Health Canada needs to be more realistic in its consultations, processors say.Ottawa—Provisions in the sweeping bill to implement the spring federal budget don't deal with the real problems facing food processors while saddling them with a lot of extra costs, the Senate agriculture committee has heard.CEO Kathleen Sullivan of Food and Beverage Canada (FBC) said chronic labour shortages hold back her sector just as myriad of government regulations inhibits it's international competitiveness.Unless the government pays more attention to innovation and labour issues in the food sector, which contributes more to GDP and employment than any other manufacturing sector, Canada won't achieve its target of at least $75 billion in agrifood exports annually by 2025, she said.Susan Abel, Vice-President Safety and Compliance with Food & Consumer Products of Canada, said the processing sector wasn't consulted in advance about regulatory changes in the budget even though they have major implications for the industry.“This leaves us to speculate that these amendments were put forward in response to a number of backlogged issues that have been problematic for Health Canada as well as our industry,” she said. Carla Ventin, FCPC's Senior Vice-President of Government Relations, said the food industry has been thought a hectic three and a half years with new government proposals on labels and packages among other changes.“No other manufacturing sector in Canada has been asked to make so many critical changes to the entire life cycle of their products than the food manufacturing industry,” she said. “The cumulative impact of all of these changes will permanently alter the landscape of the food industry in Canada. What exactly these changes will look like and the impact they will have on the sector and Canadians is unknown and that is part of the problem.”Government consultations are rushed with short turnaround for comment and unpredictable timelines, she said. “For industry, this means it can be difficult to provide meaningful input. For government, this means that critical issues can be overlooked. For Canadians, this can result in unintended consequences.“We also see a lack of alignment between regulatory and economic departments across the federal government. Many departments are not required to consider the cumulative impact or promote economic growth along with the designated health, safety or environmental mandates. This results in disproportionate regulatory decisions that are not considering business competitiveness impacts.”Gordon Harrison, President of the Canadian National Millers Association, said amendments to current laws proposed in the budget bill are “in many cases so poorly designed and so obtuse that I describe them as a do-over.” They should be removed until they're properly thought through and included in a separate legislation on the food sector.Health Canada should follow the example of CFIA's consultation with the agrifood sector on the Safe Food for Canadians Act,” he said. “We have many lessons learned, and we're not applying them here.”CEO Michael Burrows of Maple Lodge Farms said his company has about 3,000 employees in its eight facilities. “We have chronically about 200 positions that are unfilled. These are skilled positions in varying aspects of our plant. They are starting to impact our productivity and certainly our ability to continue to grow at the rate we have grown over the last 10 years.”Immigration could help fill many of those jobs, he said. Instead of helping in that way, the government offers innovation programs that create more higher-skilled jobs the companies can't find workers for.“The government needs to sit down with us,” he said. “We need to start having conversations and really get into the plants and understand what innovation looks like. What are the hurdles to some of these mid-sized and small companies being able to scale up?“Canadian foods have a good international reputation and the food industry needs to capitalize on new technology to take advantage of the export opportunities, he said. New technology “will allow us to ship fresh product that will have a much longer shelf life. It is advantageous in many of the international markets because, candidly, their distribution systems sometimes lack integrity. You are better to have fresh than frozen.”Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.