Evidence of meeting #26 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
No, the regulations are still pending under the act. Drafts have been put out. They've been heavily consulted upon. Industry has been very excited about the potential to be able to do it.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
When we do put those regulations in place, it will have a marked impact on the ability to innovate by our food producers.
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Absolutely. That's what we're expecting. We'll be getting rid of those barriers that exist now.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I have a quick question. Are you properly staffed to do that?
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Yes, I believe we are.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay.
Ms. Johnston, on the role of technology in your industries to make them more productive, can you speak to how they're adopting that and what, if anything, the government should be doing to encourage that?
Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
In Canada, we have a low rate of automation in the food processing sector. We're looking at ways to ensure that there could be government and industry collaboration, government trying to reduce the risk in terms of investing in those technologies. Some of the programming that we have in our Growing Forward 2 policy framework, sometimes called AgriInnovation, will assist in terms of the sector investing in technologies to automate their sectors and their plants in order to make them more productive.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Are they aware of the automation and choosing not to do it, or do they need help to even understand that those automation opportunities exist?
Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I think it's a bit of both. It really depends on the companies and the sectors. There's a lot of innovators within the sector that can see the technologies from other countries and are looking to adopt and adapt it in their plants. Then there are other food processors that have tight margins. It's about cost cutting and efficiency, and that's what they are focused on. It depends on the companies.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
We've heard a lot about links between universities and businesses, but also about colleges and businesses. Colleges have made the argument that they're closer to the ground and they actually help more because they can innovate faster with a company. Do you have a view on that? Is it working, or not working, between colleges or universities and your industries?
Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
It's another one of it depends. Some colleges are reaching out more closely to the cluster areas, where they are in terms of the food processing sector, where you're starting to see a bit more of an ongoing business-client relationship between the colleges and the food processing area, but there's still work to continue.
Within the food processing sectors we have what are called food tech development centres. They're in every province. They're hidden gems, in the sense that they're underutilized, but they really have exceptional equipment and they're there to help the small businesses further develop their products and test them.
We're hoping in the next policy framework, as we work more closely with the provinces, that these food tech development centres can further assist the small businesses.
Liberal
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Thank you for coming today.
Perhaps you could help me understand the issues around spent fowl and diafiltered milk. Obviously, those are hot button topics. We have a certain system in this country whereby we try to make sure that what's coming into this country in the form of an import is what it is supposed to be, and they aren't skirting the rules. The U.S. has a lot of technology with regard to their processing and other methods. CFIA would know clearly what is going on in the United States because you would have people who would be assured of what's coming into this country at a dairy processing plant, for example.
If they know that diafiltered milk is being produced in a certain area, how come CFIA isn't working with the CBSA or working better with CBSA so we don't have these issues with diafiltered milk?
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
The short answer to that question is that it is not illegal to bring diafiltered milk into Canada. It's a perfectly legal product that's allowed to be used in a number of dairy products. CFIA's sole responsibility is to deal with the importation of food that is not legally allowed to come into Canada or that is not meeting our requirements.
On the aspect of spent fowl it, too, is legally allowed to be imported into Canada.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
But it's not to be sold as regular meat that you would buy off the shelf. You don't expect to buy a spent fowl when you're trying to buy chicken.
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
That's right.
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
From the CFIA's legal perspective, our rules and regulations don't differentiate between the age of a bird. It's just poultry. As long as it says “chicken” or “poultry” it's not illegal or a falsely misleading label.
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
That's our law. Those are the regulations in place right now.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
I think you need to take another look at the law, because that's not a very good law.
You know when people go to the grocery store they expect to buy chicken that has not been around for over a year, that has been raised properly under what you'd expect from the Chicken Farmers of Ontario standards. They don't expect to buy an old hen that's been laying eggs in some farm in Missouri as fresh chicken.
Would you agree?
Acting Executive Director, Food Import, Export and Consumer Protection Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
As I said, right now our laws do not differentiate. Poultry is poultry for the purpose of food safety and labelling.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
If we were in agriculture, but we're in manufacturing.
Thank you very much. It was very interesting information.
Mr. Longfield, you have three minutes.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks for the presentations.
Ms. Johnston, it's good to have you in this committee as we've been in agriculture.
Exploring something along the lines of agriculture and becoming number one in the world in food and knowing that the Netherlands is beating us at that game you mentioned the Canadian Food Processing Innovation and Prosperity Cluster. We're very interested in clusters. In Guelph, Conestoga College has one of those food tech development centres. It's got the smart manufacturing centre that started as food processing. They couldn't get students into the program. They have really good equipment there with state-of-the-art control systems, and they're trying to build that up as a manufacturing destination.
Could you describe what that cluster is? How big is it? Where is it heading? Maybe these tech centres could be helped by the federal government, particularly our support of colleges versus universities.