Submissions

On October 31, the Canadian business community sent a letter to Minister MacKinnon expressing deep concern regarding the indefinite strike by CUPE 375 at the Port of Montreal.

CFA provided a submission to the CUSMA consultation with the recommendations below:

– Maintain the existing rules-based framework that is part of CUSMA.
– Address non-tariff trade barriers and bolster regulatory harmonization through the Regulatory Cooperation Council.
– Continue to ensure that sanitary and phytosanitary measures are science based. The measures must be applied in a clear, predictable, non-discriminatory way.
– Address the extra-territorial impact of local trade barriers that affect the movement of goods between countries (e.g., California’s Proposition 12).
– Continue to allow parties to set phytosanitary measures that follow WTO rights and obligations while protecting food safety and animal health.
– Chapter 31 of CUSMA—dispute settlement—must remain in place.
– Create an effective mechanism that ensures unwarranted trade barriers are addressed quickly.
– Continue to improve the import and export processes between countries that emphasize automation.
– Review articles to ensure they are evidence based and limit unneeded redundancies.
– Increase competitive market opportunities for agricultural goods while respecting the needs of supply management.
– Ensure proper labelling standards, including the labeling of country of origin, to ensure that consumers are provided with sound, factual information about the product they are purchasing.
– Ensure that CBSA and CFIA are adequately resourced and trained to enforce CUSMA’s terms.
– Maintaining or expanding Canada’s market access to the US market which must be “wholly obtained” from sugar beets.

We recommend that the government support Canadian National Railway (CN)’s proposal to seek a regulatory exemption to Transport Canada’s Grade Crossings Regulations for specific crossings where cost-effective alternative measures could be implemented that would provide the same level of safety.

Should Transport Canada not grant these exemptions, we ask that the railways bear the cost of upgrades and improvements and that the financial burden does not fall to farm families.

– We recommend that the government support Canadian National Railway (CN)’s proposal to seek a regulatory exemption to Transport Canada’s Grade Crossings Regulations for specific crossings where cost-effective alternative measures could be implemented that would provide the same level of safety.
– Should Transport Canada not grant these exemptions, we ask that the railways bear the cost of upgrades and improvements and that the financial burden does not fall to farm families.
– We also recommend that the government work with other railways, like Canadian Pacific Kansas City, to further identify specific crossings where cost-effective alternative measures could be implemented.

CFA recommends the following revisions to the proposed guidance:

– Modify the guidance document to ensure the common name and brand name of plantbased alternatives to egg products prohibit the use of the term “egg.”2
– Adopt an accurate and transparent approach to common names by implementing a structure that requires plant-based alternatives to egg products to use descriptive naming.
– Implement firm rules to prevent the use of terms typically reserved for and associated with eggs such as omelette, frittata, quiche, scramble and meringue on the label, packaging and
advertising of plant-based alternatives to egg products.
– Ensure any plant-based alternatives to egg products that includes “protein” in their common name and/or brand name, achieves a protein quality rating using PER (Protein Efficiency
Ratio) of at least 20 to remain compliant with Food and Drug Regulation (FDR) B.01.305.

A joint letter signed by 21 organizations was sent to the Minister of Finance with the following recommendations:

– We urge the government to simplify the Canadian Entrepreneur’s Incentive and broaden its eligibility to all sectors to support equity, simplicity, and transparency.

– We urge you to scrap the increase in the inclusion rate to 66.7%, which will affect many business owners who are part of Canada’s middle or aspiring middle class.

– The increase in the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption and its indexation into the future are welcomed announcements and should be retained and protected.

The CFA recommends the workshops to draw upon farm-level experiences, in addition to identifying strategies and best practices that increase the farmers’ resilience, reduce GHG emissions, and sequester carbon at scale.

CFA would also like to be engaged with ECCC when building Canada’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Canada’s 2035 Emissions Reduction Plan.

The programs, and policies to support long-term climate objectives cannot ignore short-term implications for the farmers’ ability to face the immediate threats of climate change while maintaining the viability of their operations and delivering on food security objectives.

CFA does not support the continued use of a single positive sample as the threshold for an index field. Spore detection should be confirmed in two separate samples within the same field before the field is classified as an index field.

The CFA supports the addition of a viability assessment for spores detected in potato fields when no visible tuber symptoms are observed.

The CFA supports the new “Field of concern” classification, as it would address some of the risk to the industry, associated with false positive or false negative test results. However, we suggest the following wording: “A field where spores in only one sample have been detected and confirmed via morphology and molecular analysis will be designated a field of concern.”

The CFA wishes to express some concerns regarding the proposed greenwashing provisions, especially as these provisions could have unintended consequences due to insufficient consultation and undefined terminology, which could lead to a potential increase in frivolous lawsuits, that could have a negative impact on the agricultural sector and be increase the workload of the Bureau’s employees.

We strongly urge you to take immediate steps to ensure the labour disruption between the GWU and the VTEA does not further damage our international reputation and negatively impact Canadians farms and farm families across Canada.

Biosecurity on farms is of great importance to Canadian producers, as well as to Canadians as a whole, as breaches in biosecurity can result in the loss of animals which would impact food security, jeopardize the national food supply, affect international trade relations and the economy, and impact the mental health and wellbeing of producers, their families, and employees. Canadian farmers ask for your support of Bill C-275, An Act to amend the Health of Animals Act (biosecurity on farms) to help ensure the continued biosecurity, safety, and wellbeing of Canadian farms and farm products.

For decades, farmers have focused on reinvesting in their operations to maintain competitiveness, enhance productivity, and continually improve practices to do more with less. For most Canadian farmers, these investments are made with an understanding that the assets they invest in will position them to maintain both the financial health of the business and ensure they can maintain quality of life into retirement. These sudden, fundamental reforms to Canada’s capital gains taxation, undermine plans that are often decades in the making and challenge the financial stability of capital-intensive multi-generational family farm operations.