Fisheries Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Welcome to meeting number seven of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the traceability of fish and seafood products.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Proceedings are available via the House of Commons website. So you are aware, the webcast shows the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

I'm not going to go over the COVID-19 directives because we've all heard them many times and should know them well.

Interpretation services are available for this meeting. Please inform me if interpretation is lost and we'll ensure it is restored before resuming.

The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used if you wish to speak or alert the chair. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. For those on video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself before speaking. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

I remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the first panel today. We have, as an individual, Robert Hanner, professor at the University of Guelph. From Oceana Canada, we have Sayara Thurston, campaigner. From Ocean Wise, we have Claire Dawson, senior manager, fisheries and seafood initiative.

We will now proceed with opening remarks for five minutes or less. We'll go to Mr. Hanner first, please.

[Dr. Robert Hanner, Professor, University of Guelph, As an Individual]

Good morning. Thank you to the chair for this opportunity to address the panel.

I'm a professor at the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph.

I would just like to open by saying that Canada's fisheries are important contributors to the ecological, socio-economic and cultural fabric of our nation. However, the integrity of our domestic seafood supply chain is being eroded by poor organization and transparency in fisheries data reporting and market labelling.

The CFIA fish list and Canada's seafood labelling regulations in general are largely inconsistent with the legal tenets of Canadian policy to ensure that fish names have reliable scientific underpinnings to uphold fair market practices and to not mislead consumers.

Canada has recently ratified the Port State Measures agreement to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Thus, it is appropriate and timely that the country proceed to modernize its seafood-labelling and data-reporting requirements as part of the shift towards transparency.

Government agencies should improve the reporting of fishery production and trade statistics by necessitating species-level classifications.

Canada's labelling legislation should be aligned with that of the European Union in mandating scientific names on seafood products along with additional criteria concerning geographic origin, processing history, and production and harvest methods to promote consumer choice and effective boat-to-plate traceability. This legislation should be enforced.

Overall, these improvements in taxonomic granularity and accurate information-sharing should provide a foundation of enhanced resolution from which to evaluate patterns of domestic species exploitation and tailor sound management and conservation plans.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hanner.

We'll now go to Ms. Thurston for five minutes or less, please.

[Sayara Thurston, Campaigner, Oceana Canada]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear today to talk about the important issue of seafood traceability.

Oceana Canada is part of the largest international advocacy group dedicated solely to ocean conservation in the world. We work with all stakeholders to return Canada’s formerly vibrant oceans to health and abundance.

I would especially like to thank Mrs. Desbiens for proposing this study to examine the implementation of a seafood traceability program. I'm very encouraged to see this committee undertaking this important work on an issue that has implications for the economy, conservation, food security and on fishers and producers.

Seafood fraud or mislabelling includes swapping a cheaper or more readily available one for one that is more expensive, substituting farmed products for wild-caught ones, or passing off illegally caught fish as legitimate. These practices undermine food safety, cheat consumers and the Canadian fishing industry, weaken the sustainability of fish populations, and mask global illegal fishing and human rights abuses.

The solution is full-chain traceability, requiring that key information be paired with products along the entire supply chain with electronic records, from the point of catch to the point of sale. This approach was implemented by the largest importer of seafood in the world, the European Union, 10 years ago, and the rate of mislabelling has since dropped. The United States has also implemented boat-to-border traceability for several species.

The federal government committed to implementing traceability in 2019, but unfortunately little progress has been made since then. To move this file forward in a real way, Oceana Canada recommends committing to an ambitious timeline for developing full-chain traceability. To facilitate this, we recommend that a multi-department task force be convened to allow all relevant departments to work together. We recommend that the traceability framework itself be mandatory, regulation-based, and that it require catch documentation to provide proof of the origin and legality of all species, in line with the EU and the recommendation by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Any new Canadian traceability and catch documentation system must be interoperable with global best practices to avoid a regulatory burden on industry or the creation of loopholes. We further recommend improvements to seafood labelling standards by requiring the scientific species' name and true geographic origin to appear on retail labels, which would also match current EU standards.

As you heard last week, neither of the two lead agencies on this file, CFIA and DFO, feel that they have clear jurisdiction here. That’s understandable. No single agency is wholly in charge of combatting seafood fraud. Fisheries monitoring, food safety, product legality, trade mechanisms, border agencies, labour standards and sustainability requirements are all regulated by different ministries and agencies through a patchwork of legislation and regulatory provisions. This is a complex issue, but that doesn’t mean we cannot or should not address it. If Canada is to keep up with our trading partners, support our fisheries and protect consumers in a modern world, we have to figure this out.

To do so, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can and should learn from other jurisdictions, particularly because interoperability will be crucial for the future of global seafood supply chains. When the United States was developing the seafood import monitoring program, more than a dozen federal agencies were convened into a task force to coordinate overlapping jurisdictions, address gaps and build capacity to make traceability possible. I strongly urge this committee to recommend a similar approach here.

We know that seafood fraud is a problem in Canada. Oceana Canada has consistently found widespread mislabelling here at home, but it’s not just us. An analysis of dozens of global studies by The Guardian newspaper last year found that out of the 9,000 samples tested, almost 44% were mislabelled.

Mislabelled and illegally caught seafood products impact our society in numerous ways. Seafood fraud affects public health and food safety. Consumers can unknowingly be exposed to allergens, parasites, toxins and environmental contaminants. Opaque supply chains allow threatened and endangered species into the market. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing devastates ocean health and fishing communities around the world. In 2019 alone, the United States imported an estimated $2.4 billion worth of illegal seafood. This is troubling for us because almost all—around 80%—of the seafood that we eat in Canada is imported, much of it through the United States. Without robust traceability, we are leaving our supply chains open to seafood products that were caught illegally, that are mislabelled, that were fished through unsustainable means or through forced labour. Canada has the means and the obligation to ensure that all seafood caught and sold here is safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced and honestly labelled.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that. It was just about dead on the time.

We'll now go to Ms. Dawson from Ocean Wise, please, for five minutes or less.

[Claire Dawson, Senior Manager, Fisheries and Seafood Initiative, Ocean Wise]

Good morning.

My name is Claire Dawson and I'm the senior manager for the fisheries and seafood initiative at Ocean Wise. I am joining today as a witness to this committee from the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish First Nations in Vancouver to speak about the traceability of fish and seafood products in Canada.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the honourable members of the committee about this pressing topic.

As Canada’s most recognized sustainable seafood program, Ocean Wise is committed to working with businesses along the seafood supply chain to ensure that Canadian consumers have access to information about their seafood products. The information provided by traceability programs is critical for three main reasons. The first is to ensure that Canadians can make informed choices about their foods. The second is to ensure that we minimize the environmental and economic risks posed by seafood fraud and an illegal, unreported and unregulated catch. The third reason is to celebrate the efforts of fishing families across Canada, who work hard to put responsible, sustainable and Canadian seafood on dinner plates around the country and across the globe.

To my first point about Canadians needing information to make informed choices, without traceability, we have ambiguity. Most consumers in Canada want to be able to make choices that reflect their environmental values about seafood, but they need our help to do so. A recent study commissioned by Oceana indicates that 86% of Canadians are in support of an overarching traceability program for our domestic seafood products. However, currently, most businesses buying and selling seafood products do not—or are unable to—trace information on products from the water to the plate, aside from the basics that may be required for safety, such as to execute a product recall.

With thousands of species available on the Canadian market, it is unrealistic to expect consumers, businesses, chefs and others to be able to determine the true source of the products they're consuming, without that information being required to travel with the product. This means consumers currently lack the information they need to make an informed choice about their seafood, and businesses with more sustainable or socially responsible practices don't get the benefits or recognition they deserve. It also makes it costly to be a first mover in the traceability space. It's almost a first-mover disadvantage, currently, as it has huge impacts to their bottom line.

To my second point that traceability can help minimize environmental and economic risks of seafood, seafood follows the highly complex path from water to plate, often changing hands as many as five or six times before reaching the final point of sale. The opacity of the supply chain is one of the main reasons seafood is prone to fraud and mislabelling. Without knowing where or how a given seafood was produced, it is impossible to determine its environmental footprint.

Without knowing the species' scientific name, in addition to the common name, businesses can make substitutions, sometimes swapping high-value species for low [Technical difficulty—Editor] or wild, as we've heard. This can cost consumers, who end up paying for a product they aren't getting. Businesses can also easily substitute illegally caught product into legitimate supply chains due to this opacity. Aside from costing the environment and businesses, these practices can also threaten our domestic food security.

To my third point about it being costly for businesses to try to do the right thing, the current lack of traceability costs us all. Current studies estimate that legitimate Canadian fishers lose up to $379 million a year in potential revenue, and the lack of transparency costs the government of Canada up to $94 million annually in lost tax revenue.

In addition, access to lucrative international markets may be at stake. As we've heard, the European Union has strict requirements for the traceability of the seafood products they import. As it is a major market for Canadian-caught products, investment by the federal government in a traceability program would help to ensure that Canada’s responsibly caught and well-managed seafood remains competitive in this global marketplace.

Canadian fishing families work hard to abide by our strict domestic policies, provide employment in their local communities and feed Canadian families. By supporting a traceability program for their products, we're supporting fishing as an important livelihood in this country and ensuring that we're stewarding our vast aquatic resources that we're blessed with for generations to come.

It is clear that the benefits of investing in a Canada-wide traceability program now will pay dividends later.

Canada has the world’s longest coastline, and fishing is not only integral to our food security, but also to our national identity and way of life.

With so much positive support for increased traceability of Canadian seafood products, now is the perfect time for the federal government to show leadership in this space by investing in the sector. This investment would enable Canada to lead in producing the sustainable and responsible seafood we're known for and to remain globally competitive.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Dawson.

We'll go to our first round of questioning.

Before we do, I will ask the members asking the questions if they could please identify who they're asking the question of, which will make it easier than leaving our witnesses staring into a screen wondering who should answer. If you do that, it will be much appreciated by everybody, I'm sure.

We'll go to Mr. Perkins for six minutes or less, please.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you very much for coming to the committee today and for your patience with the delay during the vote.

Last week when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency representatives were here, I asked them about Oceana's report and the methodology. They said that they were unaware of the methodology, but then proceeded to suggest that somehow it was slanted towards products that you thought would be more fraudulent than others that consumers would see.

I was wondering if Ms. Thurston could comment on both the methodology and the claim that somehow that report was slanted to get the results it achieved.

[Sayara Thurston]

Thank you.

We make clear in all of our reports that we do select products that are at higher risk of fraud, either because they're more desirable, harder to find, or we know there are higher instances of fraud there. We make that clear in all of our studies and explain the methodology that we select those species specifically for that.

If we're looking for a problem, we want to look where we know that problem is. No amount of fraud is acceptable in Canadian supply chains, so we want to see if those high-risk species are being protected from that in Canada. We have found that they're not.

When we say that 47% of the samples we tested were fraudulent, we mean is just that. It was those samples. It's not 40% of seafood in Canada. That's not what we're suggesting. Our numbers are consistent with what has been found elsewhere in Canada by other bodies—including CFIA a few years ago with an earlier study—and around the world.

As I mentioned in my presentation, an analysis of 44 studies last year by The Guardian found that around 40% of samples tested were mislabelled as well.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

Last week I raised with the witnesses the question of some of the labelling I found when I went to the grocery store. You may have seen it. Some of the packaging had claims that the products were organic Atlantic salmon or haddock made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients, which I found a little confusing. Of course, the very popular shrimp rings we all buy just said “Product of Vietnam”, which told me absolutely nothing about where it was caught, how it was caught or how it was processed.

The defence of that was that these are all the voluntary elements of the program, which obviously don't help consumers very much to figure out what it is. I'm wondering if all three witnesses could comment on that experience and what they're looking for in the precision of labelling to help consumers know that what they are buying is actually what's in the box or the package.

Ms. Thurston can go first, then Ms. Dawson and Professor Hanner.

[Sayara Thurston]

Thank you.

Yes, it is a huge issue. It's very confusing. Right now, we talk about mislabelled products, but even correctly labelled products don't really tell you that much.

Our current country-of-origin requirements just require that a product be labelled with the last place of transformation. You could be buying something that says “Product of Canada” or “Product of the United States”, but that doesn't necessarily reflect where that product was originally fished. This makes it really hard for consumers to get an accurate sense of what they're buying if they're trying to avoid certain countries or certain practices because they have concerns about those things or if they're trying to buy locally. Right now, they don't have the accurate information to make those choices.

I'll let the other witnesses speak to it as well.

[Claire Dawson]

This is a challenge that we at Ocean Wise are confronted with on a daily basis when working with the businesses we work with to try to source back to the environmental performance of the production of that seafood.

A really good example of how we are challenged could be that a label that a consumer sees might be on a piece of sockeye salmon that's been smoked, and it might say “Product of Canada” on it. That might be confusing for consumers, let's say, if the sockeye fishery was potentially shut down that year because we had a low return or something like that.

That sockeye is likely being sourced from either Russia or Alaska, but it's being smoked here in Canada, so it gets to say that it's a Canadian sockeye salmon fillet. That's all the consumer sees at the point of sale.

This is problematic, because it doesn't give the consumers the full information they should have about the status of our salmon stocks here in Canada, whether the fisheries are open, or whether they can feel good about eating that Canadian product. Nor does it tell them anything about the environmental performance, because they don't even know where it was fished.

Our labels absolutely have to show the point of production and the method of production. By that I mean, for “wild”, where was that fish caught? What type of gear was used? Or, if it's “farmed”, how was it farmed and what is the specific species that was being farmed?. Otherwise, we have no idea about the environmental impact of that method of production.

You brought up a good example about Atlantic salmon being organic. Well, some might call any wild-caught fish organic, but this fish has actually likely been farmed, so it's being farmed to an organic standard. Again, if that's all it says on it, the consumer has no information upon which to base their decisions.

We absolutely need the species, method, scientific name and granular data to be available to the consumers, at the very least so that they can make decisions that align with their values when they're purchasing seafood.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Morrissey.

Go ahead for six minutes or less, please.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

My first question is for Ms. Thurston.

At the last meeting, I'm not sure if it was CFIA or DFO that indicated that 92% of samples were labelled correctly in a test across Canada.

What are your comments on that, Ms. Thurston?

[Sayara Thurston]

Thank you.

I think there was quite a bit of discussion about that study at the last meeting. As the witness from CFIA mentioned, those tests were done really quite far back in the supply chain, and they weren't done at the restaurant level at all. We like to test products that are at the consumer point so we're seeing what really reaches the consumer, because we know that fraud happens at every stage along the supply chain.

We've done tests. Other institutions, including CFIA, have done tests in the past to show that the rate of mislabelling in Canada is likely much higher than that number.

I don't know if Dr. Hanner wants to comment on it as well. I know he has a lot of experience with this type of study.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I'll ask him to comment at the end.

In your opinion, or from research you have done, where does most of the mislabelling occur? Is it in wholesale processing, in retail or at food service?

[Sayara Thurston]

It's really throughout the supply chain, because seafood supply chains are really one of the more complex supply chains that we have in terms of food products. We're not talking about dairy or chicken for which we know where 100% of the products are coming from.

We import hundreds of products. We fish a huge number of products as well, so a huge number of species from a huge number of places that potentially go to two or three other countries before they reach the consumer, so we know that this fraud can happen at every stage along the supply chain.

When we do our studies, our intent isn't to name and shame businesses that may be selling mislabelled products, because businesses themselves are often victims of this fraud. Even if a restaurant or a grocery store in Canada is trying to do the right thing, it doesn't necessarily have all the information to be able to protect itself against this kind of fraud.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

That's fair, but if I may quote you directly, you said “widespread mislabelling” in Canada. Could you elaborate for this committee on the detail of where the widespread mislabelling is occurring in Canada?

If you have that by species, you could provide it to the committee. Obviously you made the statement, so I take it you have documentation to back it up.

What I would like to know is whether it is unique to a particular species or unique to a particular part of the supply chain.

[Sayara Thurston]

When we've tested in Canada, we have tested at grocery and restaurant, so the end points of the supply chain. We've tested in six cities across the country. We've been doing this kind of investigation since 2017, and we've had pretty consistent results since then. We've done multiple rounds of testing across the country for the last several years, and we haven't really seen improvements. More of the fraud does happen at the restaurant level, in those maybe smaller businesses that have less control over their supply chains, as opposed to at a Loblaws, for example.

There are certainly trends with species. We do see trends with certain species that, as I said, may be more expensive and harder to find, that lend themselves more to being mislabelled.

I think that answers the question.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

If you did have documentation to back up the claim of widespread mislabelling in Canada though, I would like it if you could present it to the committee.

Dr. Hanner, you reference the significant difference between the EU and Canada. We all acknowledge that the European Union is the most sophisticated marketplace for seafood. Could you explain to the committee what the European Union is doing right that Canada may be missing?

[Dr. Robert Hanner]

Absolutely.

As we've heard from both of the other witnesses, the European Union has legislated more granular data. Here in Canada, we use just a vague market name that can apply to many different species as the only labelling requirement. In the EU, they also require a species name to get to that level of granularity so that they can manage individual stocks. They require geographic origin and catch method. Here in Canada I am really despondent given the fact that our industry is already complying with the European Union regulations to be able to export our seafood to that market, and yet we, as Canadians, don't enjoy that same level of transparency. We are eating trash fish from international markets being dumped into Canada without this level of transparency, while our own industry is already complying with it if they are exporting to the European Union.

I'm really disappointed to see this kind of gap between what was presented previously by the CFIA policy branch and their own scientists, because we published a paper with them about their inspectors collecting seafood coming into the port of landing in Toronto, at wholesale and at retail. What we saw was that about 20% of the samples they collected and we tested at import were mislabelled; nearly 30% of the samples at wholesale and retail were mislabelled, and closer to 40% of the things at actual retail were mislabelled.

What we're seeing is this problem compounding at each step in the supply chain, because there is essentially no regulation here in Canada, other than to report a vague market name, which may not correspond to any kind of wild entity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Morrissey. Your time has expired.

We'll now go to Madam Desbiens for six minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm very happy to have these witnesses with us today. It's really very interesting. I'd like to thank them for being here.

Ms. Thurston said something that caught my attention. She said she would like to see a working group set up, made up of a number of agencies from various levels of intervention, to look at this issue. For example, departmental representatives and scientists could form such a working group to set up a system, referring, of course, to those who have the best results in this area, in other words, E.U. countries. We need to make sure that a plan takes shape.

Ms. Thurston, who would you like to see in this working group?

What would be a realistic timeline for establishing a traceability plan, or even appointing an auditor general of traceability?

That's kind of my idea this morning.

[Sayara Thurston]

Thank you very much for the question.

You're absolutely right that there really must be a task force, given that several stakeholders and departments are affected by this file, as we stated last week.

That's precisely what the United States did when it wanted to take action on this problem: President Obama set up a task force in 2014. Several departments had to work together, because it was a bit of a jurisdictional mess. I think at least a dozen departments were involved, including Trade, Justice, and Homeland Security, as well as the president's office. They had to work together to create something that would be able to deal with all the complexities of seafood supply chains.

I think we absolutely need to do the same here in Canada. Otherwise, we won't get anywhere.

In terms of a timeline, the U.S. formed its task force in 2014 and the legislation was created in 2016, I believe. So we're talking about two years.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

That's very interesting.

I think we have demonstrated this morning, in this committee, that there really is a major problem with seafood products, particularly niche products, but also in other sectors.

So I would like you to tell us how you see the urgency of the situation and the risk to fishers and retailers of losing an important market because of ineffective traceability in Canada. This situation should lead the government to invest to support such a task force and put something in place.