As tedious as it may be, there’s a reason producer and industry groups commit time to reviewing bills as they are presented in the House of Commons.
Some bills are laser-focused on a particular topic or sector, such as the current Bill C-282 that aims to protect Canada’s supply managed sectors in upcoming trade deals. Other bills, however, are so-called omnibus bills and include a laundry list of changes all lumped together.
As Keith Currie, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, explains, omnibus bills can be a means of moving many policies forward at once adding efficiency to the process, but they also have the potential to include very troublesome issues that can slide through unnoticed.
Bill 293 is one such bill. The overall aim of the bill is to enhance Canada’s readiness for future pandemics. However, included in section four is language that could have a negative impact on livestock agriculture.
The bill reads, in part: “The pandemic prevention and preparedness plan must… reduce the risks posed by antimicrobial resistance; regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture; and promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including the production of alternative proteins.”
Currie says that this section fails to recognize the work the livestock agriculture sector has done and is doing on managing antimicrobial resistance.
He notes that many MPs may not fully understand the bill’s implications for agriculture. Although the bill is conceptually “good,” it’s written in a way that shows either a lack of understanding of its long-term effects on livestock protein sources, or — and more likely given the MP who brought the bill forward (Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith who represents Toronto riding Beaches—East York) — it’s designed to have exactly that negative impact.
The bill is currently in the Senate. Currie says that the livestock sector is working together to make sure senators understand the full implications of the bill, and that section four actually contradicts the government’s goals for climate change protocols, given the role of grazing cattle in grassland preservation, for example.
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