Food packaging and the law of unintended consequences

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Tucked away in the massive 2012 federal budget document was a seemingly minor item about repealing container standards. Now Tory backbenchers are finding out that it wasn't so innocuous after all

by BARRY WILSON

A key ingredient of covering politics in any realm – private, public or personal – is to look beyond the usually-vague statement to see what it really means, what the implications are.

Modern-day bureaucratic and personal language often is designed to conceal rather than reveal.

An early example of this occurred years ago after I opened an Ottawa bureau for my newspaper. I received a telephone call from my publisher congratulating me because I was getting a raise in salary.

Great, I said. Why?

Turns out it was because the company had decided the Ottawa bureau would be outside the union, so the pay increase was because of elimination of union dues.

"Not interested," I said. "This position is union or find someone else."

The dues were maintained and my salary (until the next negotiation) did not increase.

The lesson was that it is not always easy to see what potential danger lies behind every seemingly benign statement.

But that's where the real story lies. Take the 2012 massive federal budget document, for example.

More than 200 pages in, not mentioned in any of the political speeches, was this announcement: "The government will also repeal regulations related to container standards to enable industry to take advantage of new packaging formats and technologies while removing unnecessary barriers for the importation of new products from international markets."

Consultations would be held and new regulations would be published by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. There was no real analysis of economic impact, never mind political impact. We're talking container size rules, for heaven's sake. Yawn.

Except that this behind-the-bushes casual announcement had huge implications and has become a political headache for the federal Conservatives in their southwest Ontario stronghold.

It's not always easy to see what potential danger lies behind every seemingly benign statement.

Ontario food processors and southwest Ontario municipalities, already facing a hollowing out of their industry, and the fruit and vegetable producers who supply them quickly saw the potential negative.

In the interest of removing import barriers that favour domestic companies because of Canadian product container-size rules that have been in place for years and that dictated investments in plant technology, U.S. companies would be allowed to ship packages in different sizes and at lower prices. Canadian plants could go under.

Many local food companies, along with farm groups, have fought back, organizing a campaign to stop the change.

Municipal leaders and food processors in small-town southwest Ontario are predicting tens of thousands of processing jobs and related farm jobs could be lost if long-standing Canadian product container size rules are eliminated.

Multinational companies with plants in Canada and the United States simply would close their Canadian plants if they no longer have to create product to Canadian size standards, they argue.

So suddenly politics has reared its head. Rural Conservative MPs in southwest Ontario, where the government is strong, have been feeling the heat over an innocuous proposal to change food container size rules.

It is the law of politics that there are often unintended consequences. In what critics describe as a pullback from its plan to deregulate package sizes, agriculture minister Gerry Ritz promises that consultations will continue with industry and affected communities to find a "positive result."

A pre-consultation economic and political analysis before the budget announcement might have been a good idea. BF

Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.