Agriculture Committee on Oct. 6th, 2025

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being with us today.

Mr. Northey, I'll be nice and let you finish your thought.

[Greg Northey]

Thank you. I was going to say that we can put all of these on the table. To be honest, many of them have been around for a long time, but the reality—and you mentioned this yourself—is the action. It's actually doing it. It's implementing it. It's taking these things and making them concrete across the whole system.

All these options may be great, and others have really great ones as well, but we've seen so many reports, as I said, for 30 years on this topic. It's about putting them into action.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Northey.

Mrs. Chatel did raise an important point at the beginning of her remarks about recommendations. The problem is often related to the accumulation of measures or standards. Each requirement, taken individually, may be perfectly logical.

How can we ensure that we don't remove requirements that are important?

Let's take an example. Mr. Innes, you mentioned dicamba, which is currently under review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand correctly, this is a re-evaluation of a product that was already approved. Now we're being told that new data suggests this product could pose a health threat, and that may well be true.

How can we strike a balance and not be too quick to withdraw a product that our farmers need? On the other hand, we can't allow farmers to continue using a product if it's harmful.

I'm not drawing any conclusions. We're here to ask questions, together.

I'd like to hear your comments on this, Mr. Innes.

[Brian Innes]

Thank you for the question.

Protecting health and safety certainly must remain paramount. However, we should still be able to find collaborative solutions that are consistent with health and safety obligations. We can ensure food safety while also achieving economic benefits.

For example, the PMRA could adopt a collaborative process to better understand the potential impacts of its decisions. This is what was lacking in the dicamba case.

Of course, the same can be said of the lambda-cy decision. There are several examples of this at the PMRA and the CFIA.

To improve the situation, we need to show that the impact on food safety is significant and review the industry's regulatory processes. We need to keep this in mind and make it a priority.

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

You want us to consider the impacts. I can understand that, but scientific knowledge can change. We may eventually have to change some of the criteria.

Mr. Northey, when the CFIA re-evaluates products that are already in use and decides to withdraw or modify an authorization for use, it's certainly not because the people at the agency woke up one morning and decided they were going to withdraw the authorization for a certain product. There's a reason behind it.

What's the right way to approach this?

[Greg Northey]

It's a very good question. The key for us, I think, is that if you take the PMRA, for example—the way it assesses the products, the science that goes behind it and the high level of standing that the PMRA has globally—we don't want to erode that.

For many of these situations, it may be just a matter of their having to increase the consultation, to increase the sources of data and to have the resources to go more quickly in their assessment. In a lot of these cases when there's a huge delay, it may just be that their caseload or the load of the work they're doing is such that they cannot expedite these particular decisions that are so important for the sector.

As long as we have transparency, insight and what we view as the appropriate lens into what the industry needs and the decision they make, as long as they make it fast and with an understanding of it, and as long as there are processes to work through to have their decision changed or to apply more data, that's really what we're asking for. However, in many cases, it could be just a resourcing issue. It's not necessarily how they're doing it. It's about whether they're getting the proper input and doing it quickly enough.

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

This brings me to another topic.

On the one hand, people sometimes say that certain products should be taken off the market because Europe has discovered that they pose a cancer risk. On the other hand, people point to the economic impacts and say that the product poses no health risk when used correctly.

Wouldn't improving or speeding up the process—without compromising quality, of course—enable us to find less harmful alternatives in these problematic cases?

Do you have any examples of new products that have been awaiting approval for a long time in your respective fields of expertise?

It seems there isn't enough time for a response, but you can send us your answer in writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Okay. Thank you.

We have roughly 12 minutes left. We'll do five minutes for the Conservatives and five minutes for the Liberals, and then we'll finish with Mr. Perron for two and a half minutes.

I believe I'm going to Mr. Bragdon for five minutes.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be splitting my time with Mr. Bonk here shortly.

Mr. Northey and Mr. Innes, thank you for being here today.

I just want to ask this: Was either of you or your organizations approached by any of the governmental departments—CFIA, PMRA or AAFC—for a consultation process regarding the elimination of burdensome regulations? Were you folks consulted in that?

[Brian Innes]

No.

[Greg Northey]

No.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Neither one of you was.

I guess I can ask the gentleman online as well. Mr. Collins, you can submit that, if you'd like.

Obviously, if we're going to get to good policy, we're going to need good consultations with the key stakeholders whose industries are most impacted.

If you were to make recommendations, what would they be? I'll ask you to answer as succinctly as possible as to how to best alleviate the choke points or improve the aspect of making Canadian agriculture more competitive across the board. Can you summarize that as quickly as possible?

[Greg Northey]

Just to confirm, are you asking if we were consulted for these reports that were just published in September? No, we were not, but to be fair, we've been consulted for many, many years on these things. Every two years we're asked. For agriculture, there's an agile regulations table set up by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. They have 170 distinct regulations that have been identified by the sector. So, there's no shortage of massive lists of regulations that impact the sector.

Again, I would just point out that it's taking those and actually putting some change into action.

I'll cede some time to Brian.

[Brian Innes]

When I think about your question, it's not always about the regulation as written. It's about how it is executed. When I look at the things that I brought to the committee today, I see that all of those things could be solved by the way the agencies execute their mandates.

If we look at electronic phytosanitary certification, we see that it's not a regulatory limit; it's a limit of action and a willingness to take action. If we look at the seed regulatory modernization and how we can go from days in one organization to literally two to three months, which is our experience with the CFIA, we see that this timeline could be adjusted through action.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Innes, to follow up on that, what do you suggest is the solution to that? I know we've identified the problem, but what do you feel is the quickest way to a solution for that?

[Brian Innes]

It is clear direction that working to enable food security and economic competitiveness is important for our regulatory agencies.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay, thank you.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Bonk.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Mr. Northey, you made a very impactful statement at the beginning of your remarks when you said there's “institutional inertia” in CFIA and PMRA. We know the Liberals have spent upwards of $80 million in their transformation efforts within PMRA. I'm wondering if any of your stakeholders have seen any benefit at all from this.

[Greg Northey]

The transformation agenda was a challenging process, for sure. We had lots of opportunity to sit on the different committees and working groups that were involved in it, but what ultimately came from that agenda was fairly minimal. There was a regulation that was a positive development that came out of that, but they pulled it back recently.

The overall effort.... To reiterate, everyone identifies the problem we have, where agencies have a set of regulations that are either not performed well or not really working for industry. They embarked on that, but that transformation agenda did not bring the impact they were hoping for.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Every one of you today has brought up the need for more collaboration, and you could hear in Mr. Collins' voice that, for his organization, there was no collaboration when they were coming up with a lot of these regulations. Would it be possible, Mr. Innes, for you to talk about...? You always use dicamba, for example. Did you feel there was enough collaboration between your organization and CFIA and PMRA?

[Brian Innes]

When we think about implementing food security and competitiveness, it's ultimately about evolving the process to enable it to be more collaborative. The process for a special review is a black box, and what we end up with is a proposed decision after years of behind-the-curtain discussions at the regulatory agency.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

I'm going to have to stop you right there. Thank you very much.

Mr. Connors, you have five minutes.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Good day, gentlemen. Thanks for coming in.

I know your organizations have been around for a long time. Greg, you just mentioned that you've been consulted before. How has the regulatory red tape and burden changed over the years, in your opinion? I think most of us would agree there is more than previously, so I think that's already been answered, but what is the reason for that? Is it because of the complexity of the issues now and how the industry has changed? How do you think the role of regulation has changed over the years?

[Greg Northey]

Yes, we've been consulted a lot on regulation. There's always been an opportunity to feed into what should change. Some of the biggest things we're noticing are the speed of business, the speed of innovation and the way we need to get our product to market. If you're talking about CFIA and phytosanitary certificates, for instance, and how you get a shipment from Saskatchewan or Ontario to your end-use market, the speed is incredible now and the competition is even higher. While before we could generally muddle through and have 10-day service standards for things or take 410 days to get a novel trait decided upon, we just can't do that anymore. We have many competitors globally, and we're trying to position ourselves in Canada to compete in the world in our system.

Whether it's risk aversion or whether there are not enough resources to implement the regulations from the government side, we're just noticing it more, and it becomes much more problematic. Ultimately, what happens is that Canadian businesses have to put in their own resources. You have to hire three more people to deal with the regulatory process to make it go smoothly, and it becomes more problematic. That's where the friction is really emerging.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Innes, did you have anything to add to that?