THE political discourse in Canada often is informed by myth as much as by fact.
For example, the reigning myth has been that Liberals are protectionists and when Jean Chrétien embraced free trade (after opposing it), he was defying Liberal history. Actually, Liberals have been the historical free traders and Chrétien was true to party history.
Then there’s the conviction so beloved by Conservatives that had it not been for that socialist Pierre Trudeau, property rights would have been enshrined in the 1982 constitution. Any fair reading of constitutional debate at the time would suggest it was the provinces, including revered Tory names like Lougheed, Lyon and Davis, who looked askance at the prospect that provincial jurisdiction over property rights would be eroded.
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So it is today as the view grows that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is arbitrarily blocking legitimate attempts by provincially licensed packing plants to ship product across provincial borders.
It is a complaint voiced often by MPs who listen to complaints from local plants in the ridings.
While CFIA sometimes is a difficult agency to defend, the issue of blockages in interprovincial meat trade deserves at least a bit of perspective.
As it stands, more than 90 percent of product from Canadian packing plants meets federal standards and can be shipped interprovincially or internationally.
Most of the rest are provincially regulated and do not meet federal standards. Their products can be sold only in their own province.
And in several provinces, municipal inspectors are in charge of some plants or there is a voluntary inspection regime that allows plants to opt in or out. These products are meant only for local consumption.
The argument that there should be interprovincial trade in products from plants not acceptable to international buyers raises its own question of why any consumers should be offered products from another province not deemed appropriate for consumers in the United States or Japan.
But beyond that, negotiations have been under way for years on a proposed national meat code that would set standards higher than some provincial standards but lower than federal international standards.
To be clear, these “standards” relate more to physical aspects of the plant than to health and safety tests.
Still, the debate is to find a national standard allowing interprovincial movement that would be less rigorous than international standards.
The CFIA has set a requirement that any new national standard must be accepted in each province before it takes effect. There should not be a patchwork of standards across the country that inspectors would have to monitor to ensure product from a province not accepting the national standard did not leak into interprovincial trade.
Some provinces have accepted the idea of a 10-province requirement. Others, worried about the closure of plants that could not meet the national standard, have balked.
This hardly seems like the heavy hand of CFIA. It seems like an attempt to make sure Canadians everywhere can be confident that the meat they buy meets the same consistent standards no matter where they live.
Some provinces agree. Others do not.
It’s called federalism, not heavy-handed Ottawa.
