Evidence of meeting #92 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. That sounds very similar to us.
Does your agency have any responsibility for marketing or market development? You've said that you have some commissioner-type services. Our agency at one point had marketing under them, but now they fall under the health portfolio and they don't work with marketing functions.
Director General, Trade, European Commission
I think it's the same on our side. For marketing, it is mainly the member states that are doing this work.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. Terrific.
We used a bit of extra time before, so I'm going to turn over the rest of my time to the chair.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Liberal
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Good afternoon.
Thank you for sharing your concerns.
Personally, I was a farmer for 40 years. I would like to know how often on-farm inspections, animal well-being checks, production audits and environmental protection audits are done.
Director General, Health and Food Safety, European Commission
Do you mean the animal welfare inspections?
Liberal
Director General, Health and Food Safety, European Commission
There are inspections at several places. They are done in slaughterhouses, obviously. Also, during transport, trucks may be stopped by authorities and the contents may be checked as to whether the animals have enough possibilities to rest, enough access to water, and don't make journeys that are too long. We have regulations on that. We also have regulations on the way animals are kept at the farm level. Our authorities have the right to enter farms at any moment and check whether these welfare requirements are being met.
It's actually at several places in the production chain, but indeed, also in the slaughterhouses, which of course, is a very important moment. In functioning slaughterhouses, official veterinarians are continuously present which also have to oversee the welfare requirements.
Director General, Trade, European Commission
Here, the same is valid for the broader SPS control. The supervision is also present here from the commission, so the other layer of control on how the member states correctly implement the EU legislation in this area of animal welfare is exactly the same.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Do you conduct inspections on farms?
Here, the provinces manage everything differently. In Quebec, for example, inspectors go to farms to check whether the environment is being respected during production or if the animals are properly maintained.
Director General, Health and Food Safety, European Commission
That happens in the EU as well. Inspectors may enter farms—pig farms, poultry farms, broilers—to see whether the welfare requirements are indeed being met. Yes, this happens in the EU too. Our authorities ought to do so. They are expected to take care of these controls.
Animal welfare is a very important and sensitive issue in the EU. It gets a lot of attention from NGOs, politicians, and consumers in general. Any issue of animal welfare immediately gets a lot of attention, with articles in the media, etc. Those things are wrongdoings that happen now and then, but have a lot of consequences, so animal welfare is a really important aspect of animal husbandry in the EU.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Thank you.
During the study of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on the impact of the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement on Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector , the witnesses welcomed the intention to establish a dispute settlement process that would be faster than that of the World Trade Organization, or WTO.
Based on the information contained in the final text of the agreement, how long would the dispute settlement process take?
Director General, Trade, European Commission
I don't know it by heart, but it's much shorter than the two or three years that it normally takes at WTO. This is much faster, yes, and it also applies to the SPS chapter. I don't know the exact timing here. I don't have it with me.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Okay.
What are the main ways that this dispute settlement process differs from that of the WTO?
Director General, Trade, European Commission
Do you mean from the WTO or on the CETA?
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
I'm talking about what exists at the WTO.
What are the differences between the WTO's settlement process and the new process?
Director General, Trade, European Commission
I don't have it here with me, but this is a bilateral dispute settlement. I don't have the details here with me.
Liberal
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with my colleague Mr. Dreeshen.
I want to echo my colleagues' sentiments in thanking you for taking the time out of your evening to explain some of the issues and participate with us in this process.
My colleague Mr. Longfield knows these things very well, as he also has a large meat-processing plant in his riding, as I do, and I just want to make sure that we're clear. They're not washing carcasses with chlorine. It's chlorinated water and citric acid and those kinds of things. I don't want our colleagues in the EU to think we're bathing our carcasses in chlorine before we send them over.
You spoke in your comments about there being one set of rules for the 28 countries in the EU and how if our products meet those rules, the benefit is that we're not having to meet 28 different sets of rules, which I think makes a lot of sense and is why the CETA is beneficial. However, a lot of our stakeholders, as Mr. Longfield touched on with the beef carcasses, who are having some difficulty with non-tariff trade barriers that have arisen, and I want to see if there is something that we are missing on our end.
The beef carcasses are one. The other—if you go by your logic on one set of rules—is that traditionally we send about 1.2 million to 1.3 million tonnes of durum wheat to Italy on an annual basis. That has now been cut in half, as they are now saying that Canadian durum wheat is not meeting their standards in Italy; a lot of that has to do with glyphosate.
I am wondering what the rules are when it comes to those types of issues, where it appears that we have met all of the CETA regulations and standards, yet one country, which we rely on a great deal when it comes to a specific product, is able to put up some non-tariff trade barriers to block products from Canada going into the EU. Is there something more we need to do on our end to address some of those issues?
Director General, Health and Food Safety, European Commission
I was not aware that you've already had costs and a decrease in trade of 50%. Is that what you were saying? I think the measure is still quite new, so I'm really surprised.
Director General, Health and Food Safety, European Commission
Your authorities and the representatives of Canadian industries have done an excellent job. I mean, they immediately flagged our attention and their concerns. I think that in the EU we are working on this. In principle, we indeed have one set of import rules, but under certain circumstances member states have the mandate, the subsidiarity, to impose some extra requirements if they can justify them based on certain occasions, developments, some science, or whatever, but then that has to be scrutinized and evaluated at the EU level.
I think we are in that process now with Italy, so I think we don't have a very clear position on this at this moment. I think also I'm not allowed to say much more at this point. I mean, we know the problem, and we know your concerns. You've done an excellent job there—your representatives of the industry, of the wheat producers, and also your officials—and we are working on this on our side.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Would that be something that comes up at the SPS joint management committee meeting when that happens? Would that be an issue that you maybe would try to resolve at that level?
