Public Accounts Committee on June 2nd, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'd like to call the meeting to order and extend to everyone here a very warm welcome on behalf of all committee members.

This meeting has been called pursuant to the Standing Orders to deal with chapter 4, “Managing Risks to Canada's Plant Resources--Canadian Food Inspection Agency”, of the December 2008 Report of the Auditor General of Canada.

The committee is very pleased to have present this afternoon the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser. She's accompanied by Assistant Auditor General Neil Maxwell and Principal Dale Shier.

From the Canadian Food Inspection Agency we have the president and accounting officer, Carole Swan. With her at the table is Brian Evans, executive vice-president; Paul Mayers, associate vice-president; and Mr. Stephen Baker, vice-president finance, administration, and information technology.

Again I offer a warm welcome to everyone.

We'll call upon the Auditor General, Ms. Fraser, for opening remarks. Then we'll go to Ms. Swan.

[Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We thank you for this opportunity to discuss our chapter on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's efforts to manage risks to Canada's plant resources.

As you mentioned, I'm accompanied today by Assistant Auditor General Neil Maxwell and Principal Dale Shier, who were responsible for this audit.

This is an audit of CFIA's efforts to keep invasive alien plants, seeds, plant pests, and plant diseases out of Canada. The agency's efforts are important to protect Canada's economy. In 2005 the value of Canada's forest and agricultural commodities was about $100 billion. They're also important to protect Canada's environment from invasive species, such as the emerald ash borer, which is killing ash trees in Ontario and Quebec. According to experts, invasive species are the second most serious threat to biodiversity, after habitat loss

My report focuses on the agency's efforts to keep invasive species out of Canada. This is because there is a general consensus that it costs less to deal with invasive plants, pests and diseases before they become established.

CFIA's efforts to keep invasive species out of Canada are necessarily risk-based. There are simply too many shipments into Canada to allow it to inspect them all. Thus, our audit looked at whether the agency adequately managed the risk that invasive alien plants, seeds, plant pests and plant diseases could enter and become established in Canada.

Mr. Chair, our audit identified a number of serious issues. We therefore looked to some of the underlying causes of the problems and we identified four key issues.

First, there is a lack of appropriate coordination between branches. For example, the policy branch sets inspection standards, but field staff in the operations branch do not always have the current version of the standards, creating inconsistencies. For example, the fresh fruit and vegetable list of inspection standards in Montreal calls for 50% inspection, while both Toronto's and Vancouver's lists call for 10% inspection.

Second, the plant health program does not have adequate quality management systems. We looked at CFIA's efforts to inspect shipments of plants and plant products. We looked at a small sample of plant shipments from February 2008, where the agency's desk review had determined that 100% of the shipment required inspection. Of the 27 shipments that we examined, we found that only about 40% of the required inspections had taken place. Of the others, some shipments were simply released without inspection, and in other cases the office that was supposed to do the inspection had no record of receiving the related import documents.

Third, there is a lack of information management and information technology support. For example, many of the import approval and inspection activities are still paper-based, and the agency needs to send thousands of faxes between its offices annually, perhaps contributing to the missing documents that we observed in our testing.

Fourth, import volumes are increasing. The volume of regulated plant imports more than doubled between the 2000-01 and 2007-08 fiscal years.

Together, our findings led us to believe that the agency should undertake a comprehensive assessment of the scope and delivery of the plant health program.

Our overall conclusion is that CFIA lacks an effective integrated risk-management approach to plant and plant product imports. We made several recommendations aimed at correcting the deficiencies we observed. The agency has agreed with our recommendations and has made several commitments in its response. The committee may wish to explore the progress made to date, including the adequacy of the agency's action plans and timelines to address the issues raised in this chapter.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer any questions committee members may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser.

Now we're going to hear from Ms. Swan, the president and accounting officer of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

[Carole Swan, President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee today. I am the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and I have with me several experts from the agency. We look forward to assisting the committee with its important work.

The threat to Canada posed by invasive species, plant pests, and plant diseases is very real. With that in mind, the CFIA welcomes the work of the Auditor General. We have thoroughly reviewed the findings of the Auditor General's report on managing Canada's plant resources. We take these findings very seriously and we are actively addressing them.

The CFIA's plant import program needs to be modernized to reflect increased import volume, speed of trade, and changing trade patterns. Since the audit was completed, the CFIA has taken concrete steps to address the audit's recommendations. Our action plan, which has been shared with the committee, outlines short-term and long-term initiatives.

Although not a formal recommendation, the report says that the CFIA needs a clear champion to address these issues in a timely way. I agree. I have asked Dr. Brian Evans, the agency's executive vice-president and chief veterinary officer, to oversee this action plan. He will be supported by a senior level committee and a program management office. He will make sure that the actions in this plan are supported by technical project plans and that the responsible executives are held to account for their timely completion.

I will now turn to our action plan and some of the actions already under way. First, we are using a more risk-based approach for plant pest surveillance. We are auditing our pest survey protocols, which will improve next year's surveys. We are eliminating the backlog of requests for risk assessments. This will be done by March 2010. We will implement a formal risk-based approach by December 2009, in time for next year's surveys.

Second, we're putting in place a comprehensive quality management system for the plant health program and we have completed revisions to the import inspection manual. These revisions will improve consistency in the interpretation and application of our regulations, and inspectors are being trained on the procedures in the new manual. This will be finished by July 2009.

Third, we are enhancing our partnership with the CBSA so that we can collect better information about the effectiveness of our import control activities.

Finally, we are reviewing what information management tools we need to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the plant health program, and we are identifying options to fund these. In the short term, we are making essential investments in the tools that we use to track imports. We will complete an assessment of the information management needs as it relates to plant imports by April 2010.

While a lot of work is already under way to improve our approach and capabilities with respect to plant imports, we acknowledge that there is much more to be done. We look forward to the work of this committee to further guide our efforts.

Thank you, and we're happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Swan.

We're now going to move to the first round. Seven minutes, Ms. Ratansi.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here.

Ms. Fraser, thank you for an exhaustive audit. I think it's very disturbing to see what you've found. Some of the issues you raised would be of concern to every Canadian, because you have said that invasive species are the second-largest threat to Canada's plants and plant production. Plant production was valued in 2005 at $100 billion.

The CFIA has stated that they agree with your recommendation and have given us an action plan. Have you had an opportunity to have a look at their action plan?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, my staff has. We have received a copy of the action plan.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Are you satisfied that it meets your recommendations?

[Sheila Fraser]

I would say generally yes. But as Ms. Swan has mentioned, the agency needs to prepare more technical, more detailed plans to supplement that more general action plan. We would like to see that included as well, perhaps with more specificity around some of the deadlines, which we would expect to see again in the more detailed plans.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Swan, thank you for being here.

I know the CFIA tries to do good work and everybody tries to ensure that we are safe in our consumption of food. My question is, why are we focusing so much energy on our exports rather than our imports? Which country provides our largest food import? Why are we focusing our resources when according to the audit about 11% of your budget, about $65.2 million, goes into protecting plant and food safety, and you have about 6,000 people, yet we do not have a formal, comprehensive risk-based strategy and we have backlogs?

Why are we focusing on exports rather than imports?

[Carole Swan]

Thank you for the question.

You raise the issue of CFIA activities, the CFIA mandate, and you raise the issue of food safety. You are quite right, the CFIA has a primary mandate for food safety. We also have a mandate for animal welfare and plant health, and it is in this connection that the Auditor General has provided us with the audit on our plant health program.

The country we import most from, clearly, is the United States, in terms of food and food issues. We have adopted increasingly an approach in the plant health area to try to mitigate risk before it comes into the country. We have been trying to work with other countries to stop things from coming in before they become established. The challenge for the plant health program is invasive species coming in. Once they get a toe-hold in Canada it can be very difficult to mitigate. So we have increasingly been focusing on outside the border to try to stop invasive plant pests from coming into Canada at all.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But we have seen, for example, the longhorn beetle and the Asian beetle devastate our forests. The auditor has shown, in her exhibit 4.1, the existing plant health emergencies. Explain to me how you get another country to ensure that its products are safe. Why would that country want to ensure that its products are safe when it expects an inspection to be done here in Canada and you have labels on imports that say a 100% inspection is supposed to be done, and it's not being done? Why is that happening? Where is this confusion coming from? Why are we only inspecting 40% from the sample that the Auditor General did?

[Carole Swan]

As the Auditor General mentioned, we have to adopt a risk management approach because it's impossible, frankly, whether it is a plant pest issue, an animal health issue, or even a food safety issue, to have zero risk. We need to look at the greatest area of risk.

One of the things we found in our plant health program is if we can stop pests from coming into Canada in the first place, rather than inspecting at our borders, if we can assure ourselves that products coming from other countries are free of plant pests, that increases the chance that we will be able to keep these plant pests out of Canada.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But the auditor does state that you do not have a formal comprehensive risk-based assessment. So what sorts of tools are you using in your risk-based assessment that help us as Canadians to ensure that the imports coming in are safe?

[Carole Swan]

We absolutely agree with the Auditor General. As you have pointed out, we need to enhance our risk-based approach for pest surveillance. Right now we do some risk-based analysis based on country, based on the nature of the pest that is coming in. We absolutely agree, we need to get better at that.

One thing I can tell you is we have made a commitment to eliminate the backlog of requests for risk assessment, which the Auditor General noted as well in her report as something we had to pay attention to. We do not allow things to come into the country without a risk assessment being done. So while there is a backlog, at least we know we are not importing things if the risk assessment hasn't been done.

Let me just ask Brian if he wants to add to the risk assessment issue. It's a very important issue.

[Dr. Brian Evans, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you, honourable member, for the question, and Carole, for the opportunity to provide some additional perspective on it.

It is very important to understand equally that the plant health import program deals not only with those products for which a risk assessment has been completed and an import permit has been issued to allow that product to come into the country, but it also has to take on board the reality, as Carole indicated, that unless an assessment has been done there is no import permit issued and none of that product can arrive in Canada until that's completed.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I know you're going to explain that to me, but if I understood the auditor's analysis, there were products where the importer was told they were a 100% risk so they had to inspect them. How did they get through? I'm seeing some inconsistency in your response and in what the audit found.

[Dr. Brian Evans]

It's not intended to be inconsistent. The audit finding is the audit finding, and we fully agree with the audit finding. The challenge with risk-based inspection systems, as Carole was attempting to indicate, is what you determine is such a risk that you're not going to allow it in at all. The work that is done by CFIA, pre-border, if you will, before things even arrive here, is an assessment of either the individual products or the capacity of another country or the existence of an international standard that would mitigate that risk from coming. For those products that have been assessed and are allowed into the country, we still have that obligation to verify that a country's export shipment to us has met that standard and has not introduced a risk.

The point that I think was very critical, Mr. Chair, is the fact that the Auditor General looked not only at those things that are regulated to come in. Our plant survey work at the border also looks at those things that can come in through other means, not just though a direct import. There are issues around products, such as the introduction you alluded to of a number of pests that we know came into the country back in the 1980s and 1990s. It took many years of its presence before it could be detected.

We've identified risk pathways other than legal imports. These risk pathways include the types of wood packing material that is used. These are not plant imports or plant product imports, but the wood packing that's used to crate computers, cars, and other types of products. Collectively, as a world, we are learning about what risk pathways that presents and the need to trace where that wood material has come from and whether it's been treated appropriately.

Further, it also takes on board the reality of natural pathways. Again, a lot of the plant pests come in through global means. It's the reality of there being not just direct plant imports, but the “don't bring it back”.... We need to be aware of individuals bringing material back into Canada as well as travellers introducing things with the product they're bringing in as they come to visit relatives or business acquaintances. This product may not actually be permitted to come in, but it has to be addressed.

Finally, there's the natural introduction that can occur with some plant pests that can enter not just at land border crossings, but in the holds of aircraft, in the holds of ships, through natural wind spread, and other means.

This is part of the challenge the Auditor General has identified. We need to look at our risk-based assessments and at those pathways and products to make sure that we're investing in the right area. We fully support that, and that's where we're going.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. Ratansi.

Thank you, Mr. Evans.

Madame Faille, sept minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

With regards to this issue, I will focus on resources. I would also like to know more about inspectors.

In your audit, Madam Fraser, you pointed out that inspectors must share their time between inspecting plant imports and certifying exports and that exports are given priority. During our first discussions on this issue, I made reference to businesses in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area, including Immunotech Limited, among others, which sell natural products. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency used to be responsible for certifying their exports but last February these responsibilities were transferred to Health Canada.

So my question is for Ms. Swan. Over the years have you tried to reestablish a balance between the attention given to imports and exports, and did you negotiate with other departments, including Health Canada or Industry Canada, the transfer of some inspection functions?

[Carole Swan]

Thank you for the question.

I'm going to ask Paul Mayers to speak to the issue of Health Canada and our relationship, particularly in relation to resources.

[Paul Mayers, Associate Vice-President, Programs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you very much.

The issue of natural health products and the shared responsibilities that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada have in terms of food safety relate to the point the honourable member raised. In the case of natural health products, with new regulatory requirements introduced by Health Canada several years ago, which created the new category of natural health products, these products fall within the definition of drugs and as a result fall outside of the jurisdiction of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It was therefore for that reason that products that fall under the definition of a natural health product were then outside the scope of CFIA's mandate in terms of its inspection and certification activities.

We continue to work very closely with our colleagues at Health Canada as we manage the transition in terms of the management of natural health products so that products that previously might have been considered foods but now with the claims that are made come into the definition of a drug, we want to ensure that those products continue to be eligible for export and continue to be subject to export certification.

And there can be a combination effect. We do see situations, for example, where a company that markets dairy products also has a natural health product containing dairy ingredients for which specific health claims are made. We ensure that the CFIA portion in terms of its inspection of the facility is conveyed to our colleagues at Health Canada to facilitate the certification of that product into export markets. So the situation that you note is indeed one that we recognize, and we work very closely with Health Canada so as to minimize any disruption for the industry.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I wanted to point out that over the years you clarified some of your roles in order to ensure that inspections will be done by those departments that hold that responsibility. So it seems to me that you are trying to reach a better balance between the amount of effort spent on imports and the effort spent on exports.

You have service points in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. You carry out approximately 84,000 inspections. Is there any one office that is more problematic than others?

[Carole Swan]

Thank you for the question.

Again, a risk-based approach would indicate there are certain locations that are going to be more problematic for risk in terms of things coming in.

Dr. Evans mentioned that of course the plant health issue generally is not an issue, only of actual importations. It can also be inadvertent entry of plant pests into Canada. So I would agree with you that we do have different risk areas based on differing locations.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

If you do not have the figures, you might get back to us later. How many vacant inspector positions do you have by location? Could you also provide us an overview of the number of certification refusals at each service point?

Let me now switch to your information technology system. What resources did you invest in this area? Has the work started? Do you have a business plan in terms of IT systems? Have you submitted a funding proposal in this regard?