Agriculture Committee on June 15th, 2021

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

The very short answer is that influenza is a disease in which the strains mix and can change and potentially become zoonotic and affect people. Certainly, when you start mixing a pig strain, which is one that crosses into people, with a turkey strain, which is one that crosses into others, then you get a strain that may affect all species.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Dr. Pritchard.

Now we'll move to Mr. Louis for six minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Louis.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it.

Thank you, obviously, to all our witnesses.

I want to say thank you to Dr. Pritchard. I have to say that your stock has gone up exponentially with the fact that you're appearing today with your dog at your side.

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

I might have to pick her up. I don't know why she's whining. She's usually good.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I think the chair would allow that, and we appreciate it.

I'm here in Kitchener, just down the road from University of Guelph, your old alma mater. Everyone says hello, and things are going well there.

With the testimony we've heard and the stakeholders we've heard from, we've all agreed that strong biosecurity measures are essential to protect animal health and well-being. We've also heard about protecting the mental health of farmers, and then the marketability of farm products.

A lot of the testimony we've heard is saying that the introduction of a pathogen or a pest in Canadian livestock is most likely through routine animal health management practices such as moving animals between herds or flocks without appropriate biosecurity measures, or movement of service providers in previous contact with other animals and environments, or movement of contaminated equipment, manure or carcasses. We've heard about wildlife vectors and herds being close to wild animals. Is there a way you can kind of broadly give an order of prevalence for the major root causes of biosecurity issues?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

The most common transmission is when animals, or humans directly in charge of the animals, move between premises. That's the number one thing that you're shutting down with biosecurity.

In 2014, certainly one of the possible introductions—and it was pretty high on the list as a possible introduction—was the fact that there were B.C. Hydro vehicles going through fields. They were going from farm to farm through fields, putting in something.

In 2014, it was a strain of pathogenic avian influenza that was coming directly from wild animals, and I'm pretty sure that they basically carried duck poop from one farm to another farm and continued the infection. Something takes it onto the farm, and then someone takes it onto the barn, so yes, it could have been that a farm worker accidentally took it into the barn by not being careful or not changing footwear in a barn, but the introduction onto the property was actually thought to be transmitted by vehicles.

There are so many different things, and that's why, when you do an epidemiological investigation of what caused it and how it moved from here to there, you never really get the final answer. You're so lucky if you get that smoking gun. You get that it could have been this or it could have been that. When you're posed with whether it could be this threat, for someone who is unaware of the biosecurity measures that should be taken and isn't taking them, we don't know where they've come from and where they're going. That's a clear threat to me, because there are so many things that can do it. If you can say no to something that clearly would cause a problem, that's helpful.

When there are so many things—will wind carry it, will dogs carry it, do birds carry it, do insects carry it—you never know. Some things you can't stop, but if there's something you can stop, why would you not stop it?

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you. As far as where we as a government can dedicate our resources goes, would you suggest that we can improve the...let's say on-farm management, or should it be in broader education? What kinds of resources can we use to help with these major outbreaks or major pathogen concerns?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

Most of the industries are addressing that. Doing that is in one's own interest in order to remain viable as an industry. My personal experience is mainly with swine and poultry in the Fraser Valley. For anyone going onto a poultry farm in the Fraser Valley, there's an anteroom. Before you go into the barn there's a line at which you have to change your footwear and your outer clothing. As a veterinarian, you can't be in another barn that day, and you have to have changed everything in between farms.

How you perform biosecurity to protect a farm is well known. The measures are fairly intense for even just a broiler barn, and they go up, based on the value of the bird inside, to the point that they're not going to let a visitor in unless the actual barn is empty. They're just not going to let that happen. They go all the way up to the very high biosecurity swine barns, for which you have to shower in and shower out. Literally, there's that point going in and out at which you have just come through a shower and you are naked and you're putting on a whole different set of clothes, on the other side of the barn, that stay in the barn. That's a very high level of biosecurity.

These things are very variable. For instance, if you go to a dairy farm, people don't seem to really pay a lot of attention other than not letting onto the premises or into the barn, hopefully, people who have been in another barn, and trying to be aware of that. Different industries have different relationships with biosecurity, and I guess the ones I'm more familiar with—and certainly the ones that come under more scrutiny by the animal activists—are mink farms and poultry farms. On swine farms and even on mink farms there is a very high level of biosecurity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Louis.

Thank you, Dr. Pritchard.

We'll move on to Monsieur Perron.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes. Please go ahead

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Pritchard, thank you for making yourself available today. We are glad to welcome you.

You are in favour of Bill C‑205, of course. I would like to start by talking about current legislation. Some who are opposed to the bill tell us that these break-ins are already covered in the Criminal Code.

What can we tell them to justify passing Bill C-205?.

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

My experience is very local on this. After the swine farm occupation in British Columbia, I organized a meeting dealing with One Welfare, which is dealing with both human and animal welfare. At that meeting were the RCMP officers who had responded to the family farm the animal activists had invaded, as well as representatives of processors, and not directly that farm family but friends of that farm family and the veterinarians who attended that farm.

I think the largest problem in opposing anything like this is when you understand the trauma this causes. I completely agree that the provinces need to step up and address the trespassing, but to me it's clear that someone should not be able to come onto your property, cut a chain, open a door and walk in. If that can't be enforced, I don't know.... We need to be able to do better on that. We need anything that continues, as I said, to make it more consistent across the provinces and that adds to the penalty to make it somehow or other a deterrent to this continuing to happen, because this causes significant trauma to the people who go through it. They clearly have post-traumatic stress disorder from this. More than a year after the event, they could barely talk about it. The emotion was building up in them as they tried to address this. It was clearly painful, and there were discussions about how the children had been shamed on social media and continued to pay the price and had to change schools. It's just painful. It's just painful.

I think anything that contributes to, as I said, a consistent national approach and to increasing this as a deterrent is a step in the right direction.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much.

You mention post-traumatic stress disorder and so on. Do you feel that it could also give rise to regrettable incidents? We don't really know how people will react if they feel attacked on their own property.

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

Farmers are farmers. Certainly I wouldn't say this about ranchers in some provinces, because when animal identification came in I felt a little threatened going on to some ranches, but farmers aren't going to take this into their own hands. I have never heard a farmer say that they were going to do that. What they say is that when their neighbour is impacted, they are going to go and stand beside them.

Some purchasers of the processors just walked away from them when they were impacted, but the ones who stood up and said they wanted to help and they stood beside.... They come out and they literally stand on the property and show that the farmer is not alone in this, that the bullying is unacceptable.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

Let me go back to the enforcement of provincial legislation. According to a number of witnesses, it seems that having to prove damages also makes enforcing the legislation difficult. That would be one of the strengths of Bill C‑205. It would remove that burden. If I understood your opening statement correctly, you could start from the simple fact that the required protocols had not been followed. Since an offence would already have taken place, that would remove the burden of proof.

Did I understand you correctly?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

I spend all day reading regulation and trying to figure out how to enforce it. Being reckless as to whether entering such a place could result in the exposure of animals to a disease or toxic substance means.... To me, if you're not following the protocols, it could.

I feel that the burden of proof is not to show that a disease was transmitted but that it could have been transmitted. I feel that the bar for burden of proof is much lower.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay, thank you very much.

Earlier, you said that you are not an expert on the resources of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Do you believe that there can be an effective partnership with local police forces at a certain point, whereby they could simply document the offence?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Dr. Pritchard, we're out of time on this one, but go ahead with a very quick answer, please.

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

Very quickly, when I have spoken to the RCMP, certainly in the Fraser Valley, the officers wish to have that kind of a relationship, but there are not a lot of resources for them to develop that expertise and support.

Definitely we all work together when we have disease outbreaks. I am sure there is a way of doing it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Dr. Pritchard and Monsieur Perron.

Now we will go to Mr. MacGregor.

Go ahead, Mr. MacGregor, for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Pritchard, for informing this committee as we examine Bill C-205.

You were chief veterinary officer of British Columbia—also my home province. Can you tell me a bit about some of your main duties in that role?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

That was one of three hats that I wore in the duties. You get a little grey in between, so I was replaced by three people when I retired.

As the chief veterinary officer, the primary duty is basically to advise the minister of agriculture and the government, and to enforce what was brought in while I was there, which was the new act to protect animals. It's a lot of being aware of what's going on.

When you get into the relationship like I had with avian influenza in 2014, a lot of what I was doing was simply being this spokesperson as the CVO. I was getting all of the information, but my duties within that were of a relationship, advice and that sort of thing. Most of what I was doing was running the lab and getting the diagnostic samples through and, at the same time, making sure we were delivering the same services to prevent all the diseases in all the areas. Then the other side of it was overseeing, to make sure the people who were working under me—because we had been through it before—were not burning out.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Dr. Pritchard, during that time, in the conversations you had with the minister of agriculture and other departmental officials, did you ever discuss any shortcomings with the existing Health of Animals Act? Did you see a gap that Bill C-205 is now trying to fill, at that time?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

I did not specifically, but the current Health of Animals Act….

In British Columbia, the chief veterinary officer is all-powerful once an emergency is declared. There is a tremendous amount of power that falls on the shoulders of the chief veterinary officer to be able to do things, without even having written approval or putting it in writing; you can do all kinds of things verbally. There is a great deal of power that is very onerous to carry. The act itself provides so much power that you weren't looking for anything else to support it.

However, outside of that, certainly in dealing with an occasion where animal activists broke into a mink farm, let mink out and filmed them—it was just horrible—that was a family farm, and I was looking for something more there.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I guess one of the struggles we have had with competing witness testimony thus far is on the question over jurisdiction. Property and civil rights fall under provincial jurisdiction, which is why they make trespass laws, and, of course, biosecurity is definitely an applicable federal criminal law power trying to prohibit public health evil and bring the prohibitions to stop it.

In your view, is the issue we are trying to address here an issue of trespassing on farms and causing all of that unrest that farmers have to deal with, often by themselves, for a few hours before enforcement comes, or are we legitimately trying to plug a hole in existing biosecurity gaps right now?

[Dr. Jane Pritchard]

I personally feel that if the trespass regulations were enough of a deterrent, that would be enough, because you would be able to prevent the act, and if it occurred, you would be able to react quickly and contain it. The issue is that if you cannot react quickly and contain it or prevent it, then that introduces the concept of a risk to biosecurity. That is where I see the addition being protective.