Agriculture Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[Jean-Emmanuel Poitras]

Our members often tell us that a free trade agreement does not necessarily amount to market access. It’s therefore important for issues of access to markets to be resolved when negotiating free trade agreements and before they come into force so that businesses can reap the full benefits of the expanded access offered through these agreements.

[Emma Harrison, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

You spoke about a phased approach to front-of-pack labelling enforcement and I saw your recommendation for a “collaborative, phased compliance approach”.

Could you speak a little bit more about what that would look like?

[Kristina Farrell]

We are trying to recommend to the government that we give a bit of a grace period, so that companies can make individual plans with their local CFIA offices for first using up their existing inventory of packaging versus the firm deadline of January 2026. If they do need to get rid of the packaging they already have, there is a significant cost. It's also waste, when we're talking about reducing plastic waste at the same time.

[Emma Harrison, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Doyon, right now in Canada—and I think COVID-19 kind of elevated this—we have a really unique opportunity to buy local and support local producers.

What red tape is making it difficult for Canadians to access locally grown products? What would you say would make things easier?

[Paul Doyon]

Certainly, local products are available locally. There may be some regulations, particularly provincial regulations that provide a framework for this type of marketing. This underscores the need for a streamlined approach to developing this type of marketing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you.

Next, we have Mr. Perron, for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I’d like to thank the witnesses for taking time to meet with us today. We appreciate their presence.

Mr. Doyon, I’d like to hear your general thoughts on registration timelines at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, or PMRA. You spoke to the need to be transparent and not to lower requirements. I think we’re on the same page on that because it's very important to protect health, safety and so forth.

However, I have serious concerns when I hear examples of registrations that have taken 10 years or longer. We may not be scientists, but sooner or later, we get the feeling that the file has been sitting on the shelf for a while.

In your opinion, what improvements are needed at the PMRA to shorten timelines?

[Paul Doyon]

I think we need to introduce an approach that will free up resources to expedite the process. As you said, we’ve seen wait times that make no sense. Furthermore, our ability to act swiftly is hindered when urgent action is required due to climate change or something of that nature. Timely decisions suffer from delays when time is of the essence.

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

The issue of late registrations in emergencies is important to me because approvals are granted after the emergency has passed. Produce growers also spoke to that last week. Have you identified any aspects of this process that could be streamlined or improved?

[Paul Doyon]

The ability to use data or studies from other countries would be one way to reduce wait times in emergencies. There are other tests that have been conducted elsewhere. Perhaps it would help to use them in emergencies.

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

It would depend on the source. We agree that they must be from trusted partners, but we’ve already covered that question.

Mr. Poitras, you addressed a number of items in your remarks. One of the things you touched on was improving efficiencies in inspections. This is a topic that resonates with me because I can say, and not be too far off the mark, that I always circle back to this topic with your members.

What’s being done to improve that? You have many day-to-day examples. What would you recommend to committee members?

[Jean-Emmanuel Poitras]

Two pathways for improvements have emerged from proposals made by our members, who are complaining that there are a lot of differing interpretations of inspection guidelines and requirements. A guideline may be interpreted in one way in a plant in Quebec and in another way in a plant in Ontario. Our first recommendation for a pathway for improvement is therefore to create a formal mechanism that would allow businesses to flag these inconsistencies to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. This would provide businesses with clear responses to help rectify non-compliance issues. It would also reduce certain irritants.

The second proposal for a pathway for improvement is to modernize certain inspection methods. For instance, inspections to confirm proper product labelling could be performed remotely. Currently, all inspections must be done in person, which adds costs and delays.

These improvements would make industry and the CFIA more effective and efficient.

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

I assume that your idea of a mechanism for flagging discrepancies or differences in interpretation could also be used to flag inspections that drag on and that sometimes seem to stem from a single-minded focus or come across as excessive. We all have cases we could cite. What’s your view of that?

[Jean-Emmanuel Poitras]

Any mechanism to flag differing interpretations or certain irritants to resolve inefficiencies promptly and effectively would be very beneficial to the industry.

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

There’s a lot of talk about improving systems to make them more efficient. You spoke about front-of-pack labelling in your submission and in your presentation.

There are a lot of problems with labelling, which is not perfect. Among others, I raised the issue of cranberries with the former minister and I’m going to do so soon with the new minister. Cranberries are considered a relatively healthy food, but dried ones are oversweetened to enhance flavour. However, labelling conveys the impression that they’re simply bad.

There were many restrictions from the outset. We understand the regulations are well intentioned, but to what extent were you consulted before they were implemented? You also said that labelling compliance requirements should be phased in. I’d like you to tell me more because I know there are significant costs related to inventory of labels.

[Kristina Farrell]

We were certainly consulted as they were being developed. I will note, given the extensive resources that companies have put into already changing their packaging, that we're past the point of no return to some degree. That's why we're recommending that, in the meantime, we have a discretionary period. That's what we've been requesting of Health Canada and the CFIA, which would allow companies to use up the products they already have instead of throwing them out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Epp, you have five minutes.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I come from a processing vegetable, grain and oilseeds background. I first attended industry conferences, I believe, in 1988, and we talked about Canada free trade. By 1990, at industry conferences, we started hearing about the criticality of this word “harmonization”. Here we are many years later, and we're still talking about the goal of harmonization.

I'll begin with Food and Beverage Canada. The presentation you gave was very well done. In your document, you put forward the idea of calling for a national summit, a regulatory summit. Is the problem that we don't know the “what”, or is the problem that, for some reason, for the last 30 years, we haven't figured out the criticality of doing so? Just for the record, I was very young in 1988, but I've heard of this over and over again. Why is this so difficult?

[Kristina Farrell]

As you heard from AAFC officials earlier in the week, the agile regulations table working group identified more than 130 regulatory irritants. While they indicated that they've worked on addressing some of these, I don't feel that there's been any transparency as to which ones have been addressed or the timeline for those be addressed.

I think the red-tape review reports were promising, a good step forward, but we recommended the idea of a summit, recognizing that food is different from other industries in Canada, to be able to have that transparency with industry as to how these irritants are being addressed and the timeline for them, which is something we feel is missing from the reports.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

To push back on that a little bit more, it's how they are being addressed. We heard in testimony at the last committee—let's take the PMRA, for example—that they touted that their performance standards were 69% or 79% while the EPA, another trusted jurisdiction, was only 29%. Can you talk about whether we're talking about apples and oranges?

In the first round today, we heard that the EPA is dealing with 58,000 actives, whereas Canada is only dealing with 8,000. Is that a function of workload? Is it a function of comparing apples and apples? I'm trying to get my head around why we seemingly can't get progress on harmonization.

[Kristina Farrell]

We certainly need a culture change within our regulators. Again, as I mentioned in my remarks, we don't have a good process for identifying—even though we have now identified some of those—the path forward in terms of reducing some of these regulatory irritants. Although we do a lot of consulting, I think we need to take a pause, especially with what's happening with our trading partners, and not regulate for the sake of regulating. I do think that it will take a bit of a culture change within regulators to do so.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Graydon, would you have a comment as to whether it's culture change or the specifics that need to be identified in order to make some progress harmonizing with our trading partners?

[Michael Graydon]

I think a culture change is a big part of it. I think the second part, the harmonization, will come once that culture change starts to evolve. It is almost self-perpetuating, this whole evolution of a regulator. They get one step further and they just keep going down that rabbit hole to the point of the complexity and the challenges we face as manufacturing units dealing with government.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Canada does have a good, solid international reputation on food safety. Nobody wants to take away from that. But would it be an accurate statement that we seem to be hiding behind that reputation as a justification for our slow responses and timeliness in adopting new technologies?

I'll start with you, Mr. Graydon, and then I'll come back to FBC.

[Michael Graydon]

I would think so. At the end, sometimes there's too much of a good thing. I think the reputational aspect of our regulations is very good, but you can take things too far. It's now far exceeded its investment in regard to regulations and isn't providing a return on investment anymore. It's just adding costs. It is actually starting to restrict our abilities to diversify trade.