Canadian Consumers’ Association vice-president Mel Fruitman becomes agitated when asked about the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The consumer advocate from a Toronto area town has long argued that the agency’s dual mandate of protecting Canadians from tainted food while helping the companies it polices find foreign markets makes it neither fish nor fowl.
“You can’t have two masters and be properly focused on either of them,” he said.
“In both optics and practice, it makes CFIA too close to the very industry it is supposed to be policing, one minute regulating and the next minute promoting.”
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Ron Doering, founding president of the CFIA in 1997 and one of the architects of the model that combined a sprawling system of inspectors from health, industry, fisheries and agriculture into one agency, first heard those arguments when he was helping design the agency.
“Of course, consumer groups to the extent there were any, and the health coalition and the unions, made the argument that a single agency responsible for all those activities would run the risk of having conflicting goals, helping industry and at the same time being a food safety regulator,” said Doering, now an Ottawa-based food issues lawyer and lobbyist.
“At the time, it became clear to me that this was not really a persuasive argument. If it was set up as an independent crown agency, the potential for not caring for consumers and letting unsafe food be sold was a remote notion to me, a bit silly.”
Silly or not, the issue of regulator versus advocate has continued to nag at the CFIA over the years.
The agricultural export industry has regularly complained the CFIA does not take seriously enough its role in negotiating market access through technical trade barriers.
Many in the export sector regularly call for the agency to be a more enthusiastic partner, better funded and officially part of the government team negotiating trade and market access agreements.
Critics continue to see a conflict.
And CFIA continues to assure industry it is on its side.
An April 2007 memo prepared for then-agriculture minister Chuck Strahl by deputy minister Yaprak Baltacioglu in preparation for a meeting with the Canada Beef Export Federation suggested reinforcing the idea of a partnership.
“Maintaining and regaining market access for Canadian beef and cattle is a high priority for CFIA,” she said in a memo obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin through access to information rules.
“Significant resources in terms of technical experts and other staff are dedicated to this goal.”
CFIA executive vice-president Brian Evans said the agency walks a delicate line.
“At every opportunity, we will do all that we can possibly do to contribute to an economic outcome for industry, but there is a line and at the end of the day, we are the regulator and we do have to take decisions that sometimes are unpopular.”
For Toronto trade lawyer Lawrence Herman, the controversy is puzzling.
“Of course, CFIA would be involved in these negotiations because they often are very technical and who else could do that?” he said.
But Fruitman said the conflict is real and there is a solution.
“CFIA should not report to the minister of agriculture, whose role it is to promote the industry,” he said.
“Ideally, the trade promotion would stay with agriculture and the food safety would go to a reinvented consumer department. If not, it should be health.”
In 1996, the House of Commons agriculture committee recommended the CFIA report to the agriculture minister.
The Liberal government of the day accepted the recommendation.
