Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada (FVGC) welcomes the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food’s December 2025 report, Unleashing the Potential of the Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Sector through Regulatory Reform.
The report is strongly aligned with FVGC’s long-standing priorities to reduce regulatory burden and improve how federal regulators make decisions affecting food production. FVGC supports the Committee’s clear direction that federal regulators, particularly the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), should consider economic impacts, food security, and the cost of food, while maintaining high standards for health and safety.
Several recommendations stand out as particularly relevant to Canada’s fruit and vegetable sector:
- Agile Regulations Table and regulatory review: Establish an internal, independent review mechanism using the Agile Regulations Table to identify, eliminate, or update outdated regulations, guided by science and risk/outcome-based criteria.
- Plastics: Pause new plastics-related federal regulatory measures, notably Phase 2 of the Federal Plastics Registry, and work toward harmonized standards and reporting requirements.
- Inspections and duplication: Modernize food safety and inspection protocols by standardizing inspection criteria and recognizing third-party certifications, while strengthening accountability and ensuring corrective actions are reasonable and proportionate.
- PMRA timelines, transparency, and accountability: Improve transparency and predictability, including tools to help producers track applications, and expectations tied to meeting performance targets and improving regulatory performance.
- Digitization: Reduce paperwork and delays through measures such as integrating electronic certificates.
- Innovation and tools: Allow drone use when a crop protection product is already approved for aerial application while a finalized framework is completed.
- Labour: Reduce red tape in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for agriculture and agri-food and maintain the Seasonal Agriculture Worker Program.
- Business risk management access: Review the Advance Payments Program to simplify and accelerate access to funds, improve efficiency and transparency, and consider making the increased program limit permanent.
FVGC will use this report as clear parliamentary validation of growers’ concerns in ongoing discussions with CFIA, PMRA, AAFC, and central agencies, and to reinforce FVGC’s priorities through the Agile Regulations Table and other advisory processes.
As implementation moves forward, FVGC will be watching closely to ensure reforms translate into smarter, risk-based, timely decisions that reduce duplication and burden for growers, while upholding Canada’s high standards for health and safety.