Bill C-30 power grab empowers Cabinet to override CFIA laws and regulations
Bill C-30, the Spring Economic Update Implementation Act, is an omnibus bill that contains legislative amendments that have nothing to do with the budget, but everything to do with a Cabinet power grab.
The bill contains a section that would permit Cabinet to override all of the laws under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) authority – except for the Plant Breeders Rights Act. The CFIA was established in 1997 to consolidate Canada’s food and agriculture regulatory functions under one agency. It is in charge of implementing Canada’s science-based policies to support food safety and environmental and health protection in relation to food and agriculture through all of the regulations, laboratories, and agencies that flow from them under its responsibility to enforce nine Acts: the Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act, Feeds Act, Fertilizers Act, Health of Animals Act, Plant Breeders Rights Act, Plant Protection Act, Safe Food for Canadians Act, Seeds Act, plus the Food and Drugs Act as it relates to food.
The amendment to Bill C-30 would give Cabinet sweeping power to weaken the oversight of Canada’s food, agriculture, health and environment. It would allow Cabinet to “exempt persons, things or activities, or classes of persons, things or activities” from any provision of these laws or regulations for up to six years if “necessary to protect national economic security, regional economic security or national food security” as long as it is “not likely to pose an unreasonable risk to food safety, animal health, plant health, human health or the environment”.
No definitions or parameters regarding “economic security”, “national food security” or “unreasonable risk” are provided, so this clause would be used entirely at the discretion of Cabinet. It unnecessarily politicizes the legal framework governing our food, health and environmental safety and invites self-interested corporations to lobby Cabinet members for exemptions that would be against the public interest. (In all Canadian laws, “person” refers to corporations as well as human beings.) Cabinet deliberations are kept confidential for twenty years, so any considerations leading to exemptions from CFIA laws or regulations would be non-transparent. And because it is rare for governments to reduce their powers, once these amendments are enacted, they will be available to all future governments.
The Spring Economic Update includes many pages about food, but the closest it gets to informing Parliament that the government plans significant changes to the CFIA Act is a sentence on page 96 that announces “the government’s intention to amend the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act and the Pest Control Products Act to include consideration of food security and cost of food.” It contains no mention at all of enabling Cabinet to unilaterally suspend food-related laws that have been duly passed by Parliament and regulations enacted following formal procedures that include rationale, regulatory analysis and public consultation.
Why would Cabinet want to create holes in Canada’s food and agricultural legal fabric? Their assumption seems to be that laws and regulations make food more expensive. However, a public regulator must balance the public interest with private interests. If there were no consequences for cutting corners there would be a race to the bottom: the least responsible companies would become the most profitable, and it would be children, families, farmers and ecosystems that would bear the costs. It would have ripple effects on our healthcare system, the productivity of our farms and the integrity of our environment. An intact, public-interest focused regulatory framework reduces societal costs, sets standards fairly and distributes benefits to improve everyone’s well-being.
Would Cabinet use Bill C-30’s provisions to allow imports of food that does not meet Canadian standards for food safety? Would Cabinet allow importation of livestock and plants that could spread disease or infestations that cause losses for farmers and lead to export bans? Would Cabinet suspend inspections of crop exports sales, leading to potential violations and contamination incidents that could close markets? How much in-house expertise would be lost if CFIA personnel are terminated during exemption periods? Would those who gain from exemptions use the six-year period to lobby for legislation to make these changes permanent? Public trust is a critical element of our food system which the proposed amendment undermines.
If Canada is vulnerable to economic and food security crises, the answer is not deregulation. The federal government needs to address root causes, including lack of infrastructure for local and regional food processing, storage and distribution, high input costs and low prices for commodity producers, excess corporate concentration, and financialization of both farmland and housing.
What can you do?
- Call/email your MP today to stop this harmful amendment from being adopted!
- Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to raise awareness in your community!
- Share this Op Ed within your social media networks to spread the information more widely!
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Laws under CFIA’s authority:
- Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act: An Act to establish a system of administrative monetary penalties for the enforcement of the Farm Debt Mediation Act, the Feeds Act, the Fertilizers Act, the Health of Animals Act, the Pest Control Products Act, the Plant Protection Act, the Safe Food for Canadians Act and the Seeds Act.
- Feeds Act: An Act respecting feeds
- Fertilizers Act: An Act respecting fertilizers and supplements
- Health of Animals Act: An Act respecting diseases and toxic substances that may affect animals or that may be transmitted by animals to persons, and respecting the protection of animals.
- Plant Breeders Rights Act: An Act respecting plant breeders’ rights (excluded from proposed Bill C-30 amendment)
- Plant Protection Act: An Act to prevent the importation, exportation and spread of pests injurious to plants and to provide for their control and eradication and for the certification of plants and other things
- Safe Food for Canadians Act: An Act respecting food commodities, including their inspection, their safety, their labelling and advertising, their import, export and interprovincial trade, the establishment of standards for them, the registration or licensing of persons who perform certain activities related to them, the establishment of standards governing establishments where those activities are performed and the registration of establishments where those activities are performed
- Seeds Act: An Act respecting seeds
- Food and Drugs Act as it relates to food: An Act respecting food, drugs, cosmetics and therapeutic devices. Food includes any article manufactured, sold or represented for use as food or drink for human beings, chewing gum, and any ingredient that may be mixed with food for any purpose whatever.
