Fisheries Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

[Sayara Thurston]

As has already been mentioned, right now, the requirements imposed on Canadian harvesters who export their products are much more stringent. Of course, Canada exports large quantities of crab and lobster, and those harvesters comply with other systems that are already in place. Domestically, our industries are very transparent when it comes to the products they export.

However, the majority of products consumed in Canada are imported, and that is where we see a lack of product information. Canada doesn't demand as much from producers elsewhere in the world as is required of producers here.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

What you're saying, then, is that right now, the traceability level of the products we harvest and export to other countries is pretty good. Traceability poses a bit more of a challenge on the import side. Is that correct?

[Sayara Thurston]

I wouldn't say a challenge, necessarily, but right now, we are doing less on that front.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I see.

Earlier, you talked about the testing you had conducted at the restaurant level and otherwise. That testing focused on products imported to Canada, did it not?

[Sayara Thurston]

We test imported products as well as Canadian products.

As mentioned, a huge number of products are sent elsewhere for processing, so when it comes to processed products, there's no way for us to necessarily know whether the products were imported or local to begin with. There is a huge amount of product movement when it comes to the seafood trade. Canadian products can be sent outside the country for processing, transiting through two or three countries before being sent back to Canada for sale.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Naturally, I would assume Canada's industry wants to be seen around the world as an industry whose products consumers can trust. In a few seconds, can you tell us what needs to happen in order for industry rules and standards to change as quickly as possible? The idea would be to foster an environment where Canadian consumers knew what they were eating and were assured that the various players in the supply chain were providing safe and healthy products.

[Sayara Thurston]

This is really an opportunity that the industry should seize. Clearly, all industries have to keep growing and developing.

As I said earlier, either we do it ourselves or we continue to be forced into doing it. This is an opportunity for Canada's industry to maintain its international reputation. It would also ensure that cheap low-quality products don't eat away at our market.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

As you know, change can be hard for an industry. For years, people have always done things a certain way. If practices were changed, though, we would definitely come out big winners.

Thank you, Ms. Thurston.

My next questions are for Ms. Dawson and Mr. Hanner.

I think both of you, or maybe one of you, said that there were some issues with CFIA when it comes to traceability.

Is the only issue regarding where the product is coming from and all the rules surrounding it?

I'll give you an example. For lobster and crab, fishermen need bait. Sometimes we import herring, for example, or mackerel, from other countries. Some of those countries, for example within the European Union, seem to be very safe, as all of you have said. I think they have some good rules, but it's very difficult to import some of those herring or mackerel for bait.

What do you think is the problem? The European Union has a very high traceability process, and when it comes to us having that bait here, which we kind of stock at every single corner where the industry and the fishermen need it, is there a problem that we don't know about? Why is it so difficult?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier, but you are over time.

I would ask if the witnesses could provide a written answer for the committee, as it might be easier to do it that way.

We'll move on now to Madam Desbiens for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask Ms. Dawson and Mr. Hanner about the working group idea.

As someone who's quick to look for solutions, I have to tell you the idea really caught my attention. I am convinced that the hard work needed to deal with these issues could be carried out by a working group funded by the federal government. I think that's the easiest way to proceed.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

How should such a group be structured? What do you think it should look like?

Do you think representatives from the EU or the U.S. could even be brought in to support Canada and Quebec in their efforts?

[Claire Dawson]

I can speak to that first.

In addition to what Ms. Thurston was saying about having all the key players from the various departments who have the power to draft the regulations to actually make the change, it's going to be really important to hear from the stakeholders themselves. You need producers of varying levels—first nations participants, small-scale fishers from across Canada as well as those participating in the industrial fishing complex here—to provide their insights on how this may impact them and their businesses, looking at the many varieties of men and women, family businesses and large businesses that are working in seafood supply, import and selling in Canada.

I think it would be key to have members from the retail food service industry describing how these types of updates might impact their business so that you have the full spectrum of potential impacts to consider when implementing these rules. Broadly, I think everyone is supportive, but we do need to make sure that they work for the people who have to operationalize this, so making sure they have a seat at the table is key.

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

Thank you, Ms. Dawson.

It's also important for people to understand the process. As Mr. Cormier pointed out, industry acceptance plays a key role. I think it's extremely relevant that industry stakeholders have a seat at the table.

If I still have a bit of time, I have a question for Ms. Thurston.

Is my idea of having an auditor general in charge of traceability something the working group could examine? I'm just throwing that out there, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You went over time to ask the actual question.

Again, I'll ask Ms. Thurston if she could provide an answer in writing back to the committee.

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron, for two and a half minutes, please.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I'm listening to all of this information that's coming forward, and it's clear that this is complex, with multiple pieces that are all part of this equation on how we move forward. We're also hearing some tangible solutions and examples of how this is going well in the EU, for example. If we followed suit with many of their processes, we wouldn't have so many Canadians being sold short within our seafood industry.

We have talked about having effective labelling, as one example, but also the monitoring and enforcement component as being essential for us to be able to move forward.

I'm wondering, Dr. Hanner, if you could speak a little to the PCR tests, what that would look like with regard to being able to test seafood in the field and what information that PCR test would provide us with to effectively monitor and enforce the labelling of seafood products.

[Dr. Robert Hanner]

Thank you. It's a very good question.

With respect to traceability, there's a push for things like blockchain. However, without verification testing along the supply chain, you're really only tracing the movement of packages and not what's actually in them. We've developed tools. For example, for a business dealing in large volumes of a single commodity, you can have a hand-held instrument with a PCR test at point of detection and can ask, “Is my cod, cod?” If it's not, then it would need to go to a lab for full-blown sequencing to determine what it is.

In terms of quality control, if you're taking possession of, say, a two-tonne shipping container and something declared to be red snapper, then it is possible to confirm that it's red snapper on site, in real time, with PCR tests today. It's just like we're doing with rapid tests for COVID.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about the concerns and shortcomings we're seeing with the current consultation work from the 2019 mandate to implement boat-to-plate traceability. Can you speak to the scale of the challenges and some of the barriers in implementing that report?

[Dr. Robert Hanner]

We need to differentiate industry into our domestic producers, who know what they're catching and are largely complying with EU labelling, versus the import industry. They're very different animals.

It's important to recognize that there is a lot of unfair market competition happening for our own domestic suppliers. There's potential for damage to “brand Canada”, so I think it's really important that we stay on top of this.

As Ms. Thurston noted, we can track our package from Amazon, so why can't we track our seafood to see where some of these verification claims lie? It's fully doable. As the European Union has shown, we can dramatically reduce the rates of mislabelling, if we take the time to do something about it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron. We're a little bit over our time.

I want to say thank you to Mr. Hanner, Ms. Thurston and Ms. Dawson for appearing before committee today.

That's the full extent of our first hour. We'll take a quick couple of minutes to change to our next set of panellists for their presentations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We're back.

Now we'll go for our second hour of testimony and questioning.

Our witnesses for this particular part of our meeting are Christina Burridge from the BC Seafood Alliance; Paul Lansbergen from the Fisheries Council of Canada, who is absolutely no stranger to committee, and Sonia Strobel from Skipper Otto community supported fishery.

We'll go first to opening statements by witnesses, with Ms. Burridge first for five minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.

Madam Desbiens, you have your hand up?

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

Yes.

I just wanted to request that Ms. Thurston send the clerk a written response to my last question for the information of all committee members.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

Now we go to Ms. Burridge for five minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.

[Christina Burridge, Executive Director, BC Seafood Alliance]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The BC Seafood Alliance is an umbrella organization whose 30 members represent fisheries accounting for about 90% of the value of wild seafood from Canada's Pacific coast. Our members are associations representing commercial fishermen, licence-holders and vessel owners and operators in all major fisheries in B.C., with vessels ranging from less than 30 feet to over 150 feet. We also represent most of the major seafood processors, which account for at least 70% of salmon, herring and groundfish production, as well as some specialty products, making us by far the most representative commercial fishing organization on the west coast.

I'm going to provide some context on seafood traceability from both the harvester and the processor perspectives. It is our view that for this part of the supply chain there is a robust system already in place. Let me give you the example of groundfish. Roughly two-thirds of west coast groundfish commercial harvests are managed under the Canadian groundfish integrated program, which integrates the management of 66 different species, seven different fisheries and three gear types.

Each vessel is fully accountable for every single fish it catches, whether retained or released, through a monitoring program that requires 100% electronic monitoring or at-sea observers and 100% dockside validation before the catch goes to the processing plant. Other fisheries have somewhat similar systems and are also developing additional consumer-level traceability systems to discourage illegal product from recreational or FSC fisheries. You may remember that the prawn tubbing issue began with the development of such a traceability system.

Virtually all B.C. seafood processors, as well as some fishing vessels, are federally registered with the CFIA under the safe food for Canadians regulations and for export, which requires the lot code, date of catch, common name, origin of harvest, etc. These are passed on to customers as the minimum requirements to ensure timely and effective recall of products if necessary.

On the west coast, we export about 85% of production, and export customers have different systems and different traceability requirements that exporters must fulfill. In addition, most processing plants maintain Marine Stewardship Council chain of custody certification. The annual audit looks at the plant's overall traceability system to ensure it can segregate MSC certified product from non-certified.

Both harvester and processor members are committed to best practices, and they rank highly on a global scale thanks to robust systems. We certainly believe that consumers, whether domestic or export, have the right to know with confidence that they are getting what they paid for—clearly labelled, safe and healthy Canadian seafood that is sustainably harvested.

We know that in our export markets, the Canadian reputation is first rate. One of my members, for instance, provides a certificate of authenticity that Japanese retailers use as a marketing tool.

We would encourage the committee to focus on the gaps in the system rather than on trying to introduce a new and costly system that will never meet the needs of our customers, domestic or export. Those gaps, on this coast, are illegally harvested product entering the small-scale retail and food service market; mislabelling, particularly in small-scale retail and food service; and imports.

I remind you that CFIA's 2021 report found almost no evidence of mislabelling, with a 92% compliance rate, with domestic processors at 96%.

Seafood is not cheap but it is good for you, so let's not add to the cost. Let's target the gaps in the system and not the system itself.

Thank you very much, everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Burridge.

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

[Sonia Strobel, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery]

Good morning.

Thank you for having me here to discuss this important topic of seafood traceability and labelling in Canada.

My name is Sonia Strobel. I am the co-founder and CEO of Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery, based here on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Watuth land in Vancouver, B.C.

We've been in business for 13 years and we pre-sell all the catch of our 40 Canadian fishing families directly to over 7,500 member families across Canada. As you've been hearing all day today, Canada has a problem with seafood traceability, especially at the retail and restaurant levels. The ripple effects of mislabelled seafood in Canada for Canadian fishing families, consumers and small businesses like mine are massive. I want to talk a bit about that today.

As you know, there is a growing and significant demand for local, traceable food in Canada. The pandemic and the recent supply chain crises have brought traceability and local sourcing to the forefront of people's minds. Canadian consumers want to know if their seafood purchases are supporting Canadian fishing families or if they're propping up illegal operations and slavery, yet locally caught seafood is indiscernible from foreign fish in the marketplace because of our labelling rules.

As you discussed with the previous panel, foreign fish often masquerades as Canadian fish because our labels only need to state the country of the most recent “transformation”. A piece of fish on a styrofoam tray, harvested in Southeast Asia, might say “Product of Canada” because it was cut here. It goes both ways. I've seen sockeye salmon in my local grocery store that was likely caught in B.C. or Alaska but labelled as “Product of China” because it was cut there.

When you think about it, I know more about where my cellphone comes from than the fish I'm about to feed my family. I know where it was designed versus where it was manufactured. Heck, I can even find out where the zinc was mined to make it, right?

As Mr. Zimmer said in the previous panel, we do a great job of tracing and labelling our meats, so there's no reason why we shouldn't expect this kind of thorough labelling in seafood too.

Domestic markets for seafood are some of the strongest available for fishing families, yet our seafood can’t compete on the grocery shelf because it’s sitting next to cheap copycat fish, which might be cheap because it was harvested by slave labour or destroyed delicate ecosystems in the process. Canadian consumers who want to buy local, sustainable seafood and fishing families who want to sell it to local consumers should be and able to do that. We need our government to protect small businesses and consumers through better traceability and labelling laws.

It's tough to know where your seafood comes from, but it’s also hard to know what species you’re getting. Dr. Hanner, in the previous panel, referenced our confusing rules around naming fish. For example, the ubiquitous common name of “red snapper” can be used to identify 47 different species of fish. The term “rockfish” could refer to 100 different species, some of which are abundant and sustainable and some of which are endangered. When a label says “cod”, which is it? Atlantic cod? Pacific cod? Black cod? Lingcod? Incidentally, “lingcod” isn’t even a cod.

The point is, if you want to make more money off a piece of fish, all you have to do is use one of these vague names and charge what you can get away with. As a consumer, you should have the information to make your own choices about what you want to support and put in your body. There’s so much great information out there about the health reasons and the sustainability reasons to choose different fish. Consumers should have access to the information to help them make these choices.

At Skipper Otto, our labels go above and beyond what's required. I'll show you some examples of our labels. Here’s an example of one. It has the full common name, the scientific name and all the information about which of our 40 fishers caught it, on what boat, when, where, and how. We’re really proud of the direct connections that we have with harvesters and our ability to do that.

I’m not saying that all of that needs to be the law tomorrow, but our company has been growing for over a decade because of strong consumer demand for that kind of traceability. The time is right for all seafood industry labels to have a higher minimum standard to avoid penalizing companies like ours when competing with cheap look-alike fish. At the very least, there needs to be some standardization around common name conventions and country of origin if we want to give Canadians the chance to shop according to their values.

The last thing I want to bring up is that all of this indicates an enforcement problem, which was addressed in the last panel as well. You can’t argue that all of this mislabelled seafood is just an innocent mistake. As the previous panel discussed, 69% of Oceana's mislabelled samples were farmed salmon labelled as wild. Clearly, that wasn't by accident. Mislabelled seafood is almost always a cheaper fish masquerading as a more expensive fish.

You can make all the laws you want about what should go on a label, but if we don't enforce those laws, things won't change. Because of weak enforcement, when seafood fraud is uncovered, people shrug and point to someone up the stream from them, pay the fines and carry on. It's just the cost of doing business. But there should be significant incentive for each person in the supply chain to vouch for what they're selling.

DNA testing, as was discussed in the last panel, is getting cheaper and easier, so there's no excuse for selling mislabelled fish except that you like that it was cheaper and you're willing to turn a blind eye to suspiciously cheap fish so you can make a profit.

Not following through on this enforcement work hurts small businesses like mine, which are trying to do the right thing by supporting local harvesters and sustainable fishing practices.

There's so much more to say on the topic. I'm happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. Thank you for having me here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Strobel.

We'll now go to Mr. Lansbergen for five minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.