Evidence of meeting #4 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pmra.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Thank you.
Practically speaking, there is no mechanism. As I understand, food is not being inspected on the way in for that, or is it?
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
That is a good question. I do not know the answer to what level of import scrutiny is being done. I do believe CFIA has a testing program to look at imported food and residues, but I don't know the specific details on that today.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
With your work on the IR-4 project or our minor use of the IR-4, can you talk a bit about climatic zones? Does the PMRA recognize where we have similar zones between where I'm from in southern Ontario and Michigan, Quebec and New York state, Montana and our western provinces? Is that being acknowledged? Is that being accepted in their reviews and their assessments?
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
There is a North American zone map, and research trials that are conducted in similar geographic and climatic areas can be used interchangeably between Canada and the U.S., like in an Alberta and Montana trial. One good thing to expand that further would be to look at that on a global basis. Do we have similarities between, let's say, here and Europe that we can do the same thing with?
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
I understand that, but if the PMRA is looking at that, then why isn't that resulting in similar time standards in having our products either re-evaluated or approved for use?
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
It's a great question. What often occurs is that the same data goes into PMRA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a different outcome comes out, at the end of the day. I cannot explain why that is.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
That's interesting.
The statement was made that service standards were 79% being met by the PMRA, whereas the EPA was at only 29%. Again, with your international work, would you be aware that those service standards are the same? Is the EPA holding itself to the same kinds of service standards as the PMRA? Otherwise, we're comparing apples and oranges.
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
PMRA has certain application categories that I know they measure their performance against. Whether or not those are the same types of categories as the EPA is using, I'm not sure. I have heard, though, that companies that are looking to get new technologies registered in Canada are facing the longest wait times they've ever had.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
In discussions with a crop protection industry representative—now this, granted, was over a year ago—I was led to believe that when companies applied for reassessment and submitted their information, they were not able to use a new technology called email and actually had to fax all of the things in. The PMRA was working on a seven-year project to bring a new technology in for use, using online email. Can you comment?
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
At the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, we don't submit applications to PMRA directly ourselves, so I can't comment on that process.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
On the transformation initiative that has already absorbed over $80 million of government funds into the PMRA, what impact has the industry has seen from that? Has there been any kind of improvement in service standards or anything positive back that the industry has seen from that?
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
Yes, I'd say, speaking candidly from the industry perspective, we haven't seen any positive impact from that investment.
Conservative
Dave Epp Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
It was mentioned in Mr. Laycraft's testimony that structural change should be considered. Can you comment on whether the movement of PMRA to another...? I'll ask Mr. Laycraft to comment on this as well. I ask for your perspective, and then I'll go to Mr. Laycraft.
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
I think the movement of PMRA itself, without changing how it functions, won't result in meaningful change. We need to look within the policies and procedures at PMRA itself.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Michael Coteau
I'm going to stop you there. Your six minutes are up. Thank you, sir.
We're going to go to the next speaker, MP Chatel.
Liberal
Sophie Chatel Liberal Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses for being here.
Our government was elected to build a strong Canadian economy. However, as we know, one of the major obstacles to growth, especially in the agricultural and agri-food sectors, is the accumulation and rigidity of regulations and requirements, as well as service delays.
In July, we asked all departments to undertake a major review to reduce red tape, eliminate duplication and improve services. The progress report was tabled in September by all departments.
We really want to hear feedback from representatives of the Food Inspection Agency and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. The changes that were listed earlier with respect to regulations in all sectors, whether it be harmonization, technology registration or new products approved in a trading country, such as the United States or Australia, or in Europe, are already in the progress report.
The question I really want to ask all the witnesses is this: Is it ambitious enough?
If not, can you tell us where it is not ambitious enough? I would like to hear your comments, one at a time. If you do not have time to answer my questions, I would ask you to submit your response in writing to tell us where federal agencies and departments should be more ambitious in this process.
I would first like to hear Mr. Laycraft's response. Then Mr. Duyvelshoff and the witnesses participating by video conference can answer my questions.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Cattle Association
That, I think, is the critical question when we talk about restructuring. The restructuring isn't changing names; it's changing expertise in some of these as we go through process verification. I'll use an example. We've been working since 2017 to get third party verifiers for the EU program, and we're still working on one and two. Right now in the U.S., through AMS, they have a group of experts who specialize in that. In 2010, it took them six months to approve their first third party verifier, and today they have 52 third party verifiers available.
You create, first of all, the mandate that they're measured against to get this done. You don't necessarily put a meat inspector there. They're incredibly important, and we need them to do their job. Health and safety is something we all believe in, but when it comes to doing these things, it may be that a country has certain certification, maybe halal certification—we're dealing with that with Indonesia right now—that's not food safety. That is a procedural thing that we need to get verified.
In the U.S., FAS, the Foreign Agricultural Service, and AMS deal with that, and they deal with it very efficiently. That's what we're talking about. You put the mandate. If it's more about marketing and quality, keep the meat inspectors, those people in charge of ensuring healthy food for Canadians, which is a different expertise. That's certainly what we believe.
Liberal
Sophie Chatel Liberal Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC
Thank you, Mr. Laycraft.
Mr. Duyvelshoff, I would like to hear your comments on this matter.
Chair, Crop Protection, Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada
I would like to comment specifically on international collaboration, because that is one of the items that is mentioned in the report. This would be co-operation with other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and so on.
The important part that is lacking for us is taking other countries' reviews and using them to substitute for work done in Canada, not simply discussing what either country feels about what the data says but trusting it to the point of using that to make decisions in Canada. That is the level of co-operation that Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada would like to see.
Liberal
Sophie Chatel Liberal Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC
Thank you very much.
Mr. Léger Bourgoin, what are your thoughts on this?
General Manager, Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec
We agree with what our colleagues have said. It all depends on how agile we are in implementing the new procedures.
What I have noticed about governments, whether it be the Government of Quebec or the Government of Canada, is that they have reached a point of zero risk-taking. Risk management must be considered in a context where the world is changing rapidly and where we are facing the globalization of markets. We must therefore be able to ensure both food integrity and food safety in Canada. However, there is no such thing as zero risk. This is true even in Canada. During the previous legislative session, Canadian government officials addressed the committee on the issue of risk management for products from abroad.
My comment may sound like an editorial on the issue. Sometimes, when it comes to risk management, we are much more flexible or show greater latitude for products from outside Canada than for local products, where the chain of traceability is often much clearer—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Michael Coteau
I must stop you there, Mr. Léger Bourgoin. Thank you.
Mr. Perron, you now have the floor for six minutes.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses for taking the time to appear before us today. It is greatly appreciated.
Ms. Lessard, in your remarks, you mentioned the lack of flexibility in the context of climate change. Could you elaborate on that by giving us an example so that we can fully understand what you mean?
Associate Executive Director, Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec
Yes, absolutely.
We must consider climate change, but we must also take into account the concrete data provided by producers. In some cases, such as in Quebec, we notice that certain data or geographical information is not necessarily taken into account.
I will give the example of our emergency registration application submitted to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency for a product called Command 360 ME. As part of our application, we provided studies to the PMRA. In addition, there was a consensus among experts, the Quebec government and Quebec producers to request emergency registration of this product. We also presented studies conducted in the Quebec context. The PMRA refused our application for emergency registration, stating that according to studies conducted in Ontario, there were alternative pesticides and herbicides available. However, these products are not acceptable to us and do not work in the Quebec context. Emergency registration was not granted and, as a result, producers did not have herbicides for beets for the 2025 production season. This is all the more unfortunate given that the alternatives proposed by the PMRA were more harmful to health and the environment than the product requested by our association.
This type of Canada-wide approach is clearly problematic and does not take into account our specific situation. Whether we are talking about climate, soil type, needs or molecules, the data we need to obtain emergency registration may vary. We regret that this was not taken into account by the PMRA.