Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 19 - Evidence - Meeting of June 7, 2012
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:02 a.m. to examine and report on research and innovation efforts in the agricultural sector (topics: bringing research to the table in the context of Canada's current agriculture and agri-food innovation system; and civil society and innovation and research in the agriculture and agri-food sector).
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. My name is Percy Mockler. I am a senator from New Brunswick and chair of the committee. I would like to start by asking all senators to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Fernand Robichaud, Saint-Louis-de-Kent in New Brunswick. Good morning.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Frank Mahovlich from Toronto, Ontario.
Senator Buth: Good morning. I am JoAnne Buth from Manitoba.
Senator Eaton: Nicole Eaton from Toronto.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Good morning, professor. Ghislain Maltais, Quebec.
Senator Rivard: Michel Rivard, from the Laurentides, in Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Professor Moccia, thank you for accepting our invitation and sharing your comments, views and recommendations with us. The committee is continuing its study on research and innovation efforts in the agricultural sector. Today we will have two panels. First, we will be focusing on bringing research to the table in the context of Canada's current agriculture and agri-food innovation system.
[Translation]
For the second panel, the subject will be civil society, innovation and research in the agricultural and agri-food sector.
[English]
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is authorized to examine and report on research and innovation efforts in the agricultural sector. In particular, the committee shall be authorized to examine research and development efforts in the context of developing new markets, domestically and internationally, enhancing agricultural sustainability and improving food diversity and security.
This morning, honourable senators, we have with us Professor Richard Moccia, Associate Vice-President, Research, Strategic Partnerships, Department of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph.
Again, professor, on behalf of the Senate committee, we want to extend our sincere appreciation for accepting our invitation. I will ask you to make your presentation, which will be followed by a period of questions from senators. Like we say in l'Acadie in New Brunswick:
[Translation]
You have the floor.
[English]
Richard D. Moccia, Associate Vice-President, Research (Strategic Partnerships), University of Guelph: Thank you very much. Good morning, honourable senators. It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak with you this morning about a subject that is of significance to Canada and to each one of its individual provinces.
As all of you know, the agri-food industry in Canada has a very long and historic background of contribution to the economy of both rural and now significantly to the urban parts of the country. It is a $150 billion-plus generator of primary economic wealth in Canada. In the province of Ontario, it is one of our top two major industries. It is a real opportunity for me to be able to speak to you from the University of Guelph, Canada's premier agri-food university.
In the interests of time, I would like to move directly to some of the recommendations that I would like to make, reverse engineer my comments from those recommendations and hopefully provide an opportunity for a good engagement in the question and answer session as we move to the end of my formal presentation.
My first recommendation for the Government of Canada would be to look to explore and exploit new strategic opportunities for enhanced co-location and co-investment in our intellectual capacity and infrastructure within the Canadian university system across the country. As you know, in previous years — back in the 1960s and 1970s — there was much better integration between federal, provincial and institutional research capacity. We had many government employees that were actually housed physically within the university infrastructure and significant co-location occurred. This started to devolve throughout the 1980s and 1990s. We ended up with two somewhat separate pillars of activity, universities becoming somewhat insular and government research facilities evolving on their own.
This caused a bit of a separation of our intellectual capacity and many of the long-standing partnerships started to devolve. This happened for a number of reasons, but it was not really conducive to long-term efficiency of our research capacity. We now have examples of trying to recover this co-location. A perfect example would be research scientists from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada who are now within an office of our department of plant agriculture working on a long-term bean-breeding program. They are working at direct, across-the-table interface with our research scientists, students, development of high-quality personnel and graduate training, and are even involved in our undergraduate teaching.
My first point would be that we need to look more aggressively at co-location and co-investment opportunities between federal, provincial governments and the university infrastructure.
My second recommendation would be to look at improving our partnerships between provincial and federal agencies and our academic sector when it comes to renewal and establishment of new infrastructure for research. If you have been in the agri-food industry in academics for more than 20 years or so, you will know that we have had significant deterioration of our infrastructure over time. We are at a period now of unprecedented need for both renewal of existing capacity as well as establishing new infrastructure to give us the platforms to undertake the kind of research necessary for the next 30 or 40 years. We have had a few recent examples of very independent establishment of major infrastructure in Canada without coordination with the major target audiences, being primarily provincial governments, university institutions and private sector. Again, I am looking to call for federal, provincial and academic institutions to revisit their approaches to collaborative partnering on infrastructure.
My third point to senators would be a little bit of view back to the future, in a way. It is a call for us to attempt to enhance and revamp our priority-setting system for research in the agri-food sector, both federally and provincially. Again, two decades ago we had a system where each province would develop research and service priorities that fed into the federal level of program planning. We had quite good coordination between most of the main contributors to our research enterprise. That has been lost. We have had the disassembly of some of our priority-setting mechanisms and we need to revisit improving how we both establish priorities, by including private sector, public sector and academic expertise around the table, and then using those priorities to implement programs and manage resource allocation.
As we know, the amount of resources we have for research is dwindling on a per capita basis so we need to make smarter decisions about where we put our money to address more contemporary problems in the agri-food industry to allow the sector to commercialize more quickly than it has in the past and exploit economic opportunities.
My take-home message would be to have a major rethink of how we establish provincial and federal priorities for research and industry support and then to use those in coordinating and implementing our research programs and allocation of resources across the country.
My fourth recommendation to senators is that we attempt to recognize the importance of public health as a key driver of our food and nutrition systems in Canada and to support research and enhance coordination among the medical funding agencies, health funding agencies and agri-food, as we look toward developing value-added and innovative products through bio-economy and bio-industrial research.
For example, we have a project at the University of Guelph using genetically modified plants to produce cancer drugs to treat breast cancer in the human population and have an opportunity to take agri-food from being primarily a food industry to being perhaps a pharmaceutical-producing industry to produce drugs more cheaply and cost- effectively than we can through other mechanisms.
This is an example of a network partnership between health-funding agencies and agri-food, which exploits our agri- food production capacity, because we need to produce these plants, and also exploits our knowledge base in the pharmaceutical and health industries to better serve human populations in Canada.
That would be a plea to have us look at better coordinating our expenditures in our health ministries as well, as they relate to the agri-food sector.
My fifth recommendation to senators would be for us to look at some well-established and successful models of large-scale partnering between public and academic sectors. I use as an example of this a several-decades-long partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the University of Guelph. We have several decades of a long-term partnership of co-investment in research, veterinary and agri-food education and training, and also the provision of analytical food safety and support services for the industry and the province. This is a very large, approximately $100 million a year co-investment by the province into the University of Guelph. It has helped to make us one of the premier institutes on agri-food but also demonstrates effectively the benefits of true partnerships, not ones that are just three or four or five years long, but ones that see a long-term relationship in co- delivery of systems.
There are many opportunities across Canada to do this, among provincial and federal departments and universities that have major delivery systems supporting agri-food. I would suggest that this is a major opportunity that can be quite rapidly exploited, particularly as we look at agencies like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which have gone and will undergo significant restructuring in the next five years. They have established a new division around research and technology, and this is a prime opportunity to look at these kinds of extended partnerships.
My sixth recommendation to senators would be for us to look carefully at investing in some of the new knowledge translation and transfer sciences, the so-called knowledge mobilization sciences, to incorporate these at the front end of our research programs and to make them an essential deliverable of the research itself. As an example, I could show you, if I was up close, an app that was developed for a smartphone, iPhone and BlackBerrys, which allows farmers to have real- time information about the infestation levels of aphids on their crops to help them make better decisions about when to apply pesticides and when not to. The project itself was not a research project but a knowledge mobilization project to take research data in field collections and transfer it to a smartphone application to allow modern-day farmers real-time exposure to that important production information.
My final recommendation to senators is that we need to establish working groups to overhaul and harmonize our approach to the protection and management of intellectual property that arises out of collaborative research. We have at least five different ways that intellectual property is managed in the academic and public sector. Part of my job is to oversee our business development office, so I oversee the management of intellectual property patents and licensing and interface with the private sector that uses technology. We spend almost as much time trying to write legal agreements to cope with intellectual property problems in collaborative research as we do conducting the research initially.
There are some fairly simple fixes to this and ones that could be implemented to both speed up the protection of intellectual property as well as moving it into the commercialization sphere so that the private sector can take it, improve their competitiveness and make additional profits from the advanced technology we are developing in our laboratories.
Those seven recommendations conclude the formal part of my presentation. As a backdrop, I will just say that my own career has been involved in agri-food from the moment I left university. I see this as a significant industry for Canada that increasingly falls below the radar of the common citizen in Canada, 90 per cent of whom live in urban centres now, and we need to reposition the importance of agri-food and what it contributes to Canada's economy, job creation, and the opportunity for global competitiveness with new technology.
We have been a world leader and we need to regain our international prominence in agri-food technology.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you.
Senator Eaton: To turn things upside down a little bit, you talk about integration between government and universities, and universities and other universities. Is there, has there been or are you in the process of doing something from the ground up? Do you have a relationship with similar research in other universities? Would you ever get together with some of the big agri-food players and then you come to the government say, ``These are what our priorities are, so how can you help us?''
Mr. Moccia: Thank you, senator. Yes, we have attempted to implement a number of those kinds of coordination programs in the last 10 years. We have a council of agriculture and veterinary deans that meet on a regular basis across Canada to try to bring common themes and issues to the table.
We have also attempted, with more success in some provinces than others, to bring forward priorities through a collaborative discussion session. For example, in Ontario we are using a tripartite negotiation process now with the public sector, the private sector and academics sitting around the table together to determine research and service priorities. Then we are attempting to filter those up to the major funding agencies in the province and then have them use it to determine program development and resource allocation.
The challenge has been — and it is a problem with all of our federal agencies — that it is difficult to have a national scope of planning as well as the provincial and regional issues, which are important. I would say we have had much less success in trying to interface federally with that research prioritization mechanism. It is why I am making the recommends today that we need to revisit how to improve that.
Senator Eaton: It is really between the feds, then. You all interact, and you interact with the province, but it is really with the federal level that there are difficulties; would that be fair to say?
Mr. Moccia: I would not say it is necessarily just with the federal level; I would say it is more challenging to do federally. We have actually done quite a bit of work in the last two years, in particular, in trying to improve partnering with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment Canada, in particular. I would say we have had good success with AAFC in the last 18 months in developing co-location agreements, co-investment opportunities and bringing forward priorities.
However, it is more ad hoc than it should be. This suggests there is more of a need for a formalized structure that would be recognized as being the conduit through which we feed information. Perhaps even with some minor tweaking we can have significant improvements in this information flow, provincially and federally.
Senator Eaton: Back and forth.
Regarding commercialization, we heard from some colleagues of yours about the development of plant-based drugs, which is fascinating, but it is the same old story we have heard in our forestry study, as well: There does not seem to be a bridge to easy commercialization. Venture capital seems to be very difficult to access in this country. Do you have any thoughts on how to build more bridges to commercialization?
Mr. Moccia: Yes, interestingly, at Guelph we recognized three years ago that we were falling behind in our own institution in commercialization and networking, so we completely restructured our own business development office, which we now call the Catalyst Centre. We have done two things to try to improve this connection. We have established what is called an industry liaison program, where we actually now are doing aggressive and formal outreach to the private sector and philanthropic and angel investors that we need early on. We are also tying in with the significant capital investment sector, right from the onset of research projects. Therefore, we have the pharmaceutical industry now onside very early on in the game, so that they have an opportunity to help us through proof-of-principle testing, which seems to be the key threshold point — if you can succeed through proof-of-principle testing, that is when you really get the interest of the capital investors.
We have been aggressive with an industry liaison program. I would suggest that is an opportunity for all universities and government agencies to be able to establish more formal liaison networking programs with the private sector. There is no question that Canada has a problem in generating capital for this kind of work. Much of the money comes from outside of Canada, which means most of the intellectual property leaves Canada; they buy the rights to take our knowledge base away and then someone else makes the profit on our new knowledge. It is definitely a challenge.
I will say that it has been very difficult to get money to go beyond the sort of end stage in the laboratory for the research, so proof-of-principle money is very difficult to get. It does not come from the private sector and mostly does not come from the government funding sector. Again, in Ontario, we are able to collectively pitch to the province, establishing a smallish fund to support proof-of-principle projects. That is been quite effective, actually.
Senator Eaton: Would it be useful if there was a fund for proof-of-principle, then?
Senator Robichaud: Professor, in one of your recommendations you talk about the priority-setting mechanism for the allocation of research grants. How do we improve that? It is not the first time we have heard that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is hard to access, because on the bodies that make the allocations, there is not much presence from AAFC.
Mr. Moccia: That is very true. It is particularly true when you look at some of the other major funding groups like health. Much of health investment research is going into things to enhance and improve food products. However, when you sit around those tables looking at allocation decisions, there is almost no presence on the agri-food side, where much of the expertise rests actually within the university sector.
I would suggest that there are emerging models right now. Again, I hate to speak too parochially from the Province of Ontario, but we are looking at developing a new model for the province where all of those major funders will come together with planning and steering committees to look at both leveraging funding from each agency and developing a high-level set of priorities in major research initiatives around significant agri-food and health problems. That was the reason I included the recommendation around recognizing public health as a key driver in agri-food research. That is a novel concept to a lot of people. Recently, we all know that your health is a lot of what you eat, but we also know that much of our health improvement can come through functional foods now, such as through the nutraceutical industry, extracting products from plants and animals to treat and improve human health.
My response to your question perhaps is that we need to look at better high-level mechanisms of connecting health and agri-food funding agencies together and look at major priorities that can be used to help guide program allocations.
Senator Robichaud: You mentioned the model you are working on in Ontario. Go ahead and tell us about it. If it works, it could be applied elsewhere. How far along are you in developing that model?
Mr. Moccia: It is very early on. In fact, I think the first set of formal meetings is happening over the next few months.
It is bringing together representatives from health, environment, agriculture and the private sector representing those agencies to determine the common themes that research needs to respond to and ask whether we can establish common research priorities. We can then say, ``Let's bring this much funding from health, this much from environment and this much from agriculture, and perhaps fund a long-term major partnership between, say, a medical school and an agri-food school?'' For example, Guelph is looking at partnering with McMaster University and others to link the medical side of the research platform with agri-food. We are doing this on an individual researcher-to-researcher basis; however, we need to take it up a level or two, where we have major commitments among institutions and government to provide the support as well as the collaborative partnering with their research enterprise in trying to commonly address problems. In some ways, senator, it requires stepping back two levels from the problem to determine better ways to coordinate the funding and the solutions.
Senator Robichaud: Is there much resistance from the medical or health industries to the model you are trying to put in place?
Mr. Moccia: I do not know if I want to tell tales out of school here.
Senator Robichaud: We will not tell anyone else. However, this is public.
Mr. Moccia: It is perhaps too early to tell how much resistance there will be. I can predict that there will be significant resistance, perhaps for the same reason. As an example, I am not sure how amenable the health industry will be to seeing medical research dollars go to an agriculture university, as an example.
On the flip side of that, we have a significant threat ourselves, from the perspective of the agri-food research side, in seeing a relatively small pool of dollars that we currently have being completely consumed on the medical research side. There is a risk of seeing agri-food dollars completely gone and having that invested primarily in directed medical research programs. It would be a catastrophic failure of the partnership if either of those things happened.
Yes, senator, you are very sharp to ask the question about resistance, because I think there will be some.
Senator Buth: Thank you very much, Dr. Moccia, for being with us today. I am interested in a couple of areas. To start with, did the University of Guelph participate in any of the Science Cluster programming that the federal government did, and can you give me your comments about it if you did?
Mr. Moccia: Yes, we did. We were, of course, always invited to participate and had active representation around the development of the Developing Innovative Agri-Products programs, the cluster programs, et cetera.
One of the challenges, though — and it is a challenge with all forms of information gathering and communication outreach — is that a lot of information feeds in, but then the loop is not closed to say, ``Okay, how are we making decisions about the information we have gathered,'' how we prioritize the importance of it, and then how we use that to guide program allocations and partnering opportunities.
Some of the programs have been quite successful. Some of the Growing Forward programs and DIAP programs have been successful in their intent, but some of the execution of them has not gone very well.
Part of my job in the last couple of years has been to manage the contract side of our research office. We have had significant problems in trying to provide just the administrative and audit functions to be able to bring money in, leveraged through private-sector funding with federal dollars.
This is high level and excellent in terms of outreach and information feeding in. The implementation side and some of the process side have been almost strangling to try to get the work done.
I would say it is probably good news, on the one hand, in terms of the collaborative nature of the workshops and programs that were held to get ideas. This was the first time in a long time that we were able to collectively sit around a table and have that information going in, so top marks on that part of it. However, some of the implementation and process side has reduced our efficiency.
Senator Buth: I am interested in hearing your views on university overhead. My understanding is that some of the groups that received Science Cluster funding got stalled in terms of some of the contract issues because of the high university overhead, which the federal government, of course, was not prepared to pay.
Mr. Moccia: That is very true. I think there needs to be a candid and open discussion about the actual total cost of delivering research, infrastructure and capacity. Many studies have been done internationally, and even a couple in Canada now, which demonstrate that the indirect costs, what you call overhead, in supporting research capacity can run anywhere from 40 per cent to perhaps as high as 65 or 70 per cent, depending on the type of research platform. One of the challenges that universities are having is that we increasingly have to bring in indirect or overhead dollars to provide the support for research. It costs money to take money and use it.
I had a $4 million philanthropic gift that we were looking at recently. In order to deliver back on the investment, there was about a million dollars of indirect costs to deliver on that, which made the total project $6 million: $5 million of the investment, $1 million in indirect. We had a very difficult time trying to find that $1 million of indirect to deliver on that.
Exactly the same issue occurs with some of these projects coming through. Industry wishes to control part of the intellectual property. There are significant requirements for financial auditing and reporting. These things actually increase the amount of overhead that is required to deliver.
I think we need to sit down and have a candid discussion among federal funding agencies, provincial agencies, and universities about the true cost of indirect, where it is coming from, who has to share in paying it, and what the total cost accounting is to do research in this country. Animal and crop research, in particular, is incredibly expensive, and to maintain certified research facilities to do dairy research, for example. You can do a $10,000 dairy study with a couple of milking cows that will cost perhaps $200,000 in infrastructure support — feeding, maintenance, cleaning — things that we use indirect to pay for.
We appreciate the challenge that the private sector had. We got into some lengthy discussions with the grain industry in the province, for example, about what was reasonable indirect and who needed to share in it. I welcome your question, because it is a challenge for all of us.
Senator Buth: I know it was definitely a challenge for some of the industry groups.
You have talked a lot about partnerships with the province and with the feds. You have mentioned industry at times. I do not know if you include growers in that, but growers are increasingly, of course, with check-off dollars, driving research. The Science Cluster program was essentially driven by commodity groups. What is your relationship with growers and how do you interrelate with them?
Mr. Moccia: I think in my comments I mentioned academic, public and private sector.
Senator Buth: Right.
Mr. Moccia: The private sector, to me, captures private industry, from the grower, on one end, to the food retailer on the other, and everything in between, so the true private sector.
Growers, of course, are only one piece of the agri-food industry. Much of the wealth in Canada is coming from post- production, if you will, so what happens after the product leaves the farm, is harvested from the farm. We need to have the concept that there is a pyramid, in a sense, with the production sector on the bottom. You cannot produce cheese unless you produce milk, and to do that you need a dairy cow somewhere. It is not just the producers, per se, which is, to me, a small subset of the private sector.
I did not mean to diminish at all the importance of producers, because to me they are just one piece of the private sector three-way partnership. I will say that we have recognized here the importance of that tripartite relationship — private sector, public and academic — and in fact we are overhauling many of our governance systems right now to use that three-way mechanism to generate dollars, leverage co-investment, and determine allocations. You are on the money 100 per cent on that one.
Senator Buth: Chair, I would like to follow up on round two, if I could.
Senator Mahovlich: Was there ever a time in the history of the school where the federal and provincial governments were in partnership and they got along and it was not a problem for funding?
Mr. Moccia: You asked me a few questions there. Was there ever a time in our history when all three were actually partnered in a significant, long-term way? The answer to that is no.
At the University of Guelph, we have had a long-standing relationship with the Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Agriculture. We have had many federal government programs, over time, that have come to partner for five years or seven or whatever, but nothing that has stood the long-term test of time like we have with our provincial relationship. At the program level, we have had very successful partnerships between feds, province and private sector and the university, but they have all been on a program basis. Here is something for three or four or five years, and then that evaporates and you establish something new.
The problem with that, of course, is that this whole industry is driven off of long-term capacity development. We have genetics programs in our soybean research, for example, that have been going on for 25 years, and in some of our other crops and livestock, and these are programs that do not even happen if you have a five-year agreement or three- year agreement.
My leadoff point was that the potential to exploit more co-location and co-investment is to shift the paradigm from a three-year project or program where everyone puts in money and it succeeds to saying, ``Look, let us say that university, that agency, that consortium will be our centre of expertise for the next couple of decades,'' because that is where it is, right? We need to invest in that. Forgive me, senators, if I speak out of the language here, but treat this as a long-term, marital-type relationship where we have a common goal, a common vision and we are in it for life, in a sense, as opposed to getting together for three or four years and then switching. That thinking has not occurred at a collective level.
Senator Mahovlich: I understand the time clock. Playing hockey, you only had so much time. It was difficult.
Mr. Moccia: Yes.
Senator Mahovlich: When I thought of Guelph, I thought of the veterinary college. It was famous worldwide. Do you get a lot of support from, say, the Jockey Club in Toronto or all the racetracks across the country? Do they support the university? I am sure they use it from time to time.
Mr. Moccia: Oh, absolutely they do. We have, in our equine industry, in particular, a well-established partnership between private sector and public sector in our vet school. We still are a world leader in our veterinary programs. In fact, we are looking to re-establish our prominence in a number of areas: developing a brand new cancer centre right now for the treatment of companion animals, first time ever in a veterinary school where we are seeing that capacity; a new primary health care clinic; and a new equine exercise and performance training facility that we have. Of course, as you know, there is lots of change in the equine industry, and perhaps the new policies on sharing slot revenues will be a game changer in some ways too.
Senator Mahovlich: You mentioned the farmers and the BlackBerry and finding out information on aphids. I have always had a problem with my oleanders at home. I had to introduce ladybugs in there to get rid of the aphids, but my wife started to complain that there were too many ladybugs around. Is the public able to get some information on that?
Mr. Moccia: Yes. One of the things that we have tried to do is recognize the importance of what people understand as extension education. We use well-established programs. The public could call in and send in a sample of their horticultural plant and say, ``What is the pest, and what do I do with that?'' We used to do that, but of course you could never charge enough money to pay for the service. We did it when government paid for it.
We have reinvested money now in what we call knowledge translation and transfer. In fact, we put $5 million of provincial money, in collaboration with Ag and Food, into a new knowledge mobilization program. We are trying to revisit that outreach to the general public, medical doctors on health research, the home gardener on pest control and organic production methods and smaller cropping capabilities to have urban agriculture, for example, as well as dealing with the very, very large farmer. This speaks to my sixth point about trying to look at encouraging the inclusion of knowledge mobilization components to all research so that they become a deliverable in and of themselves.
Senator Mahovlich: I have one more question on bean breeding. Are you telling me that we will have a better bean than we have ever had before?
Mr. Moccia: I am absolutely telling you that, yes. In fact, you would be surprised at the work that goes into developing different kinds of beans for sauces and pasta and different kidney bean and white bean varieties that go into different kinds of foods, high fibre beans that are good for your health, to lower your cholesterol level and improve your digestibility. You remember all the old adages about beans are good for your heart and the rest of that. There are significant programs.
This one is a success story, actually, between collaborative investment of the federal government with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, who pick up the salary and some of the operating costs of our bean breeder, a great guy here in our plant ag department; the provincial government, which provides research infrastructure and facilities, field crops to test different bean varieties, genetics programs, and also invests in our food science department, looking to take the produced bean, analyze its composition and look at how it can be developed into much higher value products than just the wholesale price of the bean off the land. It is actually a shining example of a success story in what we hope will be a long-term partnership with federal, provincial and academic, and private sector involved too.
Senator Mahovlich: Thank you. I am looking forward to it.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Thank you, Mr. Moccia, for being with us via teleconference. I listened closely to your recommendations and I am almost in complete agreement with you, in particular in terms of intellectual property. However, there is an eighth recommendation which you should include in your brief, and that is joint action.
A number of representatives from universities have come here to testify, and as a result of that testimony, we got the impression that there is no chemistry between universities that conduct research. You talked about research in dairy production. In Quebec, there is a large centre for research into genetics and milk. There is also a centre for research into plants. We have even visited them.
So why not have an interuniversity research council? You could join forces and deal as one with the federal government, instead of having to make hundreds of different requests of all kinds. The interuniversity research council could sit down with the federal government and outline its objectives for the next 10 years. It would be a lot easier for the federal and provincial governments to get on board and give you the money you need for agriculture as a whole. Why should everybody go it alone?
You talked about soy. In Winnipeg, they do a lot of research into soy; you do too, and perhaps other kinds of research. Perhaps there is a way to link up with an interuniversity research council, which would be in charge of telling the federal government, provincial governments and businesses: ``This is where we are going and this is what we need.'' It would be a lot easier for everyone.
[English]
Mr. Moccia: Thank you, senator. I very much appreciate that comment. In fact, you have given me a great idea about trying to ramp up our own approach to integrating the key agri-food universities across Canada in some of these initiatives.
Historically what has happened is that individual researchers will network with a researcher in another project. Our individuals work on dairy genetics work with those at Laval and other universities across Canada, but there is not a high level integration system for the key agri-food research universities to come together and jointly pitch long-term planning and infrastructure investment to the federal government.
Our council of deans is the only mechanism we have had so far, and that has been the agriculture deans and the veterinary deans who got together. However, they mostly just share their own vision of problems and everything. It has never gone to the next level to ramp it up to a coordinating committee. The only refreshing thing that has happened in the last two years is that we have three or four executive level vice-presidents across Canada talking a lot more about how we can jointly develop university-private sector programs to partner to government.
We have been working with Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. ourselves to try to bring together common areas of research capacity. In fact, we are working with the provinces of Quebec and Ontario to have a joint launch of a research investment program to force integration across the academic institutional sector.
I am taking an action item away for myself from this meeting this morning based on your comments, to perhaps set up a meeting of presidents of the key universities to talk about how to do this. It is an excellent suggestion. Thank you, senator.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Mr. Moccia, most of the guests who have given presentations before the committee told us about the major funding problems you have as a public institution, and you also talked about how hard it is in the private sector. We are going through an economic crisis at the moment, a financial crisis — just think of the euro, the situation in Greece and the Spanish banks. But we have to remember that, at the beginning of the 1980s, interest rates were up to 20 per cent and inflation stood at about 15 per cent. So just think of how hard it was for companies back then to get financing.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the Government of Quebec had a fabulous idea to deal with the crisis; it created a program called the Régie d'épargne-actions. It allowed a taxpayer to buy a share, say for $100, and that gave a tax deduction of 150 per cent in the person's income tax return. If people held on to the share for two years, they did not have to refund the tax exemption. If there was a capital gain, the usual taxes applied. If there was a loss, it was different. The initiative helped a lot of companies. You had to invest in companies capitalized at under $200 million. The program helped companies like Bombardier and Canam Manac to thrive, and they still do today.
However, I recall the example of the research company BioChem Pharma. It no longer exists under that name and was sold to a multinational. Thanks to this kind of financing, the stock savings plan, BioChem Pharma was able to develop a drug for AIDS, AZT.
Could a program like that make up for the lack of venture capital? It could be a national program, not necessarily restricted to Quebec.
[English]
Mr. Moccia: That is a very interesting suggestion which would require some thinking. It is hard to say whether we could, today, mimic a program of charitable contribution giving of money that is targeted to be investment capital. At the end of the day somebody then needs to own the intellectual property, right? It is an interesting concept of how you would actually tie together a taxpayer investment driven by a tax credit, which is what I think you were saying. Ultimately, somebody in the private sector would hold the intellectual property ownership so that they could commercialize and take the product to market.
That is an interesting one. I could see perhaps being able to generate capital that way, but I wonder if the challenge would be figuring out how to deal with the ownership of intellectual property.
I am interested to know how that occurred in Quebec when the money went into the private sector, and who got to own the IP in the end.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: If memory serves, BioChem Pharma kept its intellectual property. It was sold to a multinational later.
You mentioned the word donation in your earlier reply. But this is not a donation. A taxpayer buys a share in BioChem Pharma, say, for $100. He gets a 150 per cent deduction; that is $150. Let us say he decides to liquidate after five or six years; in the case of BioChem Pharma, the value has significantly increased. The taxpayer therefore gets a tax break and a significant capital gain.
This is not a donation, it is a venture capital share; at the time, the program was called Programme de Régie d'épargne-actions.
In terms of intellectual property, if my memory serves, that remains. You are a shareholder of the company. The company keeps the intellectual property.
[English]
Mr. Moccia: That is interesting. I can advise you that I will bring that to our Catalyst Centre, our business development office and look to put some thinking into perhaps establishing a small program something like that to test the waters. It is an interesting idea. Thank you, senator.
[Translation]
The Chair: Senator Eaton would like to ask a supplementary question.
[English]
Senator Eaton: Professor, as a follow-up to my colleague's suggestion, has the Catalyst review looked at MaRSand the way they are trying to commercialize? Do you foresee anything that you can do with agri-research given what they are doing with medical research? Commercialization?
Mr. Moccia: We worked with and follow MaRS very carefully. We in fact had a small MaRS-type operation called MaRs Landing in Guelph for a number of years that attempted to mimic the MaRS approach. I would say, yes, we are using that as a model.
The problem is the money side of it. There just simply is not enough of the private sector capital money that is available to kind of drive the big projects.
Senator Eaton: Well, how did they find it or how are they finding it?
Mr. Moccia: The money is in the pharmaceutical and the health companies that have big deep pockets for investment. A lot of the medical research stuff was driven by things that had huge profit potential for big companies.
The problem with agri-food right now is that outside of certain product developments — which are difficult to maintain the intellectual property on, you cannot file a patent on a lot of things — there has been a real reluctance even by the big agri-food companies to come to the table with significant capital dollars. They do not see the long-term big profit potential in it.
We still potentially see it in pharma, but even there I can tell you we have the same arguments about indirect wanting to charge 25 per cent or 40 per cent indirect on a pharmaceutical project for a company which is making billions of dollars; they do not want to pay the 25 per cent indirect to actually pay to do the research. Even big pharma is a tough sell when you get into the agri-food side of their business.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: It was mentioned earlier that there is an infestation of aphids in the plants as well as too many ladybugs. Would people be interested in investing in the intellectual property resulting from this research because a number of people are experiencing these problems?
[English]
Mr. Moccia: Yes, certainly.
The Chair: Professor, we cannot make a public deal as we are talking.
Mr. Moccia: Okay. Sorry.
Senator Buth: Your seventh recommendation was intellectual property. You mentioned that you had five different ways of IP being managed and that it was complex and time-consuming; then you said you had a simple fix. I want to hear your simple fix.
Mr. Moccia: The simple fix is that in the public sector side of things there needs to be a transfer of intellectual property to the inventor, with free rein to commercialize and develop it. That is the way we have moved within most academic institutions now. Previously, institutions owned the IP, primarily, so the University of Guelph would own the intellectual property. We have actually now transferred IP ownership to inventors. We are finding that is stimulating more of the technology transfer because, of course, it is a profit motive for individuals to aggressively work on that commercialization and outreach end.
The challenge is that the government holds the IP. In some provinces, the province owns part of it and then they delegate other parts of the IP to the academic institution. We still have some academic institutions in Canada where the universities own the IP, and then others, like most Ontario ones, where the inventor holds the IP. When you get the private sector involved in it, then of course they want to own all of the IP. The challenge is when you sit with four players — provincial government, federal government, university inventors and private sector — it would drive a contract lawyer crazy because they cannot figure out how to write the sections on who owns the IP and then how to share the profits based on it.
We do every one like a one-off. We sit down and try work out through the IP. We could fix it by establishing a slightly different approach to IP.
The challenge for government is how to explain to a taxpayer giving IP to an inventor whose salary is coming from the taxpayer to invent stuff, and then you are giving them the IP; but we are trying to do that now here. Perhaps we just need more creative thinking about how to do it.
I can tell you in our Catalyst Centre that what causes the most problems is when you get to the end stage trying to do the final deal, how to figure out IP when you have these joint investments.
Senator Buth: It is the final step before you get to the commercialization stage. You cannot commercialize without some kind of agreement. I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the federal government; it is taxpayers' money. I am interested in exploring that further perhaps with some other groups.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Moccia. There is no doubt you have enlightened us. It was very informative. Your recommendations are interesting. Do you have any comments as we conclude?
Mr. Moccia: I would like to say thank you. It is a great opportunity to speak to you about issues that are very significant across this country and to this province and university. I appreciate the opportunity of your time.
Second, I do not want anyone to go away thinking that I am criticizing things that have failed in the past in our various partnered opportunities, but rather that we should look back and learn from those and refine the way we go forward with new partnerships, new long-term relationships among those three important groups — public sector, private sector and our academic institutions. I would like you to go away with a very positive thought about my comments, looking very much to the future about how to improve things rather than being critical of past attempts.
The Chair: No doubt, professor, you did sensitize the committee.
We will now hear from our second panel, composed of Dr. Elizabeth Nielsen, a board member of the Consumers Council of Canada; and Mr. Bruce Cran, President of the Consumers' Association of Canada.
I have been informed by the clerk that Dr. Nielsen will be the first to make a presentation, followed by Mr. Cran. They will be followed by questions from the senators.
Dr. Nielsen, please make your presentation.
Elizabeth Nielsen, Board member, Consumers Council of Canada: Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable senators. I would like to thank you for inviting the Consumers Council of Canada to participate in these hearings. It is a pleasure to be here this morning to discuss research and innovation in the agri-food and agricultural industry from the perspective of the consumer. It may be different from what you have heard previously.
Before starting I would like to provide a brief overview of the Consumers Council of Canada. It is an organization that advocates for the implementation of the international charter of consumer rights. The council endeavours to work collaboratively with consumers, business and government in support of consumers' rights and responsibilities.
This morning I plan to discuss the importance of the relationship between consumers and the agri-food industry, and the issues of concern to consumers with respect to the safety of food and new technologies, such as nanotechnology.
The Consumers Council is concerned that the food consumed by Canadians is safe, and it supports the efforts of the agri-food industry with respect to improving food safety through developing and implementing the food safety management-type programs like the Good Agricultural Practices and the retailers Global Food Safety Initiative.
The relationship between Canadian consumers and the agriculture and agri-food sector is critical to both. Consumers purchase the sector's products, and farmers and the food industry provide consumers with the food they need to survive. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, in 2005 — these are the latest figures I have available, unfortunately — Canadian consumers spent slightly more than $131 billion on food and beverages in retail stores and food service operations.
Canada, for the most part, has created an excellent food safety system. Even so, it is not infallible. It has experienced a number of serious food safety incidents in recent years. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that 11 million Canadians suffer food-related illnesses every year. The vast majority of these are minority, but there are some major ones such as the listeriosis outbreak that caused 22 deaths.
Studies carried out indicate that consumers are primarily concerned about antibiotic and growth hormones used in livestock; microbial contamination from unsanitary food handling practices all the way down the food chain; animal diseases; and exposure to pesticides, chemical additives and preservatives.
Consumers also express concern over the fact that 70 per cent of Canadian food and products are imported from 190 countries with various levels of food safety controls. Although CFIA is planning to introduce new regulations to better control imported products, consumers are not confident in government's ability to oversee the safety of these products. One reason for this concern is the priority that the government places on certification of food for export rather than the safety of food in Canada. Certification for export is mandatory by law, and pressure for certification is applied by major export markets, such as the United States and companies involved in exporting food products.
The concerns expressed by consumers were confirmed just last month by a study from Underwriters Laboratories. It confirmed the findings from studies carried out in Canada, which found that 74 per cent of Canadians are concerned about food safety, and that 70 per cent of consumers do not think food manufacturers conduct thorough testing before introducing new products to the market.
Canadians want to know where the food comes from, information about the safety of the product, and how it is produced and modified. Unfortunately, current food labels leave consumers confused and ill informed. Moreover, a majority of consumers have little trust in the information provided by the agri-food industry.
There is also concern that labelling issues are considered of low priority by the government, and they classify them as non-health and -safety issues. Unfortunately, consumers do not have the capability or the capacity to determine whether the nutritional information on a package is correct or accurate.
One issue directly related to innovation is the impact of new technologies, such as nanotechnologies. Globally, the agri-food industry is spending millions of dollars to apply nanotechnologies to the food through tracking of food products, the food itself, food additives, packaging, et cetera.
The successful application, management and acceptance of the technologies in this sector will very much depend on consumer confidence in them. Given the lessons of the GMO debate, it is important that the benefits and risks of nanotechnology are identified and openly discussed with the public.
The special relationship between humans and food, both a cultural and personal perspective, makes the utilization of this technology in food much more sensitive to consumer reaction than in other product areas, like hockey sticks, for example. In fact, many consumer and environmental organizations have demanded that nanomaterials not be used in food or food packaging until they are proven to be safe, and that products containing nanomaterials are labelled so that consumers can make informed purchasing decisions.
The stakes in terms of consumer acceptance of nanotechnology in the food sector are high, and pose a significant challenge for both government and industry. Consumers have a tendency to ``practise precautionary consumption'' if there is a product they are not comfortable with. It is important that the potential benefits of this technology in the area of food safety are not lost due to the risks not being identified accurately and managed.
The question that needs to be answered in terms of the mandate of this committee is what can be done through research or innovation to address some of these concerns. There is a need to engage consumers and ensure that information on the safety of food products and new technology is accurate. Otherwise, they will get it from other sources that may not be accurate, and this will cause problems. The information has to reach consumers in an understandable, clear, accessible manner.
The industry needs to become involved in research about how best to inform consumers and engage them on issues such as pesticide use, current food handling practice and treatment of animals, as well as the new technologies. In the area of nanotechnology, research to date has primarily been focused on the development and application of nanomaterials in products. Research is required to answer the questions that consumers are asking about the impact of these materials on their health and the environment, and how any potential risks can be managed.
Research is also needed in the rapid detection of pathogens, the effectiveness of continuous versus intermittent monitoring of products by government, and the impact of climate change on farming practices, animal diseases and pests. It is difficult for those representing the interests of consumers to carry out research in order to develop policy positions on agri-food issues. Funding is not readily available from government or industry to carry out this sort of policy analysis or to pay for the research maybe in a university that needs to be done.
Any incorrect consumer perceptions or information can seriously impact the industry sector, because they will just stop buying the products. We would like to draw the attention of the committee to the importance of ongoing investment in research and long-term research — not just the research where the tap is turned on and off, which is the tendency of government — to deal with consumer issues by governments and industries.
Thank you very much for listening to me this morning. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Nielsen.
Mr. Cran, I would ask you to make your presentation, please.
Bruce Cran, President, Consumers' Association of Canada: Good morning, senators. Thank you for having me here.
I represent the Consumers' Association of Canada. We are a 65-year-old organization. We have operated in Canada all that time, doing whatever needed to be done for consumers, which included talking to government, being involved in agricultural issues, almost any issues a consumer would be interested in, including taking many of our issues to the Supreme Court of Canada. I will confine most of my remarks today to consumer positions on food safety.
We, as consumers, of course, welcome innovation, and most of us think of innovation as research and development. I think we, in Canada, are very good at research; we are not so good at development. We invent things in Canada that fade away because we have never used them. We invent things that have been sold to commercial enterprises and taken elsewhere, and maybe brought back again at some point and sold back to us, at great cost, for something we have already paid for.
In the matter of food safety at the moment, we are thinking it is not only the agri-food that is grown in Canada; it is what happens after that, right up to the day it lands on our door or at a store or whatever. Practically every month this last year — and I imagine the one before, going right back over the last decade — we have had some sort of a problem with a food product that has caused sickness, illness, and sometimes death.
Thirty years ago, Canada spent something like $86 million developing irradiation. Eventually that technology was sort of disposed of; it did not seem very popular to be used and it was sold to another company. One of the companies that bought part of it was a Canadian company called Iatron. I guess their intention was to use it for food, but it never was. They are in operation now. They do medical devices and other bits and pieces, but they do not do food.
Iatron, the company that bought the $86 million worth of development that we did on irradiation, recently opened a plant in the United States and virtually recreated the one they have. That plant down there is now starting to produce irradiated food. If irradiated food had been available to Canadians, and if that is what they chose to buy, it would have prevented the listeriosis problem that we had, and many others.
We just did a survey on that. We now know that I think it is 67 per cent of Canadians would like to see that available as an option. We are not saying that we want all of the food irradiated. The rest of the food should bear the raduraicon that is supposed to be on all irradiated food. We have never followed up on that, even though it is the law on Canada. There are two sets: Some people might want to buy it and others want to know what is in the package. Neither of those things is happening here at the moment.
The food technology industry that manufactures food regards the production of irradiated food as far too difficult to warrant the expense. It is difficult because of the way they have to go about getting certification, as I understand it. I think that should be cleaned up. I have made public statements on that already.
It seems sad to me that something we spent $86 million on about 30 years ago has been sitting out there doing practically nothing. This technology is available to us now and would be the single most obvious factor that I can think of to improve agricultural food products in Canada, if it were available.
The other area where we have not done much is in terms of the education of people on items such as irradiation and how to use other food products produced in Canada. Ms. Nielsen is right when she says that 70 per cent of our edible foods are coming into Canada from overseas suppliers. I think they are held to a lesser standard than we are in terms of what we produce here.
Canadians would like to buy Canadian food; there is no question about that. My organization was involved in bringing in the ``made in Canada.'' We fought for that for a number of years. It surprised me that that fell to the Consumers' Association of Canada to bring in. We also defended it when we had it in at 97 per cent, I think it was, and the manufacturers wanted to reduce it to 80 per cent.
I did want to mention programs like Growing Forward, first and foremost, which we have been heavily involved in. We have supported a number of industry applications for funding under that program. That was a very successful program, and I think Growing Forward 2 has the potential to be equally successful. I would like to see more consumer input, which was lacking to a degree in Growing Forward 1. While I do sit on a number of committees in various provinces and what have you, looking at those programs and in some cases helping to direct those programs, I am mainly interested in what happens to Canadian food. It is Canadian food that we are trying to bring to market in a safe way.
I went to four or five meetings with provinces lately, and the word ``consumer'' did not even come up. British Columbia, I believe, at the moment has the most advanced food safety committee, but they did not have any ``consumer'' wording in their intentions for future products either.
I would urge senators to take a close look at that. We consumers are out there. After all, in the end, we are paying everyone's salary, as are you. Everyone in this room is a consumer.
I came along today to do seven minutes' worth of presentation, and that is what I thought I would focus on. Tucked in the back of my brain are the answers to all sorts of questions, so I welcome any that you may have. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cran.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Thank you for your opening remarks. I am surprised at the number of consumers who are concerned about imported products. Currently, we import and export a number of products. But we know that, in the interest of Canadians, Canada continues to sign agreements with other countries, beyond the NAFTA, including Central American and South American countries. Additionally, we will soon be signing a free trade agreement with the European Union. That means that more and more foreign agricultural products may well enter the Canadian market. If we go by current statistics, consumers will become even more concerned.
What would you suggest we do in order to reassure those consumers? However much experience in guaranteeing quality our federal agricultural officials have, we can never prevent a consumer from being concerned.
Would you have any suggestions to make to the government that would help to reassure consumers and to bring their concerns down to a reasonable level?
[English]
Mr. Cran: We do have some concerns about imported foods generally, but it is the responsibility of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to deal with imported foods. They operate on a risk management basis. At the moment, I find it basically acceptable. Risk management is a difficult way to handle food. You can use risk management easily for money, and no one will die or whatever, but if you make a mistake with your risk assessment in the food product coming into Canada, people can get very ill or they can die.
CFIA just announced a new program — in fact, I am going over there this afternoon to listen to its initiation — where they are making some huge changes. I have browsed through those things, and I am neither confident or not. I want to see how this comes out in practice. I think the best route to that is for us to sit back and have a look at how this plan of the CFIA is implemented, and then we intend to be there to critique it or tweak it or whatever has to be done. I think it is a step in the right direction.
You are talking about mainly imported foods, senator. I see imported and made-in-Canada as two different items. We get a lot of complaints about Canadian food. They are mostly general and complaints about availability for local food or wherever. Some groups in the world like to push this 100-mile circle of food and do not buy anything out of 100 miles away from your front doorstep. If you do that in Canada, you will starve. There is nowhere in Canada that I know of that can supply a year-round food product. My organization is not very sympathetic to those issues. It is great in California, but you cannot do it up here. We are very interested in food safety, and I hope what CFIA is about to bring in will bring a lot of assurance to Canadians.
Ms. Nielsen: I was involved in the consultation on the modernization of the inspection that CFIA has put in place, and I think my experience tells a story of why consumers are concerned. I was the only consumer there at the table, period, and I felt very much like the whole thing was manipulated, that the decisions had been made prior to the consultation and that there was really no opportunity to provide a policy or analysis or consumer input into the process.
With all of the decisions that are being made by government right now with respect to the agreements with other countries and everything else, I would like you to ask how many are representing consumers at the table. One of the things that needs to be done right along in research and in some of the work is to include consumers there, engage them and make sure they are there at the table.
There is a movement, and there are concerns about imported foods. If you look at fresh vegetables coming in from Mexico, Mexico does not have the same environmental standards. I mean, they have on paper, but they do not put them into practice with respect to pesticides that are used. The lettuce comes in. Do you know how many weeks it takes to do the analysis and determine what chemicals are on that product? By the time any sort of analysis is carried out by CFIA, it will be months later that they report on it, and the food has been on the shelf and has been consumed. These are the sort of things that concern consumers.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: How can consumer representatives judge the quality of imported products? Experts, agronomists and researchers have more skills than ordinary consumers. I am an accountant by training and I became a businessman. I wonder if I would have the skill necessary to represent consumers by assessing agricultural products from Mexico or Chile.
[English]
Ms. Nielsen: I agree with you. You need experts to be able to do that analysis. The analysis has to go to a laboratory where the chemical analysis is carried out. You have to tell them exactly what you want it tested for. When I am talking about consumers, you need them there in terms of the overall process and not providing necessarily the exact analysis, because they cannot do that. They do not have a laboratory behind them to do that. I am speaking in terms of the process and engaging them in the discussions and ensuring that the concerns they have are addressed by CFIA. There are concerns because they are looking at the way the inspection is being changed, and the perception, because of what is coming out in the newspapers, is that a lot of the inspection work will be cut back. Quality management systems like HACCP are good, but it is like anything else: Garbage in and garbage out.
Mr. Cran: Senator, I have been a member of the Science Advisory Board, which is a part of Agri-food Canada. I think it has been seven, eight or maybe ten years that I have been on that board. The rest of the men and ladies on that board, in the main, are scientific advisers of various types. I am there for one single purpose, which is to bring the views and concerns of consumers to that board. On many occasions, I have been very glad I have been there. I do make a difference or I would not stay on that board. My wife is an accountant. I would not want her looking at what is happening with food either. She counts buttons and beans very well. She does not get a copy of this, does she?
The Chair: It is public.
Mr. Cran: I have a degree in agriculture. It is not something that I use. I never did use it. I have a good understanding of agriculture, but I am there only because I have had 40 years of experience in consumer advocacy, and that is why we go to these places. I am sure Ms. Nielsen is the same. I strike this all the time. I do not know how I missed the one where she was there by herself. I would have supported you, Ms. Nielsen, if I had known.
Ms. Nielsen: It was in Ottawa in January.
Mr. Cran: I remember now. I was busy somewhere else.
The consumer point of view is extremely interesting. Some of my associates on the SAB have come to me afterwards and said, ``We never would have thought of that.'' Nanotechnology, which was discussed earlier, is a big one at the moment. The industry would like to flood the place with it. I think if we were not involved, that would happen without much looking at. The university gentleman I was listening to on the panel before, the professor, mentioned three groups. Consumers was not one of them. It is very important that we have consumer advocates involved.
One of the things I always despair of is that someone wants a consumer rep so they go out on the main street somewhere, Yonge Street, and lasso the first person there. ``Have you bought anything recently? Good, you are a consumer. We will take you as a rep.'' That happens all the time. There is a big difference between having someone like us on the board, with the knowledge that we have accumulated over 40 years, and also the strength, sometimes, to go slightly against public policy if we know the big picture is what should be looked at and they are looking through a microscope.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: I appreciate that clarification. Thank you very much.
Senator Robichaud: I believe that consumer representatives have a role to play if only to provide a link between consumers and the various decision-making groups. I think this is more an issue of information.
[English]
Mr. Cran, you talk a lot about irradiation. You said that consumers would accept that way of somehow giving them some degree of assurance of food safety if they were to go through that process. I thought you said there was quite a high percentage that would agree with that?
Mr. Cran: We are almost approaching 70 per cent who are willing to have it as an option, yes. That process, the beam radiation, is the only one I know of that will remove all of these bugs, or whatever you want to call them. I say bugs because fruit flies are one of the big items that irradiation will take out, but for all of this other stuff, there is nothing else. There is plenty of scientific knowledge on it. In fact, I do not know of anyone speaking against it at the moment.
We are saying it should be available as an option. If you want to use it, fine. If you do not, that is fine. We are also saying that with the other stuff that is irradiated and not labelled in Canada — that is the law here — it should be done as well, so there are two things.
Senator, do you buy mangos?
Senator Robichaud: My wife does. She is the one doing the grocery shopping.
Mr. Cran: Pineapples or tropical fruit?
Senator Robichaud: Yes. I see some of it on the table.
Mr. Cran: Wander down to Costco sometime and you will see mangos from Brazil and Mexico, and they are pristine. When I was a young fellow, my family used to grow mangos. My dad was always looking for a race car to take the mangos to the marketplace before they spoiled. These ones are coming in pristine. Now, this is just a suspicion of mine, but in fact, it is a bit more than a suspicion: Those fruits are all irradiated.
I have a request in to CFIA at the moment. I know they do not check, but I am asking them to check. There is no test you can give them here, so they are going to have to go back to those countries and ask.
I have been around a long time. I know you cannot get mangos and put them on a plane, boat or whatever, send them somewhere and have them appear in the pristine quality that we get them in unless they have been irradiated, so it is being used at the moment. That should be clarified as well. We are looking for openness in this.
Do you know anyone who is against irradiating food? There are not many out there that I can find recently. Our survey is done by Ipsos Reid and it is on our website. It is available for anyone. I can send it to the clerk and he can send it around.
Senator Robichaud: It is just that we have not heard about it. It has been a long time since I have heard someone talk about treating with radiation. I thought the jury was still out on that.
Mr. Cran: I do not know whether the jury is. It is not against the law in Canada. It is just —
Senator Robichaud: No, no, I am just saying that from a consumer point of view.
Mr. Cran: I have been speaking on it for over a year, and I have been in some paper practically every month on that particular issue. It is a top issue at the moment.
We hear from Canadians who say they would rather have irradiated food than risk dying or being sickened by E.coli or listeria, both of which are killed by irradiation. There are some good articles. I have a couple of other articles that I can send in.
Senator Robichaud: Would you please do that through the clerk?
Mr. Cran: I will.
The other thing is that it has been 30 years since they thought you used to get a piece of something and dangle it over the products. That was 30 years ago. Young Canadians do not know anything about it, and I think that is a bit sad because the Government of Canada should have been educating people.
We are not saying every piece of food that comes into Canada should be irradiated. We are not saying that at all, but we are saying we want the choice. We want to make that happen, and I am going to do my best, whatever it takes, to make sure that it does. I will send you what I have.
Senator Robichaud: Ms. Nielsen, you mentioned lettuce from Mexico that is imported. Yes, we have treaties on the use of pesticides and things like that. However, you say in some countries the practices are a little looser and this food that comes in is not tested for those kinds of pesticides. Would they not do spot checks once in a while?
Ms. Nielsen: Yes, I did not say they were not tested. I said that the problem is doing the sort of chemical testing that is required. One, you have to identify what sort of chemicals you want to test for. You send it to a laboratory. The laboratory is going to take one or two weeks to be able to do the analysis. By the time that is done, the product has been on the shelf, sold and eaten.
Senator Robichaud: I understand that part of it.
Ms. Nielsen: I did not say it was not tested. I just said there is a long delay in getting the information that would be important.
Senator Robichaud: However, on the products that would be coming in after the results of the test are known, would not there be some kind of warning issued saying that this does not meet the requirements of the Canadian consumer?
Ms. Nielsen: There should be, but the experience is that CFIA puts a report out about a month or two after the testing is done and by then, it is irrelevant. The new product coming in could have very different results. There are not enough inspectors out there doing it. I think a lot of times they depend on the USDA because they do a lot more testing than we do.
Senator Robichaud: I find it hard to understand why they do a test and then it has no practical results.
Ms. Nielsen: I do not understand it either, sir.
Mr. Cran: If you are sitting where I do, you see this stuff all the time. Do you remember the carrot juice problem we had a few years ago in Toronto? Does anyone remember that one?
The carrot juice came in here, and at that time we were still operating under the old Hazardous Products Act; it has been replaced recently. However, they put something up on the CFIA website and something up on Health Canada, a recall or whatever. We tested one week, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks, and those products were still on the shelves. There was no provision. They can do the recall, which are mostly voluntary.
Even if you have a bunch of lettuce in and it was condemned that day — maybe under the current system they might take it off — they could not take it off the shelves. I do not know whether they can now, before they are eaten.
Ms. Nielsen: No, they cannot.
Mr. Cran: That is what Ms. Nielsen is saying. That is why I do not read that section. I do not want to read about green salad I might have eaten the night before and that has been condemned. There is no follow-up I know of when they find out about it; it is not a recall or anything, so it falls right between the cracks.
I am hoping the new system might pick that up. They use risk management, and I understand what they are doing. They test some. Another one was when we had malachite green in the basa fish coming in from Vietnam and those places. We went to stores and bought fish, and the malachite green level was something like 120 times more than it should have been; something huge. At that time a few years ago, CFIA raced out and took five or six fish out of a 20- tonne container, which they tested. They might get five or six good ones, I do not know. Maybe someone is even shoving the fish that they will test.
Then they fixed it. We went out and bought another 10 fish and tested them. They were full of malachite green again. Eventually it was corrected, but it was not easy.
Senator Buth: I will try and get a short answer on my first question. How are you funded?
Mr. Cran: We are not funded by anybody at all. We are funded by voluntary contributions.
Senator Buth: That is funding, but I am wondering how you get your budget.
Mr. Cran: We do not have a big budget. Our funding is miserable. We are the last of the volunteer groups. We have been volunteers for 65. When I go, I might be the last one. I do not know.
Senator Buth: Okay, but you do have people that contribute memberships?
Mr. Cran: Chicken feed.
Senator Buth: That is fine, thanks.
Ms. Nielsen: We are funded very much in a similar manner. We do not have a lot of funding to do the policy analysis. This is one of the problems that hopefully government will realize: If they want input from consumers or from the public, they will have to start looking at helping to fund it, because we just do not have the funding to do it. It is all volunteer work that is being done. Even our executive director is only paid part-time. We just do not have the staff to do it. It is by individual contributions, or maybe via contracts that we carry out on a project basis for certain things.
Senator Buth: I want to go back to a couple of your statements, Dr. Nielsen. You say that you believe that the Canadian food system is a relatively safe one.
Ms. Nielsen: Yes.
Senator Buth: Then we end up talking about examples that lead us and the public to believe that there are all sorts of issues out there. I just want to confirm a couple of impressions that I have had over the years.
One of those impressions is that the greatest risk in terms of food-borne illnesses is consumers' handling practices in the home. When I have looked at information from the Centres for Disease Control in the U.S. or the Public Health Agency of Canada — and you made the comment that 11 million people had food-related illnesses — most of that is because consumers are not doing what they need to do in the home. I wonder if that is still the case. What types of things do you do in terms of public education for consumers and food handling?
Ms. Nielsen: That is very true. About 20 per cent are caused by things other than handling, but a large proportion of it is handling of the food in a home or in a restaurant-type environment. However, we do very little in the way of information because we just do not have the money. This is one of the problems. All we can do is try to encourage groups like CFIA and Health Canada to do some of that, and they do provide some of that information.
Unfortunately, in many cases, in a lot of areas for concern, they are not engaging consumers. In one of the surveys we have done, one of the comments was ``silence, deafening silence from the government.''
Senator Buth: What is the number one issue that consumers are concerned about in terms of food safety, according to the surveys that you have seen or had done?
Ms. Nielsen: The survey that I was involved in is not directly related to food safety. The concern was nanotechnology. That is the one I was involved with.
Senator Buth: That was a specific survey.
Ms. Nielsen: That was very specific. They were concerned about that because they did not know. People are concerned overall about the safety of the food they are eating, but I did not do a survey.
Senator Buth: So am I.
Ms. Nielsen: They are also concerned about imported products.
A lot of times this may be perceptions, and this is one of the big problems: By not engaging consumers, the analysis that we have done indicates they will get the information from the media, mainly, because they do not have the time to go through and in complicated subjects do the analysis.
Mr. Cran: I would say the main frightening item out there is the biggie that could be coming. At the moment, we have been very lucky, but with any of these things you read every week, one of these days we will kill 1,000 people and sicken 5,000 others. That is what is top of mind in my organization. We get that from the people who are in contact with us. If we do a poll, it is only as confirmation of what we already know.
Senator Buth: I am trying to get at that we always talk about consumer education.
Mr. Cran: We do no consumer education. We used to.
Senator Buth: I understand you do not. I am just exploring the fact that we talk about the need to educate the consumer, and consumers are getting information from the newspaper and online, which is tremendous access these days for all sorts of information — some of it accurate, some of it inaccurate.
I am wondering if you have any comments in terms of how to design a program essentially where you are trying to get a non-sexy message out to consumers so that they will actually pay attention to it.
Ms. Nielsen: I am not an expert in public marketing, exactly, but there are some excellent examples. In Europe, particularly, there are examples in areas where they have engaged consumers in nanotechnology. I will deal with the nanotechnology side simply because that is one of the areas I did research on. They have engaged consumers very effectively in a very complex and non-sexy subject. For instance, nanoAlberta is doing an excellent program targeting children in the schools from grades 1 to 12 with respect to nanotechnology, and they are doing it very effectively. They have done a lot of interesting videos, and they are able to do it.
There are examples out there. The Province of P.E.I. is doing excellent work in the area of energy efficiency and getting those sorts of messages out to the consumers. Those sorts of examples could be used.
It is not just providing information on a website. A number of years ago, when they had the literacy secretariat, they had done a study. I think it indicated that about 35 per cent of Canadians were illiterate in English or French. Not everybody has a computer. Hopefully Industry Canada will ensure that they have access in the libraries and that to computers, because people do not always have computers. Regardless, information on a website is not sufficient; people do not have the time to go and search for every little thing.
Senator Buth: Those are interesting examples. Thank you very much.
Senator Mahovlich: We import from 190 countries.
Ms. Nielsen: According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: As a council, would you rate countries on food safety? Is there a rating? Should I go into a store and should a red flag come up in front of me, say, if it is from Mexico?
Mr. Cran: Someone would shoot us if we got into that.
Senator Mahovlich: They would?
Mr. Cran: Do not say I made a mistake. I picked that one a couple of years ago and had a good solid crack at them. I was getting hate calls for about six months afterwards. I got a letter from one of the government departments saying I should not talk about it like that — not that it stopped me.
Senator Mahovlich: I do a little shopping myself, and sometimes I will go in and see a Del Monte product or a Chiquita, and I feel quite safe. I have enjoyed it all this time. Other times, I will walk in and search for it and I cannot find it, and there is another fruit there from I-do-not-know-where, and it is difficult. They do not identify it, but it does not have that stamp on it — that Del Monte stamp or the Chiquita.
Mr. Cran: Are you familiar with B.C. glasshouse tomatoes? They used to be all over the place here. For some reason or another, they started growing tomatoes in Mexico, and they put it out under the B.C. brand. Then a little old lady phoned me up one day, and a little bird landed on my window sill and told me about this.
Senator Mahovlich: Yes, I see.
Mr. Cran: So I made it public.
Senator Mahovlich: False advertising.
Mr. Cran: It was false advertising. Anyhow, the Competition Bureau did not do anything about it.
When it got out, the B.C. hothouse tomato people phoned me up. They own the place, and they surrendered. They now have it from Mexico or from wherever it might be.
We make some darn good products in Canada, and if we label them, we should value that. I have never done an outside survey on this, but I know Canadians tell us they are prepared to pay more for a nice product from Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: We visited a tomato plant in Quebec, Saputo. I spotted it, and it is quite good.
Mr. Cran: How could you argue with that? That is the best in the world. I get into trouble all the time. People are always ringing me up that I am saying, ``Go across the border and buy.'' I never say that. I say that you should know the price across the border. It is the same with fruit. Know where it came from. You are very wise. They are not supposed to come from no-name companies, and you should be very wary. There can be a heck of a difference. Sometimes you bring potatoes home, they are big ones, and when you cut them they are brown in the middle. I hate that. Once you find the brand name, you should take that off your list.
Ms. Nielsen: In response to the business of Del Monte and some of the big companies, you must remember the big companies want to protect their brand name, and in many cases that is a good incentive to ensure the product they are selling is safe. The retailers have gone into the management-type practices to ensure that the products coming into their stores and outlets are meeting very good food safety standards. When I took part in the meeting with industry on the new inspections, they were saying some of those systems were greater and more stringent than the Canadian regulatory system.
Senator Eaton: I have a comment and then a question. Perhaps we should be recommending in our report that industry itself do the education. Before Thanksgiving, the turkey people always come out telling people to wash their hands and scrub. Maybe the beef people and seafood people should do that in an effective way of advertising their products.
We are going into free trade negotiations with Japan, Korea and the EU, to name just a few, perhaps the TPP. They are very difficult about some of our dairy and our egg industries, our GMO products. Should we, in turn, be difficult and say we will not import or use products that have antibiotics or hormones? Do we do that now, or should we?
Mr. Cran: I am for free trade myself, as is my organization. I do not think we would want to see that. When you talk about dairy food and eggs, it is a very difficult subject. I brought that up many times before, separate to anything else.
Senator Eaton: I am not talking about our negotiating position. I am asking what we should ask for in return.
Mr. Cran: We are beginning to ask for certificates of safety from these people at the moment. I think you start off with that, and then I think the next step following that, which may be a while away, if it fails, is that you then have the pasteurization or whatever radiation done here in Canada so you do know what is going on. It has been an open session. They have been doing all sorts of things.
Senator Eaton: We have heard from processors that the regulation system in Canada is onerous. To get a new product passed takes four to six years, which they find onerous and uncompetitive compared to what U.S. products face. Would you agree with that assessment, or do you think it is not well done? What do you think of our regulatory system?
Mr. Cran: I have heard of those things, but I have never actually seen a nightmare where it took six years. It depends what it is. If it is a drug or something, it might well, but common food products, surely not.
Senator Eaton: No, they take up to four years.
Mr. Cran: Four years? That is ridiculous.
Ms. Nielsen: What sort of food product are you talking about?
Senator Eaton: Processed food, not only —
Ms. Nielsen: Like a novel food or something?
Senator Eaton: I guess, yes.
Ms. Nielsen: With a food additive approved by Health Canada, yes.
Mr. Cran: At the moment, this is being looked at. It takes 42 months to change two or three words in regulations. I am not even talk about going through the house. We are looking at all of this stuff at the moment. Four years is onerous.
Senator Eaton: It is, and they feel it is very uncompetitive.
Ms. Nielsen: I think you have to look at that very carefully. When we were dealing in the area of the drugs industry, the industry complained that Canada took a lot longer for approvals. However, when the clock started in the FDA was much later. They had done a lot of pre-work ahead of time, so it appears they were having a much shorter approval time, when it was not. I think you have to be careful. With the red tape commission and the work being done with the red tape reduction initiative, hopefully a lot of these administrative nightmares will be alleviated.
The Chair: I bring to the attention of witnesses and the public listening to us that, as per the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website, irradiation of food is acceptable, and currently the food that is acceptable to be irradiated is onions, potatoes, wheat flour, whole wheat flour and whole or ground spices. Dehydrated seasonings are approved for irradiation and sale in Canada.
To the witnesses, thank you for sharing your views and comments with us.
(The committee adjourned.)