Evidence of meeting #31 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
8:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I call the meeting to order. This is our first full meeting of the fall session, and we'll continue with our study of Bill C-474.
I'd like to thank all of our witnesses in advance for being here today. We'll move right to our first one: Mr. Keller.
If all of you could keep your comments to ten minutes or less, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
8:50 a.m.
Dr. Wilfred Keller President, Genome Prairie
Good morning. I'd like to thank you for allowing Genome Prairie to make this submission.
In the form of a quick introduction, I grew up on a mixed family farm in Melville, Saskatchewan. I trained at the University of Saskatchewan, where I received a doctoral degree in crop science. I was employed as a researcher and a manager with the federal government from 1973 to 2008, particularly working with Agriculture Canada and the National Research Council. I certainly had the privilege of seeing and participating in the development of biosciences and the growth of biotechnology as part of all of that.
8:50 a.m.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
I can't hear anything. My microphone doesn't work. It doesn't work.
8:50 a.m.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
Yes, I have everything I need, but I still can't hear anything. It's as if something were broken.
8:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
It may be your apparatus.
Is there one beside you, Alex, that you can give her?
8:50 a.m.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
Perhaps. That must be it. It doesn't work. I'm not an electrician; I'm a politician. I still can't hear anything.
8:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
We've been trying to figure out a way to separate the Bloc members.
8:50 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
8:50 a.m.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
Mr. Chair, I am a very loyal woman. My husband is far away, but I still would not cheat on him.
8:50 a.m.
President, Genome Prairie
Today I'm pleased to represent Genome Prairie. We are a regional centre of Genome Canada. We cover the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
We are very interested in facilitating and coordinating new initiatives related to biosciences, particularly in the emerging area of genomics. We see this as very important for Canada's society and for our economic well-being going forward.
Over the last decade we've administered some $180 million of investment in developing research, much of it in the area of crop agriculture. We partner with universities, with government laboratories at both the federal and the provincial levels, and with small and emerging Canadian companies. We think the partnership issue is a very important part of the innovation agenda for Canada and that biosciences are going to be critical to our economic well-being in the future.
I would like to make a few general comments about the whole issue of bioscience and crops. Of course, since the beginning of human civilization 10,000 years ago or so, we have been interested in improving and selecting and modifying crops for our purposes. The field of genetics first really started in the 20th century, particularly after the First World War. Canada came to the fore as a major developer, producer, and exporter of high-quality crops. There is a long list, but certainly wheat, canola, oats, flax, and mustard all come to mind. We're a major producer of high-quality products.
During the period following the First and Second World Wars, there was a lot of work on genetic improvement. Hybrid crop varieties came into being, such as new varieties of disease-resistant, rust-resistant wheat, which is an important Canadian story.
With the discovery of the DNA molecule as the basis of genetics, we moved into the era of molecular biology in the 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, this spawned whole new industries, commonly referred to as the biotechnology industry, with many small companies growing out of universities in both Canada and the United States. Many types of technologies that had an economic impact were generated, including the production of pharmaceuticals, such as insulin. Almost all insulin is produced in genetically engineered yeast. Food additives, such as for cheese manufacturing, for example, are genetically modified. Certainly our friends in Europe have adopted them and use all these products.
Along with that came the tools for improving crops, commonly referred to as biotech crops, which are based on understanding a single gene and introducing it into a crop to bestow on the crop a perceived benefit, be it disease resistance, tolerance to herbicides, or hybrid production systems. This technology has been rapidly adopted by Canadian farmers, and at an international level, to the extent that in 2009, more than 275 million acres of genetically modified crops were grown in more than 20 countries. I believe that 25 countries are producing 100,000 acres or more of these crops. Trade in genetically modified crops is here to stay.
Over the last decade we've seen a new wave of genetics-based research, referred to as genomics, which is based on handling and understanding the whole genome. Technological aspects of sequencing the genome include using informatics and computer power to analyze it. The sequencing of the human genome, which cost $10 billion two years ago, can now be done for $10,000 and will be done for $1,000 and perhaps, ultimately, $100. It will have a tremendous impact on what's going to happen in medical research. We already have evidence of new diagnostics and therapeutics, which are reported in the paper and the news fairly often. It has a tremendous impact on Canadian industries, the health industry, and the health research communities in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
In the case of crops, we can expect similar, major, and I would say transformational changes, because now we are dealing with the whole genome and have the ability to look at complex traits, be they drought tolerance or changing the components of seed for better human nutrition. We will see new industries and many new companies coming to the fore. This is an important era for Canada in terms of trying to capture value from these technologies and for building an innovation agenda that really emphasizes the growth of our small, new companies based on our creative, young Canadian researchers. From my experience working with these companies, they will exist in many sectors across food, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and so forth, covering our major clusters, not only in Saskatoon, where I come from, but in Guelph, for example, and in Montreal, which has its biopharmaceutical industry.
My feeling, as a researcher, is that this is not a time to introduce non-quantitative, non-scientific issues into our regulatory framework, which sets the environment for investment. Consequently, our organization will make the following three recommendations in a concluding form.
One, continuing on what I've been mentioning, we need to build on that vision of having an innovative society that's based on new company growth. That involves partnership between public and small, private companies, and it's ultimately critical that the environment for investment in these new enterprises is stable and secure. We believe that it's ultimately best done through a science-based regulatory framework. We do not believe it's appropriate to introduce non-science-type issues into our regulatory framework. It will dampen the potential for investment for those small, new companies. Investors want to understand, and they need to see a good stable environment. We think we need to pursue that vision, and we do not recommend that Bill C-474 be supported.
Two, building on the fact that there is going to be an appropriate environment, we need to move forward to develop high-quality crops and high-quality products to continue to build our leadership. We are now the world's leader in exporting canola, durum wheat for pasta, oats, flax, mustard, and lentils. Some of these are genetically modified; others are not. The important point is that we use research to position ourselves to be a leader in exporting the best products and the best technologies available, and it's going to depend on clear research and a strong research environment. We need to support our producers. Canada needs to play its role in sustaining food production on a global basis, with some 10 billion people expected to be on this planet. We need to diversify our capability in agriculture to build that enterprise.
Three, we would recommend that Canada, rather than looking at the regulatory framework in terms of adding new elements, streamline our regulatory framework to make sure we are competitive. We think there's room. I do believe that. And we do recommend that Canada's emphasis should be on becoming a leader in dealing with the issue of adventitious presence, the issue of contamination in seed lots, be it some seeds that are found on a boat that are from a non-registered, non-approved variety.... We have to move away from zero tolerance to some type of accepted limit. We accept limits for all kinds of non-external products in our seeds. They can be small rocks, they can be dead insects, or they can be weed seeds or seeds from other crops. We have to do the same for genetically modified products. A zero tolerance ruling is not feasible, is not realistic, going forward.
I think this is an opportunity for Canada to be a leader, to develop guidelines that are globally acceptable, so that our trade will continue, because the technology is going to develop in many directions and we want to be in the best position possible to capture value from that going forward.
Thank you.
9 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much, Mr. Keller.
We'll now move to Mr. Paul Gregory of Interlake Forage Seeds Ltd.
9 a.m.
Paul Gregory President, Interlake Forage Seeds Ltd
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As a brief preamble, while flying on WestJet yesterday, I picked up The Globe and Mail, and here is a quote from it by the father of India's green revolution, Dr. Swaminathan:
Genetic modification is a very powerful tool. But like any powerful tool, when using it, you have to take into account the environmental impact, the food safety aspects and so on. There must be a strong regulatory mechanism. If you don’t have it, people won’t have confidence in GM technology.
As Wilf just mentioned, technology is becoming cheap and available, and we must have more than just science taking a look at it.
I am a first generation farmer who, after a stint at U of M pursuing an undergrad degree in entomology and monogastric nutrition, has turned our farm into an export company, a seed processor, and a pollination broker. Along with my brother, Lee, we employ 15 staff.
As a professional agrologist and seedsman, I have enjoyed working alongside our provincial agriculture minister on both the appointed FRDC seed board. I have toured the province extensively, both as a seed buyer and retailer and an executive member of Keystone Agricultural Producers. Currently I am serving on the executive of the Northern Seed Trade Association, an international seed trade group; the Manitoba Organic Alliance; and also as a board member of the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board. I am in weekly conversations with our trade customers, both in the EU and U.S.A., for both conventional and certified organic seed species.
Canada is a nation of oligopolies. We have a relatively small farm economy that can easily be manipulated by the railways, the grain merchants, and the agricultural input suppliers.
I submit that political oversight is needed to help farmers be competitive in the world economy. American bankers have, until recently, sneered at our so-called socialist banking systems. American oilmen have scoffed at our excessive offshore drilling safety rules. Now the life science corporations are complaining that political oversight will be restrictive toward their bid to gain market share in Canada's seed trade.
I believe in good science and modern plant breeding. I also believe in good democracy and, maybe naively, that our members of Parliament represent a public good for the majority of their constituents.
You are told that life science companies will not supply Canada with the latest genetics and that the additional hurdle Bill C-474 imposes on the registry approval process will not be in the best interests of Canadian farmers. You are told that it may cost $100 million and 10 years of work to develop a new GM crop, but as Wilf just alluded to, you're not told that Dow AgroSciences has a new DNA sequencing technology available today that cuts costs in half for breeding new traits. We are on the cusp of a revolution in plant breeding that will dramatically speed up the time it takes to insert new genes into crop species.
The argument that this new political uncertainty will drive up expenses and limit R and D dollars is groundless because, going forward, plant breeding will be far cheaper and easier than it has been in recent history. You are told by the CSTA that seedsmen are in favour of Roundup Ready alfalfa in this bill. Have you had time to ask the forage crops committee at the CSTA what their opinion is?
I was at the Winnipeg airport over two years ago when 25 members of the CSTA from across Canada met with Forage Genetics and Monsanto. The chair took a straw poll, and all but three companies present were opposed to or had reservations about introducing Roundup Ready alfalfa into Canada. But after some effective lobbying by Monsanto and others, there was a change of heart.
As a seed company CEO responsible for the livelihood of your fellow employees, would you risk ticking off in a public forum the biggest supplier of genetics? Would CSTA risk the support dollars of their largest corporate donors?
Our small company pays $3,000 per year for membership fees to the CSTA on approximately $2.5 million to $3 million in seed sales. Monsanto would pay 10 or 20 times that much for its CSTA dues. So would the CSTA executive risk their careers to go against the flow? I'm not talking about influence peddling or anything illegal, but when you have a large customer, you do what it takes to get the job done.
Speaking of customers, specifically my European friends, who buy over half of Canada's trefoil and 20% of our $142 million forage seed exports, they are stubborn on the GM issue.
As we all know, the Europeans have promised more open trade policies towards GM-traded foodstuffs. I would love to see a reasonable, low-level presence threshold for unapproved trades, but it may come as a surprise to you that over in Europe, farmers do have political clout. They're enjoying a beautiful GATT-green, WTO-green, non-tariff trade barrier by not allowing GM crops into their system. Why would they want to open up their market to world competition? Why would they want to dismantle it? I have many close European friends, and they think it will be a long time before GM traits will be allowed across the continent. Don't bet the farm on low-level adventitious presence thresholds coming any time soon.
Currently, I'm restructuring my seed company with legal firewalls that will limit our exposure to a lawsuit from Europe when they discover Roundup Ready alfalfa genes in any given seed lot. Cal/West and other American seed companies have already discovered Roundup Ready alfalfa genes in their breeding programs, and it'll be in Canada sooner than we think.
I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I really dislike public speaking, and I have heard from Manitoba friends who have testified here that committee members can turn your words around and grandstand and make you look a fool, but I have the respect of my customers, growers, and employees, and you will not take that away from me.
Thank you.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to the Organic Trade Association, Mr. Matthew Holmes.
9:05 a.m.
Matthew Holmes Executive Director, Canada Organic Trade Association
Mr. Chair, mesdames et monsieurs, thank you very much to the members of this committee for having us here today.
I am the executive director of the Canada Organic Trade Association, and I've held this position since early 2007.
The Canada Organic Trade Association is a membership-based, not-for-profit incorporation that aims to promote and protect the growth of organic trade for the benefit of the environment, farmers, the public, and the economy. Our members range in size from small organic farms in rural Canada to some of the world's largest multinational movers of organic commodities, ingredients, and products.
I serve as the regulatory chair of Agriculture Canada's Organic Value Chain Roundtable; the processing chair of Canada's national organic standards technical committee at the Canadian General Standards Board; and an adviser to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on our new regulations.
COTA has advocated for international trade recognition between various organic standards and our own, such as the historic organic equivalency agreement with the United States. We also hope to soon have a similar agreement with Europe. And we have recently taken part in a Canadian consultation on low-level-presence policy.
Recently COTA developed and launched a long-term international strategy for Canada's organic sector with the support of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's AgriMarketing program. This strategy looks specifically at the opportunities and threats facing Canada's organic sector and identifies priority markets we should be targeting for growth.
As of June 30, 2009, organic products imported or traded at the national level must meet the requirements of Canada's organic products regulations and be certified by an accredited certifier recognized by the CFIA. Additionally, all organic claims in the marketplace are subject to full enforcement by CFIA inspectors.
Organic farming takes an approach to agriculture that focuses on sustainability, low environmental impact, and some of the latest in agronomic science, such as complex crop rotations, integrated pest management, and low-till techniques.
We were pleased to hear the government's recent announcement of over $6.5 million for the Organic Science Cluster's research to continue exactly this sort of innovation and research into organic methods in agronomy.
The organic sector also takes a precautionary approach on behalf of our consumers with respect to those aspects of agriculture we feel are not fully understood or could compromise the well-being of our human populations or our environment. For example, our standards prohibit the use of sewage sludge; fossil fuel-based fertilizers; artificial colours, additives, and flavours in processed food; cloned animals for meat; and persistent toxic and synthetic chemicals as pesticides. We also prohibit all materials and products produced from genetic engineering.
Obviously our legal requirements to follow these standards and regulations put the organic sector in the position of bearing a disproportionate risk when confronted with what we call GE contamination, or adventitious presence, in our products.
In addition to the added cost of inspection, traceability, and certification that our farmers take on for themselves, our organic farmers and processors also face the private costs of genetic testing and the potential loss of their organic designation, as well as rejected shipments, increased liability, and significant barriers to market access.
Following the recent Triffid flax contamination, some of my members were asked not only to pay for the testing of their shipments and of their product all the way downstream but also to accept responsibility and full liability for any market recall of any final product in foreign markets. No farmer, whether organic or not, can do business in that sort of environment.
For these reasons, we support as a first step the adoption of Bill C-474 as a means of ensuring that these sorts of economic impacts are reasonably considered before the introduction of new GE seeds, which could potentially harm our established markets.
Canadian sales of organic food doubled from $1 billion in 2006 to $2 billion in 2008. We continued to grow through the recession. Our global markets, which are estimated at $52 billion in sales a year, demand the organic products that Canada can bring them. And organic production and sales continue to grow around the world, often at more than 20% annually. There is tremendous opportunity here to reconnect rural and urban Canada and to empower and enrich Canadian farmers, with your support.
Innovation is most celebrated when it provides a solution to a problem. To put this another way, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
We have a certain obligation to ensure that our buyers are sold what they want to buy. It seems reasonable that we would consider where we do business in agriculture and with whom before we introduce a product that could potentially compromise that existing business.
By their very nature, genetically engineered seeds replicate themselves within the populations of non-genetically altered crops. They can infiltrate other populations. They can pass undetected, as we have seen, and compromise entire sectors.
The matter of alfalfa has been raised with this committee a number of times. It is not only exported from Canada as an organic feed and seed source, but it is also integral to the organic livestock and dairy sector--the value chain to which very much of our entire sector is connected. It is also an essential rotation crop for organic farmers because it puts the right nutrients back into the soil. So to compromise alfalfa, for example, does not only compromise one limited forage over here, it actually compromises our entire model of production.
As any government that has had to navigate a country through a global recession will appreciate, in our opinion economics is a science with just as much to offer public policy as chemistry, biology, or agronomy. Bill C-474 does not establish some unrealistic threshold, nor does it give economic considerations of veto over all other considerations. It simply provides policy-makers with one more tool with which to understand the implications of their decisions, and our sector feels this is a reasonable one.
In conclusion, Canada's organic sector bears a disproportionate risk when confronted with adventitious presence of GE in our products. We face this as both a loss of our organic designation for our products and a loss of our established markets. We know that many of the markets we do business with, such as the EU and Asia, do not want GE products. They are not open to them, and we need to respect this or they will supply new suppliers.
We are a young and quickly growing sector with strong ties to our consumer base and to vigorous international markets with tremendous investment opportunities. We need some safeguards in place to allow us to adequately respond to market opportunities without incurring prohibitive costs or closed borders.
The organic sector, in essence, is looking for reassurance that our business will not be taken from us. It's a new business and we're still trying to grow it. We either need to know that our production model and existing business are being considered as factors in the regulatory approval of plants with novel traits or we need a policy that describes the onus and liability of the owners of biotechnology, whose innovations are not solutions but instead have become a problem and liability for the organic sector.
I'm happy to speak with you on either of these two options, but I suspect that Bill C-474 is the easiest and most graceful of the two for you to consider, and I urge you to do so.
Thank you.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you, Mr. Holmes.
We'll now move to Mr. Peter Phillips, professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
9:15 a.m.
Dr. Peter W.B. Phillips Professor, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan
Thank you very much.
To give you a sense of where I'm coming from, I study the issues of innovation as they relate to agrifood and trade. I've spent the better part of 13 years in a series of research chairs, research projects, funded by the granting councils and by various agencies, and I've had some experience in the area of trade litigation and regulation through CBAC and through the NAFTA chapter 13 process.
Let me start with the intent of the bill. I think it's an excellent intent. The whole purpose of the proposed Seeds Regulations Act is to actually assist and promote innovation within the seeds sector. It's there to ensure that whatever we import and whatever we produce, and whatever we then export to the world, has quality assurance around it. From an intent perspective, I think it's an excellent proposal. The problem is that the devil's in the details. With most simple answers to complex problems, you can create some adverse effects that you don't anticipate.
Let me start by talking about what innovation is about. If that's the purpose of the regulations in the act, it's perhaps a good idea to think about how it affects innovation. Innovation is fundamentally about creative destruction. It's about new ideas that enter the market and challenge existing positions, and then if they're successful, they overcome the other product and we get more value, more social good, and we enhance the quality of our lives, our environment, and our society. So those are the fundamental underpinnings of innovation.
It's really about change. It's not about protecting interests; it's about unleashing the possibilities and the challenges of existing positions.
There are two types of innovation. The simple innovations, the small ones, the iterative ones, where you're simply adding a little incremental change to a technology or product, they could live quite happily within the most strict regulatory regimes you could imagine. They could live quite comfortably within this proposal. The difficulty is that you don't get much value out of those. They're happening, they're important, but they're not going to speed the underlying success of the agrifood industry in the 21st century.
The agrifood industry in the 21st century is not competing against the United States or Europe for land, labour, and capital; it's competing against its neighbours down the road, who are doing other things that are earning higher-value products there, higher values from their land, from their labour, their capital. The reason you're seeing disinvestment in agriculture throughout much of the developed world is not because they can't compete with the third world; it's because they can't compete with their neighbour down the road who is doing things that are adding more value and generating more income.
I used to belong to an agricultural college. We used to send 75% to 80% of our students back to the farm. Now we send less than 5%, because the opportunity cost of getting a degree is too high.
These major transformative changes need flexibility and liberty to be able to find their market niche. It's very difficult in many cases to in fact know what the market niches are until they've actually been tested and adapted and adopted to the marketplace. They don't come fully packaged, not like those small incremental ones, where you know exactly who's going to use it, where they're going to use it, and how they're going to use it.
In this case, in the area of transformative change, you need to have some flexibility. We do have very strict regulatory regimes that ensure public health and safety. What we don't have at the moment are rules that lock in the market system and the market shares by various product or category. So that's what we're talking about here.
Let me give you an illustrative example of why it's important. Many of you will have heard that in the city I come from and the product line I specifically look at, we have generated a world-class product that has generated multiple times its investment: canola. Herbicide-tolerant canola was a product of not simply two multinationals working in their private labs using private capital, but it was really a team effort. It was investments by the Canadian government. It was investments by the people of Saskatchewan. It was investments by the farmers themselves in bringing new technology to the market.
Now that story has a lot to say about what might or might not happen under the provisions of this bill, so let me take you through five or six implications. In the first instance, that technology, which was in two traits initially and is now in 12 traits that have been commercialized--some of which have been withdrawn because they didn't meet market tests--generated more than $1.2 billion, which stayed in the hands of Canadian farmers. It also generated over $1.5 billion of net returns to the industry, which then got distributed either in new investment, returns to shareholders, or some of it was taxed by the Government of Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan.
In addition, what's often forgotten is that about $600 million of net value has been generated over the last 15 years for consumers. Most of those consumers are not Canadians. They're poor people who are living on low incomes in third world countries. That's where the bulk of our oilseeds are used in the food chain.
So over $3.3 billion of investment was generated by this technology. That's point one.
Point two, if you had had this rule, could you have realized that $3.3 billion? The short answer is no. AgrEvo's technology has still not been approved in Europe. So you would have foregone that under the rules that you're proposing here: a major internationally competitive and internationally attractive investment in a technology.
Third, part of the story I haven't told you yet is that when this technology came to the market, the identical question you're trying to address was raised by the industry. Pending approval in Canada and the United States, the seed growers and others in the supply chain, and farmers' groups, said, we've got a problem. Our major markets, over 50% of the market share in the previous three years, were in Europe and Japan. They had yet to approve the technology, and there was some uncertainty as to when or if they would approve it. So the industry worked together with the seed trade and with the commodity groups and with the growers' associations to ensure that the technology could be adapted and adopted in a test model, an identity-preserved production marketing system, for two years very successfully. It accelerated adoption of that technology by two years, and the net gains across the supply chain have been estimated in some of my previous work to be in excess of $100 million in net present value terms. So by allowing the industry to work with the proponents who had the most at stake, they were able to structure something that brought the technology to market and got it adapted and adopted by early users in North America.
A third point is that this structure they created was in many ways the gold standard for responsible introduction of new technologies into contested markets. Interestingly enough, the great demon of the biotech world, Monsanto, has in subsequent technologies tended to try to live up to that commitment through their Monsanto pledge around GM wheats. Other companies similarly have been working with industry and with supply chains to ensure that the technology doesn't artificially or inappropriately disrupt market shares in areas. That's not to say that there aren't some problems lingering from previous introductions before they had found this model.
A fifth point I'd like to make is that there's no technology that's universally accepted. This technology has been unambiguously rejected within the organic industry. We have actually had a tentative class action case in Canada, the Hoffman-Beaudoin case on behalf of the Organic Directorate in Saskatchewan, to attempt to either halt, withdraw, or seek compensation for the damages. While the case was never litigated on its content because it didn't get a class status, what it really amplifies is that no matter what technology you're talking about, there are going to be markets that will say, “No, thank you.” The challenge is, can you segregate between the accepting and the non-accepting markets?
Finally, let me make a point about the provenance of technologies like this. In the international global agrifood world that Canada now lives in, and will succeed or fail in, research will not come from the small, isolated public lab or the small, isolated commercial seed producer in a niche market. It's coming from networks and relationships. Those networks and relationships are increasingly being vested in research centres: the city of Guelph, the city of Saskatoon, St. Louis, Melbourne. These are places that have invested heavily in the infrastructure and the networks and the capacities to bring new technology to the market. Wilf has indicated that this could create a chill in the public investment and the private investment community, and I wouldn't discount the fact that the public sector may say, we won't invest there either if there are increasing difficulties. The challenge here is that those will be your sentinel species. If you're looking for where the effect will be, you will see it hit first in those areas.
Let me conclude my substantive arguments by saying that innovation is not about managing change; it's about creating the appropriate space for change. In that sense, I think the debate you've opened with this bill is an excellent one. The regulatory system is not complete; it does have areas that need change and improvement. There are lots of studies that I and other scholars have done. There's work done by CBAC and the Royal Society about what more could be done to improve the system so that we can bring technologies to the market that meet the needs of everyone at this table, not just the biotech seed companies, but the producers that are producing commodity bulk products and the other industries that choose not to use the technology.
Thank you.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you, Mr. Phillips.
We'll now move into questioning. Just a reminder that it was agreed upon that the witness or public part of the meeting would go until 10:30 a.m. and then we'll deal with the subcommittee report.
We'll start with Mr. Easter for seven minutes.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
If there's agreement for five, that's fine with me.
Is that okay with everybody?
