Ontario Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne has
joined the lobby against the federal government’s proposal to deregulate the
sizing of food packaging.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has announced his intention
to allow the food-processing industry to use any package size they wish, ending
decades of regulation restricting their choices to standard sizes.
Wynne said she has lobbied Ritz during federal-provincial
meetings of agriculture ministers, pointing out that his proposal is widely
opposed within the industry.
“Represented by the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Processors
Association, the Alliance of Ontario Food Processors and Food Processors of
Canada, the industry said that this project would have disastrous consequences
for the sustained processing sector competitiveness and food packaging in
Canada and would include job losses and plant closures,” Wynne says in a
statement recently issued from her office.
She also notes that the Ontario Association of
Municipalities is also opposed to Ritz’s proposal.
Meanwhile she has done nothing to ensure that Ontario chicken can be produced to meet the demand for kosher and Hong Kong dressed birds or to investigate the inappropriate collection of levies by the egg marketing board on eggs that do not qualify as Grade A large.
