Agriculture Committee on Oct. 26th, 2023

[Lynn Kavanagh]

Yes.

I was going to say that there are particular concerns with certain fragile animals, like cull dairy cows. Because of the way the system is structured, they have to go through auctions first, rather than directly to slaughter. That's another change that could happen. By way of example, that's what extends their time substantially.

I would be happy to share our report on that particular issue. If anyone is interested, they can follow up.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Ms. Taylor Roy.

Thank you, Ms. Kavanagh.

Finally, we have Monsieur Perron.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Actually, Mr. Chair, I have just one question.

Ms. Fitzgerald, in your introduction earlier, you said that what was desirable was a permanent exemption, like what exists in the United States.

As for providing the clarification requested regarding section 76 of the regulations in question and clarifying the instructions that are given for interpreting those regulations, I understand that this can be done in the short term and that it would solve a problem.

If we manage to do that in the short term, would you still recommend that the committee suggest an amendment to the act to create a permanent exemption like the one in the United States, or would an amendment to the guidelines for regulatory enforcement be enough?

[Susan Fitzgerald]

Initially, because we are talking about something we would like to put in place in the relatively short term, that clarification or guidance, particularly utilizing our existing regulations in subsections 76(1) and 76(2).... Ideally, as I mentioned, harmonization with the United States is preferable. We noted the integration of our agriculture sector in certain parts of the country, more so than in others, and that we have animal transporters operating on both sides of the border, often during the same day. They have to comply with both sets of regulations.

Ideally, yes, we would like to see harmonization between our countries. In the short term, I think we need something to safeguard animal welfare. The guidance in subsections 76(1) and 76(2) could be that tool.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Perron.

I have one final question.

Ms. Fitzgerald, you mentioned of course that drivers are required to record the reason if there was an issue and they had to invoke the emergency piece. You talked about how this is actually inspected at a provincial level. One of the things I heard today was that Transport Canada is of course asking industry to provide numbers that ultimately seem to reside within provincial jurisdiction. Maybe that's something for which this particular council you mentioned, the CCMTA, could be a bit of a purveyor, to try to actually flush out a more concrete element of the numbers instead of asking industry, where that is recorded in a decentralized way. Ultimately, those numbers might reside provincially. Is that a fair assessment, how I just recapped that?

[Susan Fitzgerald]

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. That is an excellent suggestion. As was mentioned before, individual companies are not going to report to an association and so on the number of violations they've had, and not every company is a member of our association. Certainly the data and the true numbers of infractions should reside with those enforcement agencies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

As the son of a truck driver, I'm glad I had a good suggestion for the trucking industry.

Thank you, Ms. Fitzgerald.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us here today: Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Shantz from the Canadian Livestock Transporters' Alliance, Ms. Cartwright from Humane Canada, Ms. Kavanagh from World Animal Protection, and Mr. Schwindt from the Canadian Pork Council. Thank you so much for sticking around.

Colleagues, just quickly before I let you go, in terms of planning, we have asked for the production of documents from major retailers. Those requests have now gone out, with the deadline of November 2. However, we've asked to be in camera and there are a lot of procedural elements that I think we could use some clarity on, along with legal requirements in terms of the documents that we will see and how far our parliamentary privilege extends. I don't want to be running afoul of competition law, so I've asked for the law clerk to actually come in to provide an in camera briefing about some of the legality of what we're moving forward on. I intend to do that on Monday.

For November 2, where we don't have anything slotted, with your permission I would just give that time back to you to work with your constituents and on constituents' files. On November 6, we can either move to the biosecurity report that we prepared as a committee—because the analyst should have that ready—or we can take a moment to go in camera and look at the production of documents, depending on what happens on November 2.

That just gives you a sense of where we're at. There are a lot of moving parts, but that's what we'll do on Monday. I don't intend to hold a meeting on Thursday, unless somehow you want to challenge the discretion of the chair. That's all good.

Biosecurity recommendations for the study we are going to be doing need to be in tomorrow by 5 p.m.

Mr. Louis, do you have a quick question?

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

Do we have a budget to approve for today? Is there anything we need to approve?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

The only other element of course is that we are working to get the Minister of Transport. His schedule has not allowed for next week. That's part of the scheduling issue of my trying to fill meetings. I am told that officials would be available sooner than the minister would be. My question for the committee is whether you would like me to work on calling officials. We could do that on November 2, but I'm not so sure that Minister Rodriguez would be able to join us. I need some discretion from this committee.

Mr. Steinley, would you like to see the administration of the Department of Transport? We might be able to work on having them come on November 2, or certainly we could work on having them come on Monday, potentially, but the minister is not available next week. Normally we have the minister and officials. Would you like to have just officials?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I would like to try to get the minister here.

Did we say up to three meetings? I'm just wondering. We submitted a pretty substantial witness list. I'd like to see if we could have the three meetings so all the witnesses we contacted would be able to present here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

We've set a minimum of two. That's what we are working on in terms of the schedule. We might not be able to litigate that today, but what I'm hearing, at least from Mr. Steinley—and I'm happy to hear from any other members—is that if the minister is not available next week, you want to wait and see if there's an opportunity to have these officials and the minister together.

Mr. Perron, Mr. MacGregor or any of my Liberals colleagues, do you have any thoughts?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

As long as the witnesses respect the function of the House of Commons, the percentages, that's the only thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. MacGregor, do you have any thoughts? Okay, good. We'll proceed with trying to find another time that the minister might be able to join us. We'll proceed as I mentioned to you, and anything further we can discuss off-line.

Thank you to our witnesses.

The meeting is adjourned.