Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Regrettably, the Prime Minister didn't appoint me as president of the CFIA last week, so I really can't provide you with a good answer on your initial question about the relocation of a CFIA office. To get to the broader question, Canada has a really good reputation for producing safe food.

Finance committee  I'm just about to finish, Mr. Chair. To meet these challenges we believe the next budget should provide for the development of a national food safety strategy and set out a five-year plan for food safety funding. This would involve providing financial incentives for food businesses and providing increased funding for federal agencies and departments to carry out their new responsibility.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us. It's not our first submission, but it was our first time asking to come before you. The coalition was formed 16 years ago. Our membership is composed of 32 national, provincial, and regional associations that represent businesses at every link in the supply chain, from input suppliers, primary producers, transportation, processing, manufacturing, distribution, and importing, to final marketers in export, retail, and food service.

Agriculture committee  In my initial answer to your colleague, obviously, I went over part of the ground, in terms of what our WTO obligations are. We have to have a system in place here that we can defend if we're going to impose those requirements on others. So we need to have a first look at our domestic system.

Agriculture committee  Put it this way, I'm no longer a trade expert. I dabbled in the field back in the Uruguay Round. I'm not in a position to answer whether it applies to all of our relationships, but clearly it's a fundamental of how our trading relationships are built—that we apply to others that which we have applied to ourselves, to put it in very simple terms.

Agriculture committee  We see more and more of them having a role in, what we would call, an audit function, as opposed to an on-the-line inspection function. Whether the title of their job changes or not, we see that happening. As that happens, there will be requirements for new competencies, new skills, new knowledge, and new capacities to apply them.

Agriculture committee  There are a number of interesting questions in there, and I'm glad you didn't ask me any more about the budget.

Agriculture committee  The coalition's position is that imports should be meeting the same standards that we have in Canada. It's a real challenge to achieve this in a marketplace where we all enjoy food that comes from someplace else. It's a challenge even in the domestic sense. We have inspectors, but they are primarily functioning in the registered establishments, which represent a significant portion of the Canadian supply but not all of it.

Agriculture committee  The coalition is quite supportive of eliminating re-inspection. This discussion is now going on at the Regulatory Cooperation Council, as is the broader discussion about how we can harmonize our approaches to imports. But we still have to have a regime in Canada that allows us to make sure we treat imports the same.

Agriculture committee  My understanding is that members of the coalition are very supportive of that idea. They're also supportive of another idea that's happening in the world around us, which the British would call “earned recognition”. In registered establishments where we have an ongoing presence, perhaps there could be a system where the success of companies meeting the requirements should be taken into account through a lower level of inspection.

Agriculture committee  It's an interesting question, and it's not one that's been brought to my attention and concern. From the coalition's perspective, no. Clearly our view would be, as we stated in our presentation today, that Canadians, no matter where they are, are entitled to have food that's produced at the same safe standard.

Agriculture committee  One of your colleagues asked why it takes so long to do things federally, and I couldn't give him a precise answer. In this case, I can give you a fairly clear answer: getting 14 governments to agree is a pretty massive challenge. We have some good examples of how they do it elsewhere, though, that we think are worthy of looking at.

Agriculture committee  Some of my members don't like me using the word “modernization” either, but yes, at this juncture, as long as it's achieving the objectives in the context in which we've set them out—which is that there are these principles we're working with, these responsibilities we share, and these tools we've accepted as being part of our tool kit to move things ahead—then modernization is going to be a very positive initiative, event, and series of events.

Agriculture committee  There are a number of answers that have been identified by members of the coalition. For example, we see in a number of areas where the legislation requires a regulation to be passed in order for something to be added to a list, whether it's a food additive or whether it's a processing activity, etc.

Agriculture committee  I think the officials have been giving it a lot of thought over the past several years.