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Results: 1 - 15 of 129
View Dave Epp Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you.
I'd like to get one more question in if I can to Mr. Gilvesy. What would be ALUS's position on cross-compliance between BRM programming and environmental initiatives?
Bryan Gilvesy
View Bryan Gilvesy Profile
Bryan Gilvesy
2021-06-08 15:58
One of the things that farmers have told us in the design of our program is that we need to be voluntary. That means that we operate in a space that is neither a regulatory one nor a legal one. Our farmers' actions are operating in an additional nature. In other words, they're providing environmental services over and above what any regulation or compliance might require.
View Kody Blois Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Kody Blois Profile
2021-06-08 16:00
Okay.
I want to get into verification. When I have conversations with stakeholders across the country, that becomes a big piece. Obviously, your company is in that space. I presume there are others who might also be in that realm in the private sector.
Do you see it as government's role to play a helping hand with farmers, or is this something that the private sector can take a leading role in, in terms of the verification of farmers' meeting some of these protocols, to take advantage of these opportunities?
Wade Barnes
View Wade Barnes Profile
Wade Barnes
2021-06-08 16:00
We've had experience in both the regulatory market in Alberta and now the voluntary market. In both cases, you need an independent verifier in order to ensure that these credits are credible.
Government can play a role to ensure that a third party is verifying it. That would be helpful when it comes to even corporate clients buying those offsets and having some governance around that.
View Kody Blois Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Kody Blois Profile
2021-06-08 16:01
Mr. Barnes, beyond the regulatory approach of actually auditing the pieces, it's the tools, on farm, for farmers to be able to illustrate some of this work that you're talking about.
I hear you on the regulatory piece, but in terms of the actual tools on farm, is that best delivered by private companies like yours that can help digitize some of this, or does government have a role in incentivizing that behaviour?
Wade Barnes
View Wade Barnes Profile
Wade Barnes
2021-06-08 16:01
It depends on how you look at it. One, the investment on the farm, to be able to digitalize that, to get that data so that data is verifiable, is critical and Canada can play a huge role in that.
The question is that our friends south of the border are essentially using crop insurance as a way to incentivize farmers to implement those practices.
Does government have a role to play? Possibly. If you want to speed up the digitalization at the farm level, it could. The other side of it is to not get in the road of a transaction between a farmer and a corporate client to create value, because they'll make those investments on their own.
View Yves Perron Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the officials who have stayed with us for the rest of the meeting.
I will start with Ms. Barnes.
Ms. Barnes, earlier you and Mr. Lehoux talked about reciprocity of standards and inspections. I'm very happy to hear you are doing more inspections on duck, because that has caused issues in the past.
I recently met with Chicken Farmers of Canada. They told me that they saw spent layer imports from the United States increase to 88 million kilos last year. According to them, anything more than 60 million kilos is almost certainly going to be imported illegally. They have developed and proposed a DNA test that would be easy to use and would not be very expensive to implement during the inspections that are already done at points of arrival.
Is the department working on that? Is the department open to implementing it? Have you ever considered it?
Colleen Barnes
View Colleen Barnes Profile
Colleen Barnes
2021-03-11 17:16
Yes, our science branch has already completed that work. Right now, my colleagues in the operations branch are developing a test that would allow the Canada Border Services Agency to verify whether shipments designated as spent layers are actually spent layers.
We have other methods as well. Sometimes it's possible to identify fraud by what the shipment looks like, but testing can also be used.
View Yves Perron Profile
BQ (QC)
If I understand correctly, Ms. Barnes, you are saying that we can expect that this DNA test will be implemented very soon. Is that correct?
Ken Falk
View Ken Falk Profile
Ken Falk
2021-02-25 15:35
Thank you very much, honourable chairperson and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Ken Falk. I'm a third-generation farmer in Canada. Two more generations are already active on our family farm. Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry produces ducks, geese and specialty chickens in Chilliwack, British Columbia. I'm the vice-president of the Canadian Commercial Waterfowl Producers Association.
We are encouraged that stability, renewal, capacity, competitiveness, and food security are important to government. The Barton report says that bold ideas will improve Canada's economic growth, and being a global food champion tomorrow cannot be held back by how we worked yesterday. Winning requires bolder ambitions, an urgent strategy and a new form of co-operation between the private and public sectors.
Meanwhile, other countries are increasing outputs, often supported by subsidies, with much lower standards, to the detriment of Canadian farmers struggling to compete against these imports or in export markets.
I want to highlight a couple of personal experiences that expose barriers to achieving our objectives.
Barrier number one is that the food sector faces over-regulation, with inconsistent, unreasonable, heavy and even sometimes underhanded enforcement tactics by the CFIA.
In our case, we were wrongfully charged for interprovincial movement of product. Details are in my brief, which I submitted earlier. Charges must be based on evidence, not on mere conjecture, speculation and mistakes. The harm, apparently, that could be done, they said, was monetary losses due to unfair competition. Facing $52,000 in fines, we spent over $214,000 in legal fees and five years to clear our name. This has seriously impacted our family, with many sleepless nights and incredible stress. It's been unfair, unethical, unprofessional and disrespectful. My character and integrity were called into question time and again.
They say that this is just a cost of doing business for us. Trust has been destroyed, and they say that now I just need to move forward with a positive attitude. I ask today that you restore our faith in government and make this right. I'm confident that none of you, as our elected parliamentarians, intended that we would be treated this way.
The administrative monetary penalties act and regulations must be changed. Eliminate the kangaroo court that the CFIA operates. Ensure that there is practical recourse. Key defences, such as due diligence, must be available. CFIA staff must be held to account when they get it wrong—not if, but when—or they will carelessly file wrongful charges again. Their cultural norm is to take punitive action instead of using a co-operative approach. We could have solved the situation in minutes. Instead, we spent years fighting. Civilian oversight would bring accountability. The ministers have refused to engage, and the complaints and appeals process is a sham.
We can learn a lot from the things we teach our children: to be fair, empathetic, helpful, trustworthy, respectful and kind. When we make mistakes, we acknowledge them quickly. We apologize and we make it right. Sadly, this has not been my experience with government. This punitive “gotcha” style of inspection must stop. This new co-operation between private and public sectors is possible, but it will require these bold ambitions, as the culture is so deeply entrenched today.
Now we get to barrier number two. Over the past five years, large quantities of very poor-quality ducks have been imported into Canada. The CFIA said they were produced in an equivalent system and weren't required to meet Canadian standards. We strongly disagree. Independent testing revealed how bad the product really was; not one sample tested met Canadian standards. The CFIA's first response was to try to discredit the report.
Labelling was also deficient. To instruct a consumer to warm raw poultry thoroughly before consumption could result in a serious food safety problem. The CFIA said that Canadians will know how to handle raw poultry, yet we know that if one of us had done that, the product would be recalled, and the producer would face huge fines.
Selling prices were well below the cost of production, likely due to subsidies in other countries but also due to lower standards of inspection, workers' rights, wages, animal welfare and the environment. A duck is a duck. They're sourced from similar genetic suppliers, are consuming similar feeds, and are raised much the same. There's no secret formula. The only difference is input costs.
We are held to high standards in Canada, and that's good. We only ask that they be reasonable, that they provide a level playing field and we be treated fairly, and this has not happened. We don't understand why government would knowingly want to run us out of business.
After recent meetings with the CFIA, we are hopeful that this is being resolved, but serious harm has already been done. The waterfowl sector in Canada is struggling, and we fear these inequities will happen again and again.
Here's the irony. We've suffered monetary losses due to unfair competition, but CFIA says they don't consider that. However, that's exactly why they wrongfully charged me in the first place.
If you want stability, renewal, capacity and competitiveness, stop the unfair treatment. Be fair. Support Canada's producers.
A third barrier is access to capital. As a niche market in the poultry sector, we're often overlooked. I'm also a supply-managed producer, so I work with my friends in supply management, only to find that those sectors will be eligible but we're not. We don't have the lobby power, so effectively we're forgotten. We've struggled with lenders, particularly in recent years, with unfair competition and with the treatment by CFIA, all of which have driven margins down to the point that we are barely able to survive. Banks don't lend to struggling companies in the real world.
The impacts of COVID-19 have been devastating for our sector. Duck is primarily a food service product, and as you know, that sector has been decimated. We didn't enter COVID with the cash to survive lengthy shutdowns, so we've all had to cut production and lay off staff. Now we fear that cheap foreign duck will flood into Canada again. Please don't let that happen.
We can supply Canadians with duck while producing a world-class product for export. The same standards and laws that we uphold in Canada must be enforced on all who want to import to Canada, and there must be substantial changes if we are to compete well in export markets.
We need to be supported in our efforts by government in order to be profitable. If you want stability, renewal, capacity and competitiveness, and you want to protect food security, I say rebuild trust. If we can trust one another, the unfairness would not happen, the adversarial “gotcha” style of inspection would finally come to an end and the punitive enforcement would be replaced with co-operation. I ask you to take the lead. It's going to take that urgent strategy, but it will be worth it.
Again, I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today.
View Yves Perron Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I also thank our two witnesses.
As Mr. Lehoux pointed out, your problems seem to be similar.
Mr. O'Shaughnessy, I'm going to continue with you.
What could be changed to rectify this situation? We've heard several times that imported products do not meet the same standards.
What are some concrete recommendations we could make to the government?
Philip O'Shaughnessy
View Philip O'Shaughnessy Profile
Philip O'Shaughnessy
2021-02-25 16:02
On our side, the problem has been going on for several years. Historically, we've had a hard time being heard. That has probably been our biggest problem.
On the other hand, I must admit that the situation has changed a lot in the last few months. We have been put in touch with the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We were really heard and action has been taken.
The Association des éleveurs de canards et d’oies du Québec, the Quebec duck and goose breeders association, was forced to pay for independent studies. We had to do our own studies. Getting our voice heard and our point of view across was difficult.
View Yves Perron Profile
BQ (QC)
You're getting into part of Mr. Falk's statement about a relationship of trust. You seem to be telling us that we are in a relationship of mistrust and denunciation rather than a collaborative relationship. But I understand that that is changing.
Philip O'Shaughnessy
View Philip O'Shaughnessy Profile
Philip O'Shaughnessy
2021-02-25 16:03
As far as I'm concerned, I can say that there has indeed been a lot of progress. I think the contacts and relationships we have managed to have in the last five months are historic. It's the right thing to do.
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