Agriculture Committee on Oct. 5th, 2023

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I mean legal standing.

[Camille Labchuk]

“Legal standing” is a term of art referring to whether someone has the right to go to court to seek a legal remedy if their rights are being violated. Animals don't currently have any rights.

What we would say, as I've repeatedly mentioned to this committee, is that animals currently don't benefit from on-farm legal protections. They have some of the worst laws in the western world protecting them.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

So you believe in protecting animals over humans and over the rights of Canadians and farmers to have secure farms—

[Camille Labchuk]

That's not what I'm saying at all—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay.

[Camille Labchuk]

I'm saying that we're in the country—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Does it concern you that those who come onto farms uninvited are putting livestock at threat and at risk?

[Camille Labchuk]

Animal Justice doesn't advocate on-farm trespassing. What we're here today to say is that we have very poor laws protecting animals, and that fact is what's contributing to this very low public trust in agriculture.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I'll disagree with you again. There is not a low public trust in agriculture, and that's been proven.

[Camille Labchuk]

Well—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Does it concern you that those who come onto farms uninvited are causing psychological harm to farmers and their families?

[Camille Labchuk]

What concerns me is that there is low public trust in agriculture. You can look at studies from places like the Centre for Food Integrity, which is an industry organization, that show that people are increasingly concerned about animal welfare on farms—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

So the welfare of the farmers and farm families doesn't concern you at all.

[Camille Labchuk]

Yes, it does. I'm concerned about the welfare of animals and I'm concerned about the welfare of farmers—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

But the people who run the farms. Great.

Does it concern you that those who come onto farms uninvited are causing trauma to children who live on the farms?

[Camille Labchuk]

Look, as I've said, we don't advocate on-farm trespass. I'm here today because what this bill would do is shut off undercover videos from investigations that are employment-based, where people lawfully work on the farm and expose what they see to the world. Oftentimes, unfortunately, that includes animal cruelty. These videos have resulted in prosecutions, policy changes—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you very much, again, for no answer.

I'm going to turn my comments and questions over to Dr. Lazare.

Dr. Lazare, in your testimony on Bill 156 at committee in the Ontario legislature, you said that “there are...ways to achieve the legislative objective [here that] have less of an impact on fundamental freedoms. For example, simply raising the fines for trespassing would do the job, or expressly prohibiting the introduction of biosecurity threats, like the federal private member's bill C-205 would do. Both of those things would impair rights less than the current form of the legislation. Again, that's enough for the law to fail in a constitutional challenge.”

In your opening comments, you alluded to the fact that Parliament doesn't have checks and balances set up—when in fact it does—to vet private members' bills to make sure that they are constitutional before they're even introduced.

Thank you for acknowledging that this bill, formerly Bill C-205, prohibits “the introduction of biosecurity threats” on farms. We've already established through previous testimony that whistle-blowers are protected under Bill C-275, since they have lawful authority to be on the premises. Therefore, the provisions in this bill would not apply to them.

Would you agree? How does this bill ban whistle-blowers?

[Dr. Jodi Lazare]

I'm sorry. There were a lot of questions there.

What I said with respect to Bill 156 in Ontario is that Parliament could prohibit the introduction of biosecurity threats on farms. However, what I'm saying today is that this bill doesn't do that, because it only applies to trespassers who, according to the evidence, are not the ones introducing biosecurity risks on farms. That's number one.

How does this bill prevent whistle-blowing? As Ms. Labchuk stated, in certain provinces, entry onto a farm as a whistle-blower or an undercover investigator is illegal. Those people would be on the farm illegally, making them subject to prosecution under this bill as well.

Also, I don't think I said that there are no checks and balances. I think the point of a committee hearing like this is to hear from experts—experts from the CFIA, experts in animal protection and experts in constitutional law—and that's precisely what we're doing right here. We're discussing the validity of the law.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thanks, Dr. Lazare. I appreciate that.

We'll now move to the Liberals and Ms. Taylor Roy for six minutes, please.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

This is a very important bill. Of course, on the agriculture committee, we're all concerned about the health and welfare of farmers, as well as the welfare of the animals on those farms.

There's one thing I'd like to ask about. It has been stated by both Ms. Lazare and by Ms. Labchuk that this bill actually does not address the real risks of biosecurity. In my mind and in hearing from other witnesses, it seems that those biosecurity outbreaks are the largest cause of stress for farm families.

Could you address how this bill could potentially address biosecurity risks on farms, if it is not doing so now?

[Camille Labchuk]

Yes. Thank you for your question.

One thing that we've done through analyzing decades of CFIA data is take a close look at the things that result in biosecurity threats and diseases, and oftentimes it tends to be poor practices on farms or poor adherence to practices that are voluntary. For instance, there have been numerous studies in the dairy sector, in the chicken sector, on mink farms and on rabbit farms that have shown that people are not really following the rules closely when researchers put up cameras to monitor their behaviour.

One thing that we are advocating.... When the last iteration of this bill, Bill C-205, was discussed at this committee two years ago, it was amended to do a couple of things, and I think those amendments would be productive in this case.

The first amendment struck the term “without lawful authority or excuse”. It made this bill apply to anyone who was on a farm who introduced a biosecurity threat, and that's important because we know that the vast majority of biosecurity threats come from people who have regular access to farms. They could be workers, operators or people coming and going with permission. They're not people who are there unlawfully.

That's what we would suggest.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to turn to Dr. Ireland.

I'm curious. There are voluntary standards on farms and there are standards through associations. Does the CFIA have regular inspections for these, or are you only inspecting when you're called in because there's a breach of some sort?

[Dr. Mary Jane Ireland]

Thanks very much. I'll start and then I'm going to pass to my colleague Dr. James-Davies, who is involved with operations and can speak to the farm level.

You're correct that national biosecurity standards are voluntary. Biosecurity in general is a responsibility shared federally, provincially and territorially with industry associations and producers. The national biosecurity standards are the gold standard that has been produced through collaboration between the CFIA with industry, experts, provinces and territories. They establish a framework for biosecurity. Those standards—and there are eight of them—can be tailored and adopted and used by associations and producers to create their own biosecurity strategies. They have been adopted by several national associations to build into their mandatory on-farm safety programs. Examples are the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Chicken Farmers of Canada and the Turkey Farmers of Canada.

With that, I'm going to pass it over to Dr. James-Davies to talk about the presence of the CFIA on farms.

[Dr. Rick James-Davies, Director General, Western Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you, Dr. Ireland and Mr. Chair.

The CFIA's activities are in line with a suite of regulations and policies that regulate the animal industry as a whole. The majority of those activities happen downstream from the farms.

As Dr. Ireland has said, on-farm biosecurity is really the responsibility of farmers, their associations and the provincial bodies that essentially provide a suite of best practices and farm regimes—

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just had to ask: Do you regularly inspect to see that these biosecurity measures are being enforced, are being practised?