Health Committee on June 8th, 2016

[Paul Mayers]

That is being met.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay.

The Safe Food for Canadians Act was passed by Parliament in 2012. It's still not in force. Section 68 of the act required an audit within five years to determine whether CFIA had the resources needed to fulfill its inspection enforcement work.

Despite the bill being in limbo, is there some sort of audit going on to ensure the safety of the Canadian food supply pending the passing of that bill?

[Paul Mayers]

To be clear, the Safe Food for Canadians Act achieved royal assent in 2012, so it is passed. It is not yet in force. The regulatory framework that supports it has gone through the normal regulatory development and consultation process. It's our intent to present the regulations in part 1 of the Gazette later this year.

We fully intend to keep our commitment with respect to the audit, which will be within five years of the act coming into force.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Tibbetts, I would like to come back to marijuana and the pop-up shops that the hon. member identified. The Prime Minister of Canada and the Government of Canada has yet to introduce any law or make any changes to the existing legislation as they begin to think through legalizing and regulating the production of marijuana. The laws that are in place today are the existing laws that have been in place for many years, and medically available marijuana has been in place now for some time.

I was curious whether the previous prime minister or the previous minister of health, who I believe is now the leader of the opposition, ever provided funding for you to do inspections of the medical marijuana shops.

[Jamie Tibbetts]

Do you mean the licensed providers?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The providers, yes.

[Jamie Tibbetts]

We do fund that internally within Health Canada through allocations of around $8 million a year, I believe. We've been inspecting those licensed providers since they have been created. There are now over 30 of them in Canada.

There's a process for their application, their assessment, the security checks, the ongoing inspection of every point of their establishment from turning the lights on—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

That's unchanged today.

[Jamie Tibbetts]

It's unchanged. It's still the same framework that was in place under the former government.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

So pending the introduction of new legislation and new changes, it is the—

[Jamie Tibbetts]

Correct.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

—status quo from the previous administration.

[Jamie Tibbetts]

We will come in with options on that and then design our programming based on the direction of government.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Okay.

I'm really not sure whether my second question is for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or the Public Health Agency, but the Senate recently released a study on childhood obesity and one of the highlights they focused on was the complexity in labelling for dissolvable sugars. There are about 17 or 18 different labels that dissolvable sugars can be labelled under.

They were looking for different food labelling, particularly to help identify sugar and a few other elements that lead to obesity in children. I know it's probably a small number, but is there anything provided in the estimates to deal with enhanced labelling, particularly of sugar?

[Carlo Beaudoin]

The short answer is that we are doing some work on obesity and food safety, but really, the labelling side and the regulatory side fall under Health Canada, so I believe Mr. Tibbetts may be better placed to answer.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Tibbetts.

[Jamie Tibbetts]

We are doing that work at this point within existing resources. We were studying this under the former government, actually, and we did put out proposals on how to regulate this in the Canada Gazette. We're now in the process of doing the consultation around those options, doing some comparison with the United States and the directions they've been taking, and are continuing the work that we have been doing in this area.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Okay.

Also, they had recommended very significant updates to the Canada food guide. I know it's several years old and it's very complex to read through, very hard for parents to really understand what is being recommended for children in terms of a proper balance. Is that also affordable under the existing estimates?

[Jamie Tibbetts]

These are funds that are in our main estimates, not in the supplementary estimates, just to be clear.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The main estimates....

[Jamie Tibbetts]

Yes. We have an area within the health products and food branch that works with the Public Health Agency of Canada on the content and renewal of that document from time to time. It is under review, as it often is.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes, I understood that. Is there a point in time when there will be a fairly substantive review of it and a new release that's more consumer friendly?

[Jamie Tibbetts]

Yes. I can't give you the specific date, because I don't think it's that targeted as a specific out, but it is within the next year or two that this will come together through, again, consultations that are under way with stakeholders and others.

There is no specific million-dollar project to do it. It is part of the normal operations of the health products and food branch and there is a timeline to get something done within the next year or so.