Quarterly Reports: CFIA's Precedent Data

Under the Safe Food for Canadians Act, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (“CFIA”) was given the power to utilize Administrative Monetary Penalties (“AMPs”) to encourage compliance with federal food regulations and penalize non-compliance. In Canadian food regulation, most instances of non-compliance never see a courtroom, as the CFIA negotiates with persons in the food sector through correspondence or meetings, which eventually escalate to licensing suspensions or cancellations, penalties, or AMPs with warning or financial penalty. While the CFIA has the power to seek criminal and quasi-criminal prosecutions, they rarely do. This absence of jurisprudence, or case law, makes understanding what to expect from the CFIA difficult, and so we rely on the CFIA’s Compliance and Enforcement Policy, along with our experience and inferences drawn from data disclosed by the CFIA. Together, this helps us understand “what’s market” when it comes to food law enforcements in Canada, which we use to advise clients.

Every three months, the CFIA publishes a Quarterly Report on its website that outlines AMPs issued in relation to the Safe Food for Canadians Act, the Health of Animals Act, the Plant Protection Act, and their related regulations. These Quarterly Reports act as precedents for the food sector to gauge compliance and punishment, and determine risk for actions related to the health and safety of food, food production, storage, importation, exportation, labelling, licensing, and overall quality. Without the publication of these Quarterly Reports, the food sector is left to guess the barometer of punishment for non-compliant actions in the food safety system, which leaves professionals in the sector entirely in the dark.  Why did it take the CFIA almost two years to publish its Quarterly Reports, then?

In November of 2021, frustrated with the lack of AMP issuance data on the CFIA’s website, G.S. Jameson & Company submitted an Access to Information Request to the CFIA; in December of 2021, the CFIA denied our request, stating that “responsible officials of the Agency” would publish this data in 90 days. Thankfully, the CFIA updated its Quarterly Reports on January 10, 2022. And while we applaud the CFIA for finally updating this information, we wonder how long it will take to update similar information on its website, which also plays a crucial role in food safety compliance.

Specifically, we note that the Quarterly Reports for food shipments refused entry into Canada have not been published since December, 2019; therefore, there is no published record from the past two years for food commodities that were denied entry into Canada, and the reasons for their refusal. How are importers/exporters expected to gauge CFIA’s enforcement response if they do not have a precedent to work with beyond the CFIA’s Compliance and Enforcement Policy? Following two years of pandemic existence, in which numerous industries and businesses have pivoted to ensure the functioning of society, we expect more from the CFIA as the Canadian regulator of the food sector.