Evidence of meeting #9 for Subcommittee on Food Safety in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inspectors.
A recording is available from Parliament.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
So are you suggesting every truckload be inspected? What's your solution, then?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I would suggest every truck be inspected. We used to do it, and I used to refuse five or six shipments a month for stuff that was in, as I said, dirty trucks, with product off condition, reefer units not working, product misrepresented. They say it's young chicken on the truck, and you find out it's fowl. That way they could bypass the quota system, the marketing board system.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
But our inspectors also can pull loads out and inspect them when they want to, right? You do the pre-inspection certificate down on 10% of the loads, but inspectors can pull another load out and say, “I want to take a look at this.”
It seems to me that things have changed. Expectations are so much higher now. If people are running with reefers that are shut down or they're running with cow shit in their trucks, they're not going to be in business. They're not going to be allowed to be in business for a number of reasons, one of which may be the inspection at the border. Certainly companies aren't going to deal with them on either side of the border. You're talking about the old days. Things have really changed in terms of expectations of cleanliness and sanitation and how meat is handled, haven't they?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, with the system the way it is now, CFIA has created a big gap and has opened the gate up quite a bit for this type of thing to happen, whereas back then we were finding those things with inspection. What's going on now? We don't know. We have no knowledge of what's going on. I can't tell you if every truck going through the border is.... It might be 100%, but we don't know that right now. There are no checks and balances to determine if that is happening.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
No checks and balances, because when people are caught in non-compliance, they're shut down for access to either country going either way. Isn't that correct?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
It's supposed to happen, yes, but I don't think there has ever been anybody shut down from the U.S. or been delisted for exporting an inferior product unless they've been audited by an audit team that has gone over there.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
I want to talk about a couple of the other things. You made six points at the beginning, and one of them was that lab samplings are not carried out by CFIA meat inspectors. But there are meat monitoring programs for microbiological and chemical testing in the country, right?
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
So you're not being entirely straightforward there when you're saying it's not being done by CFIA meat and port inspectors, but it is being done, right?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
It's being done, but to what extent? I can just tell you, from personal observation and talking to other people in the industry, that it's not being done. In my own area, I've never seen inspectors take a sample for micro analysis. I used to take samples according to sampling plans, and I used to submit them. The people I personally have worked with, or am associated with, don't have the time. It takes a great deal of time to take a sample, to take it esthetically, to do the paperwork on it, and to ship it, FedEx it—you have to take it down to the FedEx depot. All these things are quite time-consuming.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Can you tell me a little bit about your training program? What do you train people to do? What level are they trained to when you're done training them?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
In the industry course, I just basically train them to know all the procedures: what happens, how a load is certified, how it clears through customs at the border, what happens when a load is inspected, why loads are refused entry--
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
The general information about imports on import-export.
8:15 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Okay, just quickly.
Canada inspects no import meat shipments at the port of entry. That's true. But the reality is that reinspection is done in other federal reinspection facilities that are made to handle meat, right? That's the point. That was one of the changes made, to put in place better facilities for handling those inspections. Is that correct?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
A lot of meat is inspected, but at the same time, a lot of meat has been “failure to present”—it didn't show up for inspection. That has been a big problem. We're tracking shipments all the time in my facility, loads that are supposed to come to us and don't come to us. I went through access to information and found out there were almost 3,000 shipments that never were presented for inspection. That's over the course of eight years.
The point is that CFIA didn't prosecute any of these people. I used to write up non-compliance reports all the time about loads not being presented for inspection and I never heard anything more from them. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for that.
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
In keeping with Mr. Allen's request earlier to have some time for some committee business at the end, I'd like to thank our witnesses very much for attending today. I apologize for the slightly late start, but votes happen around here. Anyway, thanks again, gentlemen. We appreciate your input.
Mr. Allen, I believe you wanted to deal with your notice of motion.
8:20 p.m.
NDP
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I believe everyone has a copy of Mr. Allen's notice of motion or will be getting one shortly.
8:20 p.m.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
In any case, Mr. Chair, the notice was given before. What I'd like to do, obviously, since we're getting near the end, is to actually move forward with the notice of motion, so indeed we can get the material that was actually requested in the notice. So let me read it into the record officially:
That the committee direct the clerk to contact all witnesses (including all potential witnesses submitted by committee members that may not have the opportunity to give in person testimony to the committee) and invite them to provide written testimony and/or recommendations (on or before June 8, 2009) to the committee for inclusion in the final report to be submitted to the Standing Committee on Agriculture on or before June 11, 2009.
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
The only question I had, Mr. Allen, was whether that coincides with our original timetable for getting the reports. Maybe that's something the clerk can answer. I don't have any issue with it. I just wondered if that's.... That's more of a comment.