. Quite frankly, at least in my opinion, it's a reasonable process, although if we ever get there it would be challenging. But it's probably the direction we need to go in.

My question is what about personal use? I assume we would still need to allow that. And what about farm gate sales? Right now there are always some farm gate sales, whether of beef, pork, or lamb. I assume there would still be room to allow that.

[Joe Reda]

Do you mean in the provinces?

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

No. You would have federal inspection of the plants, but if a farmer wanted to butcher a hog or butcher a lamb and sell it farm gate, as they do today—they have the right to do that provincially—they would still be able to do it. It would never enter federal inspection and it would never enter the food chain of a grocery store. It's sold farm gate.

[Joe Reda]

Farming is one of the essentials for this country, so on a personal use, I don't see any...because it's limited: you're talking about one animal or two animals.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Yes, exactly. But if the dual system weren't there, then absolutely there'd be no barrier between trade in red meat in the entire country: solved overnight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Did you want an answer, or is that a comment?

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Well, no, I think I'm agreeing with the witness.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I know; it doesn't happen often, right?

Madam Fowlie, you talked a little bit, when you started in on your discussion, about some of the good things that have happened that allow your industry to work better, frankly, with plant breeders' rights, standardization of containers. I know that issue was resisted for a long time, but it had to happen eventually. It still may not all be phased in, but it's coming.

The issue that I look at in your business on interprovincial trade—we had the head of the Ontario horticultural sector here last Tuesday and he talked about it—is really what we would call in international trade “anti-dumping”, whereby, if another province has a surplus, that surplus suddenly gets sold in the food exchange in Montreal or Toronto or Calgary or wherever and causes that market to be flooded and depresses the prices that the growers are able to get, because there's no network to handle all of it.

Would it be a matter in which we could treat provincial regulations the same way we treat international regulations, such that you would have an anti-dumping clause with some teeth behind it and, quite frankly, countervailing tariff clauses, if one province were found to be subsidizing a product and shipping it to another province? Has your industry looked at that?

[Anne Fowlie]

I can't say that we have, or have done so in depth. Certainly it's an interesting question. I'm very familiar with the dynamics of countervail and anti-dump with other countries, for sure.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

You would be internationally, yes.

[Anne Fowlie]

I really don't know; of course, one of the unique features we face with our crop is that there are no serial numbers for some of it, no shelf life, so what do you do? It's an interesting question, but conversely a very difficult situation, if you have field lettuce that is going to melt in the field if you don't sell it.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

It would need to be a national agreement between the horticultural industry that would deal then with some of the disruptions in trade that occur based on surpluses in one area and maybe a shortage or not in another.

[Anne Fowlie]

I think one thing we would find is that, while there could likely be lots of debate around it, I think everyone would respect that on any given day, “There but for the grace....” It could be someone on the south shore of Montreal, it could be someone in the Holland Marsh, it could be someone in the Annapolis Valley. It's very difficult.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Keddy.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming out this afternoon. That was well done.

We'll break for a couple of minutes while we bring in our next one-hour witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I'll call the committee back to order, if you wouldn't mind, please.

Members, via video conference from Guelph, I want to welcome Cory Van Groningen, president of the Ontario Independent Meat Processors, and also Laurie Nicol, executive director.

Laurie, I'll ask you to open, please, with your presentation, for ten minutes.

[Laurie Nicol, Executive Director, Ontario Independent Meat Processors]

Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity. Interprovincial trade is something we've been very interested in for some time.

To give a little background, I am, as you mentioned in your introduction, the executive director. We are a provincial organization. We are the representative voice of the independent meat and poultry processor in Ontario. We work closely with the agricultural commodity organizations and the various levels of government. We have been around for 35 years. I've been with them for 30, so I have a bit of historical knowledge. We provide leadership by fostering innovation, promoting food safety and integrity, and recognizing excellence.

One thing concerning this issue, the reduction of interprovincial barriers, is that we see it as a perfect opportunity for growth. We add the caveat to that, “but not with lower food safety standards”.

Our organization has been supporting strengthening Ontario's meat inspection program back to 1991, when Ontario passed legislation that required all animals that were offered for sale to be slaughtered under inspection.

In 2005, the Ontario Meat Regulation 31/05 was introduced; it formed the basis for a solid prerequisite program, laying the groundwork for the development of enhanced food safety programs. It also enabled jurisdiction over the meat processing activities in what we call free-standing meat plants.

Ontario is one of the largest provinces in terms of the population of provincially licensed plants. There are currently 500 spread across the province, and we have a number that border on other provinces. We also have a number of provincially inspected processors and abattoirs that are supplying the national retail chains, so this subject is of interest to us, as the likes of a company such as Sobeys that is crossing borders has provided a challenge for us in terms of cross-docking and the concern about moving across borders.

Since 2000, OIMP has been involved in the issue of interprovincial trade. This issue has been around for a very long time, and I guess I'm wondering what is different now.

In 2000, there was an attempt to establish a national standard for the meat industry. Both the Ontario government and our organization were involved in the working group to develop the code.

In 2002, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada conducted a parallel review of that code and the federal Meat Inspection Act, and the code was evaluated and was deemed to be equivalent to the federal standard for food safety.

Then in 2005, CFIA initiated a meat inspection review, a second attempt to integrate a national standard, in which our provincial government was involved. It led to the draft Canadian meat hygiene standard, a document that our organization was involved in and was invited to review. Also, we were anticipating stakeholder consultations to take place in the summer or fall of 2007; these came to a halt in 2008.

In 2011, three of our member plants, including Cory's plant—VG Meats, located in Simcoe—participated in the federal-provincial-territorial interprovincial meat trade pilot project, which was a project to look at what it would take to bring a provincial plant up to a standard to facilitate interprovincial trade.

We were hopeful that the introduction of the Safe Food for Canadians Act in 2012 would provide the flexibility to facilitate interprovincial trade, again without the requirement of seeking federal registration. We have always known that in order to trade internationally a federal registration requirement would be required, and many of the requirements are trade requirements.

We're not convinced that this piece of legislation will be able to do that.

While we're supportive of this movement to look at interprovincial trade again, we certainly would want to make sure that the non-federally registered meat plants in Canada that are interested in participating in this trade should be meeting a common standard. As you know, there are still provinces that don't have a mandatory meat inspection program.

That's all I really had to say on the issue. I think it's more about what questions may follow.