Agriculture Committee on June 7th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Jim.

Now I'll move on to Mr. Lemieux for seven minutes.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today.

Jim, I just want to follow up on what you're saying there. You're saying that the bill will drive what you want to see, which is producer input into these decisions. What I would put forward is that the bill doesn't drive that. The bill just talks about studying the harmful economic impact of introducing GM seed or GM product. It doesn't force any change at all in the way producers work.

I would say that even though we don't have the bill in effect now, we have excellent examples of where producers and the industry work together. A great example is canola. A second great example is soybeans. We have examples of where the industry does exactly what you're proposing it should do, but without the bill. The bill doesn't drive any of the change that you perhaps want to see in your industry.

I guess I would just challenge you on that and ask how you would respond to that.

[Jim Lintott]

Well, the response is simple. The canola industry is, as I said already, a perfect example of a stakeholder-driven process--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Without the bill--

[Jim Lintott]

Without the bill, but they lack... What I said in my statement earlier is that they lack the legal requirement to meet a market analysis, that there is in fact a market for that product, and the production of that product would not harm the existing markets they already have. In the case--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right--but the bill doesn't drive that, though.

[Jim Lintott]

Let's take wheat as an example. Wheat is a pretty big crop out there. It's not as big as canola anymore, but if we came out with a GMO wheat, some people would be really upset about that in terms of how that would play out in the marketplace--unless, of course, we actually came up with a GMO wheat that the world wanted, and then actually had market acceptance first.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

But I think what you're doing, Jim, is you're actually supporting the argument that we don't need this bill. This bill drives none of that, really.

[Jim Lintott]

No, but here's the point; we actually have--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I think my point is that the industry can do this--they already do this--on their own, without this bill. It's already happened. The industry and farmers are...

Farmers know about markets. If there's one thing farmers know about, it's markets. And if there's no market in which to sell a product, I would argue that there's no market in which to sell the seed, to sell the product. Farmers are pretty savvy that way; they're not going to grow a crop that they can't sell. And seed producers are not going to invest millions into seed that they cannot sell.

So there's actually a check and balance already in place in the industry, in the marketplace. Farmers intuitively know this; they're not going to sow a seed that they can't sell, so they won't buy the seed. And then the research and development endeavours will dry up, because they're going to say, “Listen, we're not going to invest $10 million or $20 million in developing this if we can't sell it.”

[Jim Lintott]

Exactly--and the point is that we have a situation where we have a large corporate entity that does not care about the farmer's ability to market that product. They are moving that product, specifically the Roundup Ready alfalfa, and pushing that thing through regardless of market resistance from the producer and the consumer end--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

But if the producers organize themselves and do not buy that product, then--

[Jim Lintott]

Well, here's the problem: we have no system in place that provides the regulations for other producers to enter in and control the really important part, which is market accessibility and acceptance.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

But other producers and other commodities have done it, so there's no impediment here.

[Kurt Shmon]

So how do we go about stopping Roundup Ready alfalfa? We have approached CFIA, through past CFIA discussion documents, with the idea that they acknowledge that it will transfer pollen to feral alfalfa.

If I have alfalfa on my land, and I discover that I have Roundup Ready alfalfa on my land through transfer of pollen, does that mean that CFIA is responsible? Because it's something I don't want. Does that mean Monsanto is responsible? Who's responsible for the gene flow?

These are the marketers of the seeds. They're not the producers of the seeds. We are the sellers of the seeds, the producers and the sellers, in a niche market. We're not talking about the corn or the soybean or the canola.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right--but I guess what I'm saying is that the bill is bigger than one commodity. The bill is far bigger than alfalfa. And I'm not saying--

[Kurt Shmon]

No, but the bill covers us niche markets. You already have the three major crop types in Canada looked after. This covers us producers who diversified into these smaller markets where, through some bizarre way, CFIA manages to approve an event that makes absolutely no sense at all.

Where is our protection? Where is our protection?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

What I find interesting is that what you've done is you've carved out three products that are very successful because of the way in which they've been developed. The point is that if this bill passed, those three products wouldn't be in place. You've sort of carved them out and said they're very successful; we've had tremendous success here; the industry works very well together; and, oh yes, this bill doesn't apply to those three but to everything else that follows.

I think, just from a point of view of logic and principle, that if this bill had been in place 30 to 40 years ago, those three products would not exist today.

So...

[Kurt Shmon]

Well, Alex admitted that there is lots of potential for conventional varieties that are doing better. If you refer back to part of Kelvin's presentation, he openly admitted that there are varieties he is currently producing that have not increased his bottom line.

It has not made a difference in the financial gain of our producers, but it has made a gain to Monsanto and its shareholders.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

No one's arguing that it's the right approach for all commodities. The point is, though, that GM has made a significant contribution to some commodities, and actually to the farm receipts, the farmers, and the agricultural economy of Canada, and this bill affects all of them, not just one or two niche markets.

This affects all of it, and I don't think it affects it the way you think it does. I think you're thinking that we all hope it leads in the direction of producers having control over regulation, but the bill doesn't stipulate any of that, none of it. It just talks about doing a financial analysis of the harmful impact on foreign markets.

There are a lot of questions about that. What will it be based on? Someone does a study and says it's harmful; well, what did you base that on? Was it a widely accepted process that you used to arrive at that conclusion?

There are a lot of problems with this bill, and it doesn't drive the change that you're talking about. I think you're hoping to leapfrog off the bill into the change that you would like to see, but I would argue the bill does not drive it. We've seen in other commodities that the change you're looking for can happen, and has happened, without the bill. The bill will actually adversely affect development of other products.

[Jim Lintott]

The multinationals aren't going to leave North America in terms of the investments they have in the development of the seeds industry. Almost all of our GMO-produced crops now are tying chemical resistance to seed to enhance marketability and to enhance the bottom line for those who are involved in the marketing of those two products, the chemicals and the seed itself. It's not about getting more marketplace in the world and it's not about enhancing the bottom line for the producer.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I would say it is, though. Some of this leads to higher yields--

[A voice]

No, it doesn't.

[Jim Lintott]

Excuse me.

Anyways, the point is that from the producer's point of view, we have attempted to express our need to stop Roundup Ready alfalfa. Clearly, the regulations and the laws in place fail miserably on this point. We need a regulation that gets us there. We have been searching for that. This is from us, from producers.

We have a vested interest in all these other crops as well as these niche market crops and we are standing up and saying that this is the closest you've come up with. It's your responsibility, in this room, to help us get to where we need to be. We have a perfect example in the canola industry. They have somehow come up with a process that has market and regulation acceptance, which is not available to the rest of us in the forage industry--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If I can interrupt, it sounds as though your industry doesn't support what you're saying and you need the government to force it upon them. To me, that doesn't make any sense. Then we'll be working against your industry.