Agriculture Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mrs. Boucher, you have only five seconds left.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you, I'm done. I have my answer: it's a monologue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mrs. Boucher.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

To go back into this study, I'm very interested in the food policy as it relates to different scales or sizes of business. Each of you touched on that in certain ways.

Maybe I could start with Ms. Ventin about the labelling issue and how large retailers could look at labelling by putting information on the shelves versus the products, or by using different technologies, and whether that's an option that would play out with smaller manufacturers in terms of different ways of getting the same information versus going to a label. Does your group have an option in terms of suggestions for labelling?

[Carla Ventin]

Sure. We know that for packages of food products on grocery store shelves you can't put everything on a label. I think that's really important. In terms of what FCPC has done, we've launched a digital label in Canada. It's called “SmartLabel”. It was launched south of the border as well, very successfully.

What this means is that while we do want to provide consumers with information, we can't put all of the information on a package, and consumers may very well be interested in where the wheat was sourced for the specific product and also in other information. That is available to us.

It's interesting, and I always like to reiterate what the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says on this, which is that most Canadians get their nutritional information online and digitally, so we should regulate for tomorrow, not today.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Is it available for different ranges and sizes...?

[Carla Ventin]

Yes, it is. We are expanding it to other products as well. It's something that FCPC is bringing to Canada, and it is very widely supported throughout government, especially by CFIA.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Thank you.

Ms. Knezevic, you mentioned making sure the food policy covers small-scale operations. Do you have some specific concerns that we should make sure we include in our study?

[Irena Knezevic]

I can give you a couple of examples. I'm sure our membership would have a wide range of recommendations. For meat producers, for instance, there's a variety of different standards—provincial and federal regulations—regarding food safety. Many of the small meat producers don't even have proper access to abattoirs. Alberta has been doing some really interesting experimentation with mobile abattoirs, and this links directly to our first recommendation, which is to think of innovation differently.

Mobile abattoirs, for instance, are not about inventing new technologies to check food safety. They're really about making existing technologies more accessible to small-scale producers. That would be one example of what we have in mind.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Thank you. It's really helpful for us to be working on the pillars, so that we can try to get information for each pillar.

Ms. Cloutier, you mentioned what was being omitted in the study. That's actually exactly what we're trying to do, to fill in areas that we might not have been studying before. Things like reciprocal standards or local purchasing, access to markets, and labour and productivity—we have all that on the record.

In terms of priorities, is there a priority area that you see from your members that we should make sure we don't miss, or is that all we need to cover?

[Sylvie Cloutier]

The workforce, productivity, new technologies and innovation are certainly priorities for the food industry.

If we do not innovate, we won't be competitive. With all the new agreements with Europe, and hopefully with the U.S. again, we need to be competitive and productive. Right now, there's a labour shortage in Canada for the manufacturing sectors and ours is very much affected by this, so for us that's among the top priorities.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

We see that in Guelph. The university has just updated a study showing four jobs for every graduate in a certain program.

In the limited time left, if we look at the idea of a supercluster around food, could each of you provide a short answer on where a supercluster might be able to provide value that would help us with our food strategy?

Maybe we'll go left to right with Ms. Knezevic.

[Irena Knezevic]

I'm quite familiar with some of the current efforts around superclusters. To the best of my knowledge, they are very much focused on digital agriculture technologies, and they are really looking at the smart agriculture approach.

We don't see a problem with that necessarily, but many of our members are concerned that it does not pay attention to the social and environmental impacts these technologies have, and it also does not give enough credit to the social and environmental innovation that is already happening on the ground in Canada.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Thank you.

[Sylvie Cloutier]

We have a submission in with Guelph, so we're talking more about intelligence with regard to innovation, accessibility of innovation, and information on what's available out there to make our industry more productive.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes. I know Guelph is focused on humanities as well. I think they had nine departments looking at food.

[Carla Ventin]

I would echo Sylvie's comments. I also think there's a real role for the clusters to be focused on technology. For example, the 2014 KPMG report on automation and robotics in the food processing sector showed that our industry is lagging far behind those of our competitors. If you look at the auto sector, it is highly automated. The food processing sector is not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Ventin. Thank you, Mr. Longfield.

Ms. Brosseau, you have six minutes.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm really happy the government is going forward with the promise to elaborate a food strategy. Our party has worked really hard over the last few years on developing a food strategy from farm to fork. It's going to be important that they get it right.

One of the themes is access to food. We know that Canada is a rich country. We produce a lot of food—amazing quality food—and we export a lot of food, but there are still millions and millions of Canadians who are food insecure. There are 900,000 Canadians who go to food banks. Food banks were created to be a temporary solution. I have nothing against the food banks, but I would hope to see the day where we don't have food banks in Canada.

In 2012, the UN special rapporteur came to Canada and talked about the importance of the right to food. In these four themes, we don't adequately address food insecurity and how to make sure people have access to good quality food. I was wondering if you could speak about the importance of underscoring that right to food. Does the government adequately deal with the fact that we have so many food-insecure people in Canada?

Ms. Ventin. Then I guess we can go back that way.

[Carla Ventin]

Sure. Thank you.

I know that previously at committee, there was Food Banks Canada. I know that although Canadians spend about 10% of their disposable income on food, there are definitely regions and remote areas in Canada where people spend far more, and food is not affordable for those segments of the population. It disproportionately affects those segments of the population across the country, so we absolutely recognize that this is an issue.

This goes back to the importance of having the national food policy as a whole-of-government approach. We really do need to bring in other federal departments and the provinces to coordinate on an approach to address food affordability across the country.

For FCPC's part, we play an active role in supporting Food Banks Canada. Our member companies individually play active roles in contributing and working closely with Food Banks Canada as well as participating in breakfast programs, for example, across the country. That's company-driven as well. But absolutely, food and security is a big issue and a big challenge in Canada.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Would you like to add anything, Mrs. Cloutier?

[Sylvie Cloutier]

I would like to add some information.

In Quebec, for example, the food industry is the largest contributor to Moisson Montréal, Moisson Québec and other Moisson organizations, as well as La Tablée des Chefs. These organizations collect food scraps or offer classes to teach people how to cook them. There are also programs such as the Club des petits déjeuners, a program that was created in Quebec.

There are gaps in large urban centres. Some neighbourhoods have no grocery stores where you can buy fruits and vegetables, among other things. For example, there are parts of Montreal where, aside from at convenience stores, citizens don't have access to fresh food.

Remote areas also suffer from this lack of access. However, the problem is mainly related to the transport of fresh products, of course.

As for cities, there are more and more urban agricultural programs. It is an increasingly important movement. Having said that, you have to make sure there are enough product distributors, so that residents in each neighbourhood can have access to fresh produce.

With respect to remote areas, this is a problem that needs to be addressed in collaboration with the departments involved. Food is actually available, but transportation is difficult. That is another issue, but certainly we need to look at it.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Places that have no grocery store nearby are called food deserts. As you explained, the only option to get food is to go to the convenience stores where the choices are not necessarily very healthy.

As you mentioned, Mrs. Cloutier, there is one thing we are doing very well in Quebec. In Montreal, Mauricie and Lanaudière, there is a project under which Moisson operates with retailers. It collects unsold products to bring them to the various community organizations that help people in need. However, there is an infrastructure problem. There aren't enough refrigerators and trucks. That could be a very important recommendation in our report.

Ms. Ventin, you talked about food packaging. One of the pillars we talk about is environment. Sometimes when you go to the supermarket, you can see bananas that are packaged up in plastic and styrofoam and stuff like that. Can you maybe talk about some measures that the industry is going ahead with?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Unfortunately, we're out of time, Ms. Brosseau. Perhaps you'll have a chance for another question.

We will now go to Mr. Breton for six minutes.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for their excellent briefs and their comments, which are extremely important for our current study.

Mrs. Cloutier, it's always a pleasure to have you here. Your organization is in my riding. It is always nice to see witnesses from home.

All three of you talked a lot about innovation and how we are a leader in this area. I listened to Ms. Knezevic speak about the right to food. These are subjects that I find very interesting.

There is one element I consider important. Obviously, we know that healthy eating habits are also made by educating consumers. At the end of the day, it's the people who decide what they're going to eat and what they're going to get at the grocery store, from the producer or elsewhere.

Could you tell me about each of these aspects?

In terms of learning, how can we strategically better integrate consumer education and skills training so that they know what they are eating? This is an important aspect.

I'll start with you, Mrs. Cloutier.