Agriculture committee  I'm here today in my own personal capacity at the invitation of the clerk, so I'm not representing anyone. I assume that part of the reason I'm here is because my primary practice in law is agriculture and food law. I write widely on issues of food law, and I'm a former president

Agriculture committee  I remember I used to use the number 30,000 to 40,000, so yes, 35,000 SKUs. There are 99.9% of those that are labelled properly as far as “Product of Canada” is concerned, so let's keep this in perspective, ladies and gentlemen. My second point is that we can easily change your r

Agriculture committee  Sure. You don't have all morning, but I could spend all morning, because I do this for a living--help people work their way through this maze. Maybe I'll build on the one the gentleman just mentioned. The real solution to that problem is to not have pre-label approval for jams.

Agriculture committee  I didn't argue for no changes; I argued for no regulatory change. If you recommend regulatory change to the Government of Canada, you won't see it for a couple of years from now, minimum. You won't have had an impact on Canadian consumers, because the regulatory change process i

Agriculture committee  I'll say it again. I'm not saying that the way we do food labelling is acceptable. It is awful. It significantly undermines innovation in Canada. It significantly undermines competitiveness, and it significantly hurts investment in the food industry. I said that if you want to

Agriculture committee  That problem was not with “Product of Canada”.

Agriculture committee  We can talk after this.

Agriculture committee  That's simply because the 51% rule is based on cost, not content. It was never designed for food. It was presumably for something like importing T-shirts from Asia and then putting on some crests or doing some embroidery. If 51% of the costs are incurred here, you can call it “Pr

Agriculture committee  The problem is that he was talking about jam. Jam is unique. Jam, like meat, is unique. You have to get pre-market approval of that label.

Agriculture committee  Interestingly enough, one of the reasons Americans prefer Canadian jam is that we have different standards for jam. We have to have a higher fruit content. One of the reasons they like it down there is that it's probably a higher-quality jam if it's made in Canada. In going dow

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. First of all, on those 35,000 SKUs, we're only talking about a few hundred SKUs out of that vast array of what you'll get in a supermarket that actually deals with this “Product of Canada” issue. So let's drill down now to where this is really relevant. Let's take j

Agriculture committee  If the rule was that it had to be 100% Canadian product—

Agriculture committee  This juice company I'm talking about is a good Canadian company, a longstanding Canadian company, with headquarters in Quebec. A product of Canada is any product that is entirely Canadian or whose main ingredients, 80%, are of Canadian origin and for which all process or manufact

Agriculture committee  The big business/little business thing is really complicated. You'd have to take another whole session on that. Let me say, though, don't hold your breath for harmonization. It's not going to happen anytime soon. I can tell you, from the five years I was president of the food ins