A new report urges the federal government to de-tangle its regulations on the country’s agri-food industry, hoping streamlined measures will increase the sector’s competitiveness.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce report, titled Cultivating Competitiveness, discusses the history of regulations on the industry and sets out clear actions the government must take to improve it.
In summary, it says Canada has frequently reviewed regulations and has received recommendations, but has hardly made changes, suggesting now is the time to act.
“There has been a lot of work spent to figure out what the solutions are,” said Ryan Greer, who prepared the report and is a senior director with transportation and infrastructure policy at the chamber.
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For instance, Greer said, the government in 2015 created the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which was made up of a panel of experts to provide recommendations on ways to improve the economy and living standards for citizens.
The council identified agri-food as an industry with massive growth potential, later producing an economic strategy table with a slate of recommendations to improve the sector’s competitiveness.
The council noted that Canada’s regulatory regimes are limiting the industry to reach its economic potential.
“Even if we give the government the benefit of the doubt that they are interested in resolving these, it’s time to get on with it,” Greer said, adding there have been studies on the issue over the past decade.
“Let’s not have industry put all this time and effort into collaborating on this report for no action to come out of it.”
Greer said adopting all recommendations in the economic strategy table is extremely important, but the chamber is worried there is little time to act given the upcoming election.
“There isn’t a lot of time to implementing these things, but what we’ve said to government is show us a path to implementing them,” he said.
“If there is anything in the report they feel they can’t or will not implement, we want them to be clear and say what that is. We don’t want them to just accept the report, sit back and not do anything with it.”
In the report, the chamber highlighted other concerns that might inhibit agri-food’s growth.
It took issue with Health Canada’s front-of-package labelling initiative, which would require a symbol for foods high in saturated fat, sugar or sodium.
The report said the initiative is well intentioned, but would have competitive implications for Canadian food manufacturers, costing industry an estimated $1.8 billion.
As well, Greer said, the labelling would create a non-tariff barrier to trade, causing additional costs for companies selling product to and from Canada because separate labels would need to be administered.
“Governments often lean too hard to regulate first and ask questions later,” he said. “We’ve been saying they need to first sit down with industry, come to a combined understanding to what the problem is, and then see whether or not it could be addressed in regulatory ways.”
He pointed to the United States as a success story for its food labelling approach.
The ‘facts-up-front’ initiative lets companies provide easy-to-read information on the front of packages about the content in food products. The initiative is also industry-led, Greer said.
As well, the report recommended the government provide more resources to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), ensuring product assessments are more efficient.
It said the PMRA has more than 100 pesticide re-evaluations underway and hundreds more are expected over the next decade, but the agency has little resources to handle the workload.
The chamber also recommends the government conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the impacts from new regulation, ensure regulatory reviews are ongoing to continue to find efficiencies, and make economic growth a mandate when reviewing regulations.
