IT is a foolhardy soul who will extend a neck to make a political prediction about what will happen in this volatile,
election-bound minority Parliament.
OK, foolhardy it may be but here goes: Parliament’s long attempt at creating new legislative rules for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will not make it into law before the next election.
It will be a major disappointment to those who spent many hours working on the bill and consider it important.
And it will be a major political rebuke to members of the House of Commons agriculture committee for adding dairy labelling clauses to the bill last June without a clear understanding of their implications.
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The whole episode has created sport for conservative anti-supply management commentators across the country, allowing them to portray the members of the
committee as the political equivalent of
Keystone Kops.
The prediction is this: Bill C-27, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act, likely will not be called again for debate in the few weeks of parliamentary time left before an expected early March election call.
The government House leader is unlikely to add to a crowded agenda a controversial bill that could bring the Liberals nothing but political trouble.
And if parliamentary time is allocated for debate on amendments to the bill voted by the agriculture committee last June after months of public hearings and many hours of detailed technical debate, it will be stalled short of approval, probably in the Senate.
The problem is not the CFIA amendments designed to create greater oversight of the federal agency, more than eight years old but still without a consolidated legislative base.
The problem is with a package of dairy labelling amendments, adopted at the request of Dairy Farmers of Canada ostensibly to require that dairy substitute products not be allowed to use dairy terms on their labels.
It was a unanimous decision by MPs on the committee as all four parties in Parliament jockey to show supply management farmers how much they are supported.
But the feel-good political gesture has turned into a bit of a political nightmare. A powerful coalition of food processors, retailers, traders and consumers are against the dairy labelling amendment, insisting it will force dairy substitute products off the market.
The United States, Australia and three prairie provinces also have weighed in against the provisions, insisting they will disrupt trade.
MPs are caught in a dilemma.
Proposing to weaken or remove the dairy labelling amendments to satisfy the critics will be denounced as a betrayal by the supply managed sectors that are important political players in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec.
Leaving any version of the dairy amendments in the bill will certainly lead to a strong lobby by the powerful food industry on key economic ministers and then on the business-friendly Senate.
It all sounds like a political no-winner.
Best to let it lie on the parliamentary schedule until it is too late to get passage before an election, making vague promises to both sides that something will be done in the new Parliament.
A stand-alone dairy labelling package might be a place to start next time so that the CFIA legislation is not held hostage.
