Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members, and thank you for the invitation to appear today.
As you heard, my name is Catherine Filejski. I'm a licensed veterinarian and the president and CEO of the Canadian Animal Health Institute, known colloquially as CAHI.
As the head of CAHI, I represent the developers, manufacturers and distributors of the vital veterinary medicines that safeguard Canada's livestock and poultry sectors. We are a national association, serving as the trusted science-based voice of the Canadian animal health industry since our founding in 1968. Our full-member companies are responsible for sales of approximately 95% of Canada's animal health market.
As this committee reviews the future of business risk management programs ahead of the next FPT agreement negotiations, our core message is simple: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Animal agriculture is characterized by unique and highly volatile realities of animal disease outbreaks and biosecurity threats. When a pathogen enters a barn or a pasture, the financial devastation is often immediate, compounding and catastrophic.
Historically, our BRM suites, like AgriStability and AgriRecovery, have been essential lifelines. However, the agricultural policy community widely recognizes that relying solely on BRM programs creates a reactive framework that compensates for losses only after financial ruin has already occurred.
BRM programs can and in fact must be substantially improved by strategically complementing them with proactive animal health and biosecurity initiatives. We must modernize our definition of risk management to include the regulatory tools that allow us to prevent disease outbreaks from triggering these multi-million-dollar tax payouts in the first place.
To modernize business risk management programs effectively, we need to align our regulatory policies with our agricultural resilience goals. Rapid access to innovative veterinary medicines is a fundamental pillar of national biosecurity. If our producers do not have the necessary tools to protect their herds, no stabilization fund will be able to compensate for lost market opportunities.
Right now, Canadian producers face a critical vulnerability: a lack of access to veterinary medicines due to Canada-specific regulatory hurdles. Because Canada represents only about 2.5% of the global animal health market, international innovators frequently choose not to navigate our costly, lengthy and unique bureaucratic pathways.
Consider the ongoing issues with histomoniasis, commonly known as blackhead disease, in Canadian turkeys. This disease is often fatal to turkey flocks, causing immense animal suffering and severe financial strain for producers. Currently, there is no licensed treatment available in Canada. An effective and licensed treatment does currently exist in Italy. However, because of current Canadian regulatory requirements, it is not economically feasible to register this product in Canada, and Canadian turkey farmers currently have no viable, efficient way to access this medicine to save their flocks. They are left exposed, and when a flock is lost, our BRM programs are forced to bear the cost.
To fix this, the next FPT agreement must incorporate clear policy outcomes that are focused on regulatory reform and policy coherence. We urge the government to improve BRM resilience by investing in our regulatory infrastructure in two concrete ways.
First, create abbreviated regulatory pathways that allow for simultaneous review or, better yet, recognition of approvals from trusted international jurisdictions like the European Union or the U.S.
Second, reduce Canada-specific data requirements that don't significantly enhance the safety of veterinary medicines but do delay market access to them. By removing these unnecessary barriers, we can equip Canadian farmers with global standard tools to prevent and control outbreaks before they become disastrous and trigger BRM payouts. Proactive animal health is the ultimate form of risk mitigation.
Thank you. I welcome your questions.