The embattled Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is confronted with diverse and mounting challenges to public health. A decade ago, most Canadians either didn’t know or didn’t include in their daily lexicon the terms listeria, West Nile virus, avian influenza, mad cow disease, SARS, Asian long-horned beetle and emerald ash borer, to name but a few.
While the CFIA is mandated to inspect, supervise and protect our food supply, public health and natural environment — each having tremendous economic value — its strategy has arguably proven to be largely unsuccessful and sorrowfully short of funding.
For example, the U.S. government has spent $168 million to combat the Asian long-horned beetle while Canadian spending is shrouded in secrecy and minimization of funding. (Taxpayers in Vaughan are expected to dish out hundreds of thousands of dollars as the Government of Canada fails to operate its own eradication program on a full cost-recovery basis.)
Our public health, food supply, environment and economy are under threat and need scientific research and investment by the federal government.
This is a tale of two invasive species — the Asian long-horned beetle and the emerald ash borer — and the role of the CFIA within a GTA context.
In November 2003 in an industrial area on the border shared by Toronto and Vaughan, an imported crate from Asia introduced the long-horned beetle to Canada. Over 15,000 healthy trees have since been cut to starve the beetle into extinction: the beetle has no known local predators.
A federal ministerial order — covering a 169-square-kilometre area bounded by Hwy. 401, Rutherford Rd., Hwy. 50 and Dufferin St. — resulted in inspections, supervision and quarantine activities. Concurrently, the federal government introduced regulations with respect to importing goods using wooden crates from Asia.
International convention states eradication is complete after five years pass without an invasive species being sighted. While first detection occurred in 2003, the clock has not started ticking for the Asian long-horned beetle eradication program in Vaughan and Toronto: the bug was detected along the Jane St. and Steeles Ave. corridor during the 2003–2007 period.
And regulations did not prevent the introduction of the long-horned beetle elsewhere. It was discovered in Quebec in 2006, also traced to an imported crate from Asia.
In 2002, the invasive emerald ash borer found its way into Ontario for the first time, also through — you guessed it — a wooden crate from Asia.
Most recent releases by the CFIA tell a tale of the emerald ash borer’s uncontrolled spread, in September in Sault Ste. Marie (a first in Northern Ontario) and August in Vaughan — detected within the same area already under intense supervision and inspection by the CFIA for the Asian long-horned beetle. Between February and July, the ash borer was discovered in numerous other spots in Ontario and Quebec.
The CFIA, working with provincial and municipal governments and agencies, needs to develop a strategy that emphasizes prevention and detection with clearly specified goals leading to eradication. The Government of Canada must invest in the CFIA so that it has the resources needed.
It is time for a summit on the environment that would bring all parties together to develop strategies that protect our natural and economic environment. We cannot afford to continue the same old, same old ways of the past.
