Evidence of meeting #51 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 canola.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
What if Canada applies a harm-to-market analysis such as was suggested, say, in C-474, and all of a sudden we understand the markets out there accept a low-level presence, while there are still farmers who want a zero presence?
12:15 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
I think that Bill C-474 took that into account, because it was a harm based on market opportunity. It didn't specify what the market would dictate. It just referred to harm based on a market assessment.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Let me put it this way. Would the organics people accept that? Would the organic growers accept a sudden low-level presence being permitted?
12:15 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
I think Arnold is better....
12:15 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
First of all, you have to understand that GMO technology is a prohibited method in organic worldwide. Understand this. This is a process-based standard. If I as a farmer grow something and, unbeknownst to me, it drifts over to someplace else and there is a low-level presence, according to the NOP, I would not lose organic status on that crop. But there is an issue there. Once it's there, then you know it's there. Then you're dealing with certification and cleanup. So there's a cost involved.
A low-level presence is different from a threshold. Europe has a threshold of 0.9 in their labelling law. That's a threshold, a tolerance level. That's a slippery slope. Canada couldn't meet it now in canola. They are so far contaminated, they would never meet it.
The organic sector...we have that already. Probably worldwide we would have that as a primitive method, because of the testing. We don't believe the technology is mature enough to be used in the food production. That's our position.
12:15 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
As a sidebar here, just because CETA agrees to something doesn't mean European or Japanese consumers are going to accept it; the EU and Japan can still label their food however they want to. Consumers can still make that differentiation, whether CETA says they want to adhere to a certain standard or not. There are very different issues there, when you're considering market.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay.
I have another question, on the identity-preserved isolation distances. Mr. Richards suggested there's no level of buffer zone that assures non-contamination. Yet Jim Gowland, from the Canadian Soybean Council, was here a couple of days ago, and he's growing non-GM soybean and GM soybean.
If we were to work towards trying to create GMO-free zones and buffer distances, and that kind of thing, so we could create some type of coexistence, I'm wondering if it's possible to identify crops that buffer distances will work for and crops where buffer distances absolutely will not work.
12:20 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
It's dicey, but for sure there are differences in different crops. I know there's a good market for non-GMO soybeans—not just organic, but GMO-free soybeans—and that's coexistence, if you want to call it that. I'm not sure how they manage it because I'm not real familiar with soybeans.
But for corn and canola, it's impossible. That's especially the case with canola because it's so prolific in cross-pollination. Plus, it leaks on the truck; it just runs like water. You put it in a truck and it will leak down the highways from a tiny little crack. It's absolutely impossible. It's growing in the sidewalks; it's growing in the eavestroughs, and in livestock and birds. And who's liablel for it? Who's going to pay for the cost of cleaning it up?
12:20 p.m.
Bloc
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, André.
I don't want to get into a big debate about funding. My only point about raising funding was that based on our last presentation, the committee was left with the impression that there was no significant public funding for organic farming. My point was that there is funding, and $6.5 million is significant.
If you're going to compare it to all biotechnology, I think you raise an interesting point. The committee is here to talk about biotechnology and look into biotechnology, which is far bigger than GM. Biotechnology touches so many different sectors and commodities, in many different ways.
There are many research clusters that are funded in a comparable way to the organics. If you're going to lump them altogether and say, this, this, and this, and if I add it all up—my point was only that there is funding.
Anyway, I don't want to get into a big debate about it.
I do, though, want to understand the organic position better. As I said, biotechnology is a far wider discussion than just GM.
We've had a number of presenters here speaking from the organic point of view. I'm trying to understand, for example, if the organic sector is in favour of having a good regulatory and registration regime in place for plants and commodities—livestock—that has been influenced by biotechnology, to basically protect the interests of farmers and consumers but also allow for research and development to help farmers, or is it just a moratorium?
What I heard Arnold say was that it is a moratorium, and I'm not sure if I'm detecting that in some of the other presenters. Maybe you could clarify that for me, from the biotechnology point of view.
12:20 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
Okay. I was going to jump in before this.
When Wayne Easter was out in Davidson, in about 2002, on the Prime Minister's task force—a different Prime Minister—he asked me if organic agriculture could survive along with industrial agriculture. I said yes, but not with the proliferation of GMO crops. That was my answer.
That was ten years ago. We're ten years later, and he's a little greyer and I'm a lot greyer, but we've still got the same problem.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
12:20 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
We use the newer varieties of crops, but we can't use genetically modified technology because it's prohibited in our standards.
We can't change it; our customers, our consumers, demand that. Biotech companies say you eat what we produce or go hungry. We would never do that to our customers.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I actually agree with you. Biotechnology can help the organic sector. It's just that what happens is--
12:20 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
Except that I'm not talking about genetic engineering.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I understand that, too.
What I'm detecting, though, is that the subject matter becomes confused, in that the term “biotechnology” is thrown out there and the organic sector is somehow against biotechnology. I want to clarify this. I don't think you are against biotechnology.
12:20 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
No, we're not. We're not against it. We could benefit from it.
12:25 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
But we also have our guidelines. And our government has to respect that the consumers decide what they're going to buy.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Right. And I think that's important.
This leads to my next question. Let's look at that subset of GM products. I detect--and you can clarify it for me--that the organic sector wants a moratorium. You want, basically, a moratorium on GM products—not good, strict regulations, or a tough but fair regulatory system. And yet when we talked to the soybean growers, for example, where they actually have GM and non-GM, one of the questions I put to them was whether a tension existed between their GM farmers and their non-GM farmers where the non-GM farmers felt threatened by the presence of the GM farmers' cross-contamination issues, all the things we're talking about today. The answer was no. There's a mutual respect there, in that “I'm a non-GM soy grower. I'm going to grow my crop and I'm going to take measures to ensure it's non-GM. You're a GM grower. You take the measures you need to grow your crop.” But there's not this “I am absolutely against GM soy growers.”
But that's not what I'm detecting from the organic sector, in general. I'm detecting.... Well, you had said that you wanted to see a moratorium.
12:25 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Organic Growers
I said--and I hope it was recorded--a moratorium until some of these issues are settled, which is how you prevent the contamination.
When we sued Monsanto and Bayer, we didn't sue our fellow farmers, who have a liability issue as well. We sued the patent holders, the owners of the technology, which I think was fair. In Australia there's a lawsuit going on right now. Monsanto is defending a farmer, who is holding its technology use agreement, from another farmer for contamination. You can Google Steve Marsh lawsuit, or something like that. There are pictures and everything. There's a case where a farmer is suing his neighbour.
I get along very well with my neighbours--
