The rules at the time, established in 1985 to support Canada’s manufacturing sector, were admittedly appalling, and everyone thought so: any food product could be labelled as a Product of Canada if 51 per cent of the total production cost occured in the country, even if all the ingredients were imported.
Harper wasn’t the only one who identified Product of Canada rules as a problem, especially after CBC Marketplace did its trademark take-out on Product of Canada rules in the fall of 2007. But it did seem a bit odd that the PM would make the announcement, with Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz relegated to the task of introducing Harper at the announcement.
The problem? Four years after Harper’s announcement, it looks that the PMO jumped the gun with a rushed announcement without considering all the policy ramifications. I can see why: Who doesn’t want to be the guy who stands up for the consumer?
By the government’s own admission, it failed to consider the issue of Canadian residency of imported animals when drafting the new Product of Canada rules, and the matter still remains unresolved for all imported animals except cattle (CFIA set a 60-day pre-slaughter residency requirement in 2011 after lobbying by the cattle industry).
And when it comes to the 98 per cent threshold for ingredient? Turns out consumers would be hard-pressed to find many processed foods made in Canada using Canadian produce or meat that actually qualifies. That’s because things like sugar, salt, vinegar and some spices are hard to source in Canada, so even if a product is Canadian (think Saskatoon berry jam or ketchup made with Canadian tomatoes), it doesn’t meet the definition of Product of Canada.
This problem was flagged early on. In fact, the House of Commons Agriculture Committee was studying the issue back in 2008, but the PMO didn’t wait to hear from the experts before making his consumer-friendly announcement. Even Ritz’s deputy minister identified a problem with Harper’s announcement, according to a June 2008 memo to Ritz released to Postmedia news under access to information. The top departmental bureaucrat warned Ritz that pressing ahead might not help local producers and could cause consumer confusion.
Turns out he was prescient, but the government is sticking to its plan, with Ritz confirming this week that the government has no plans to make any adjustments to the threshold. This means no minor ingredient exemptions for things like sugar, salt and vinegar — even though the government floated the idea in 2010 and tested the idea through public opinion research.
So, here we are today, with local food processors like Andy Van Patter, the operations manager for the Winnipeg company Smith’s Quality Meats.
The company had to drop the Product of Canada label for its sausages because the company can’t certify the added salt and seasonings, which account for three per cent of the total ingredients in their sausages, are domestically produced.
“It’s all Manitoba meat, grown by Manitoba farmers, slaughtered in Manitoba and produced by a Manitoba company,” Van Patter told Postmedia News, who also serves as president of the Manitoba Food Processors Association.
“Now I produce a product and don’t put anything on it. Now my consumer is going to look at this, they don’t have a clue whether it’s a Canadian product. We have the option of putting ‘produced in Canada with imported ingredients,’ and for some reason Ottawa thinks that’s a real nice selling feature, but it doesn’t say what’s imported,” said Van Patter.
What consumers will see, added Van Patter, is the Product of Canada tag on “raw produce or raw meat, with no processing at all.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Sarah Schmidt
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