Safe Food for Canadians Act | New bill will consolidate existing bills, give new powers to ag minister
The federal government is proposing the most significant food inspection and safety reforms since the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was created 15 years ago.
On June 7, the Safe Food for Canadians Act was introduced in the Senate and debate began June 12, with Manitoba Conservative Don Plett leading off.
Debate will be interrupted by the summer parliamentary recess in late June and then picked up in the fall when Parliament resumes.
Approval of the bill is not likely at least until winter.
Bill S-11 will consolidate four existing food inspection bills into one, give the agriculture minister the authority to impose regulations that enforce national traceability systems if necessary and give food inspectors more powers to demand documents from food companies and to obtain warrants for premise searches. The bill will also impose new restrictions on food importers, including the need for a licence.
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It would also sharply increase fines for companies that violate food safety rules or people who deliberately tamper with food in stores, raising the potential fines from $250,000 to $5 million or higher.
“Clear consistent rules for our inspectors and industry overall will ultimately make food safer for all Canadians,” agriculture minister Gerry Ritz told a June 7 Ottawa news conference.
“And when the law isn’t followed and the safety of the food our families eat is put at risk, the new act will allow tougher fines and penalties to be imposed.”
Food industry reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
Canadian Cattlemen’s Association president Martin Unrau from Manitoba offered a typical reaction.
He said the promise of tougher traceability rules is welcome, as well as a promise that they will apply to imports as well as domestically produced products.
“I am particularly pleased that under the act, imported foods will be required to meet the same high standards that Canadian producers and processors now meet,” he said in a CCA statement.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett also praised the legislative proposals and the streamlining of food safety rules.
He said the commitment to stronger traceability rules is welcome, but he also wanted farmers protected from a situation where they must abide by a federal standard as well as additional requirements imposed by retail chains with tremendous market power.
“We’ve got to talk about long-term food safety rules and not short-term marketing strategies,” Bonnett said from his Ontario farm.
Bob Kingston, president of the agriculture union that represents federal food inspectors, said the legislation has good points but the number of inspectors must be doubled to do what is required.
Opposition agriculture critic and NDP MP Malcolm Allen said the bill will be challenged in the House of Commons next autumn once it is approved in the Senate.
He said increasing the CFIA’s emphasis on overseeing the food safety efforts of companies could compromise the system. He saw it as a privatization of food inspection.
“This is supposed to be about being safer and I don’t see that,” said Allen.
The legislation would also give food companies a legislated right to appeal CFIA decisions.
Health minister Leona Aglukkaq told the June 7 news conference that this is the first major food safety law update in half a century.
“We want to speed up the approval process for foods and ingredients that are proven to be safe,” she said.
“We also want to be able to respond faster when new science tells us there may be a safety concern.”
Ritz said the bill represents the last piece of implementing the 57 recommendations of Linda Weatherill’s report, who was appointed to head an inquiry into food safety rules after a listeria outbreak in 2008 killed 22 Canadians.
She recommended an overhaul of food safety legislation and rules.
Ritz said the government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to strengthen the system and hire new inspectors since Weatherill’s report.
