Evidence of meeting #43 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agreed.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much, everyone.
We're back and we're going to continue on with amendments. We are now at clause 75 and the amendment is NDP-11.
(On clause 75)
Madam Brosseau, please.
4 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you, Chair. I propose:
That Bill C-18, in Clause 75, be amended by adding after line 4 on page 51 the following: “3.3 The Registrar may not cancel the registration of a variety under paragraph 74(j) of the Seeds Regulations unless the Minister has, after consultation with Canadian farmers, determined that the cancellation would not be detrimental to their interests.”
From how I understand it, right now a company can request in writing to take any variety off the market. What this amendment is trying to do is make sure that there is better transparency and consultation required when seeds are made inaccessible. It also makes sure that farmers' interests are taken into consideration when it comes to which varieties are deregistered and makes sure that producers can plan and anticipate any changes.
This is a consultation that we want to have enshrined in this bill.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
I can see what the amendment is about, but I'm wondering if some of the staff can comment on it. Is there a slight possibility that if a seed company for some reason found something wrong with their seed—a disease like clubroot or something in it—and they wanted to pull it from the market or pull it from the system, would this prevent them from doing it?
4 p.m.
Nicolas McCandie Glustien Manager, Legislative Affairs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
To answer very quickly, the CFIA and the registrar are already able to remove a seed from the variety registration list on our own initiative if there is something such as a disease or there's a harm because of the seed. We would take action in that situation ourselves rather than wait for the company to come forward.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Are you saying there's already something in place the government can do and that this is not needed?
4 p.m.
Manager, Legislative Affairs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
I can give you a little bit more background information on the variety registration process.
There are two ways that cancellation is done. It can be done at the CFIA's initiation for a number of reasons: disease—it's maybe no longer resistant to disease—it's a harm on the market, there's no value in it, it might infringe on another variety. It can be done at the request of the company itself, the registrant. They would initiate the cancellation
The policy of the CFIA when someone initiates a cancellation in this way is that we look at it and we put it out there for comment and thought from the industry and the stakeholders. The process of cancellation when it's initiated by the registrant can take up to three years, so we receive comment on that. The policy of the CFIA is that if there's value from that seed still remaining in the marketplace we would delay that cancellation until the registrant and the farmers affected could work out how the benefits could be addressed. If there's a seed in the marketplace you need time to make sure it can be brought off the marketplace if a registration is cancelled.
From our perspective the processes are already in place to make sure that seeds are not cancelled and then taken off the market when there's still a benefit.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
That's what my question is. I'm just using a hypothetical situation. Let's say there is a seed that's been out there a bit and the farmers are buying it in February or March and they're not seeding it yet, but the seed company says there's some clubroot in it or there are some weed seeds in there and it needs to be yanked. What this says is that the minister would have to go consult with the farmers and that could delay the process of yanking it from the system. That's just a hypothetical, but it could.....
4 p.m.
Tony Ritchie Executive Director, Strategic Policy and International Affairs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
That's correct.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Chair.
As I read the amendment I'm wondering if there's a problem that we don't know about because I don't remember this coming up in committee from witnesses. The amendment would make me think that it happens at least frequently enough to warrant an amendment, where varieties are taken off the market and the farmer is left saying, “What just happened? Why did that happen? I'm disadvantaged somehow.”
What I'd like to ask the officials is, based on Agriculture Canada experience, how often is a variety removed from the market? Does it happen a lot? Not very much?
4 p.m.
Manager, Legislative Affairs, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
We can speak a little bit from experience over the last twenty-some years or so. In the wheat field, I was given some numbers. Around only 2% of varieties have been deregistered during that period of time. This isn't a situation that has been identified as a problem to us in that way. You have the two regimes operating at the same time, variety registration and UPOV plant breeders' rights, and we just aren't seeing this issue.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay, 2%. Again, it's not something we heard from witnesses at committee.
Thank you.
4 p.m.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
I appreciate the numbers. Mr. Lemieux says the numbers aren't particularly high, but then again, we're dealing with UPOV 78 and the regime now, and we're about to change that regime. He may be correct; I don't remember exactly who we talked to about that, but I can tell him that we've been talking to people for the best part of this year on numerous fronts when this bill was first introduced at the beginning of the year. They may not all get to committee because you can't get every witness to committee, Mr. Chair, as you know. You do a splendid job with the clerk at getting a good variation, but obviously not everybody can come. That's fair game. It's not only those folks we would talk to; we would be remiss if we didn't talk to others.
There is a concern, once UPOV 91 comes, that having varieties out there that companies own that aren't covered for them necessarily, they may deregister. That's a concern. I'm not saying it's a reality; it's a concern. The nature of this was that if I don't own that intellectual property under UPOV 91, because it's a variety that sits there at the moment, I'll deregister it and I'll bring you a new one. Now I can make money from that one, because I can't make it from this one. That's the concern that farmers have expressed to us, albeit not sitting in the witness chairs maybe, but that's what they're saying. There will be a change in the intellectual property coverage based on this legislation, which will pass; government has the numbers to make it so.
That being the case, that was the concern we heard from across the country, from a number of farmers saying, “Okey-dokey, this is going to be like the pharmaceutical industry. I'm going to change the colour of the pill and I'm going to re-register it and I'm going to get another x number of years out of it. I'm going to put a buffer in it and I'll get something else out of it. I'll get rid of all the other ones where I can't make money, so now you've got to come to me and buy the one because all the others are gone.” That's the concern.
It's not a reality yet. It may not even be a reality, but that is the overriding concern that folks have, that the registrants will simply say, as was pointed out, they can come and ask for it to deregister. Yes, indeed, you'll do due diligence about how long it takes to do that, but ultimately it will be the farmer's onus to actually convince you that there's value in leaving it as a registrant. If they can't do that, you'll deregister it, because that's the process that you have to work with, which is fair. It's not unfair, it's just fair; that's just how it is. It's not something you're willfully doing or not willfully doing; it's simply the process.
That's a concern. For them, this became the safeguard spot, saying, “Hey, just leave the stuff out here. If it's of no value, nobody will use it any more and it'll just disappear, like many other varieties over the years. When everybody stopped using them, nobody cared about them, they let them go, and eventually pretty well everybody deregistered even if they weren't deregistered by not buying them any more. That's what this speaks to, because the system is about to change; that's the concern that they have. This becomes the safeguard. If things don't get deregistered just because somebody decides as a company I can make more money if I get rid of them, that's the concern. No more, no less than that.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
First of all, it's a comment I made during committee on several occasions. The move from UPOV 78 to UPOV 91 does involve some change, but really it's an extension of plant breeders' rights that are already inherent, for the most part, in UPOV 78. It's not a leap from no plant breeders' rights to UPOV 91. It's an extension of rights, for the most part, that are contained within UPOV 78. I'm hoping that Mr. Allen will agree that a 2% incident under UPOV 78 and simply extending the plant breeders' rights under UPOV 91 is not a cataclysmic change in plant breeders' rights—it's more like an evolution forward—and does not really pose a risk to farmers across Canada.
The other thing I would say is, if I understood the analogy he was giving, that plant breeders might pull product A to come out with product B because they can make more money and it might be only a small technical change of some kind. But I would go back to what we discussed this morning, which is on page 3 of the act. When you look at the plant breeders' rights, first of all it's not retroactive, but second, what is it that is protected? Well, there are the four key characteristics: it has to be a new variety, it has to be distinguishable, it has to be stable, it has to be homogeneous. So it has to be a new variety of plant, and I don't think changing the colour of the seed or something like that would necessarily put it into that category.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
I used the colour analogy because that's what happens in the pharmaceutical world, not necessarily the seed world.
I think Mr. Dreeshen would correct me if I'd suggested that somehow they try to colour the seed because that's not really what they would do. I would accept the fact if he did because he has great expertise as I said this morning and I have great respect for his input here.
I disagree with my friend across the way, Mr. Lemieux, when it comes to “this is just an evolution” or “this is just a minor change from UPOV 78 to UPOV 91”. If it was such a minor change, we wouldn't have seen all of the folks lined up here as witnesses banging the drum and saying we need to get there because this is a leap forward—a giant leap forward, some of them said—and because without it, we will not get innovation.
It's not a minor change. This is a significant change from UPOV 78 to 91. If it was a minor tweak, Mr. Chair, I would suggest to you that you'd probably get unanimous consent on the bill. If it was simply on that one particular subject and wasn't an omnibus bill, you might actually get unanimous consent on the bill. The reason you don't is because these are indeed, under UPOV 78 to UPOV 91, significant changes, and that's why you have significant discussion. As much as my friend would like to minimize it, it's not the case.
There were witnesses, who were the government's witnesses, who were in favour of UPOV 91, clearly banging the drum loud and clear and saying, “We need this in the worst possible way”. I don't think they need minor change in the worst possible way. They were looking to get something that was actually going to be of great benefit to them. I don't disagree with that because it is of great benefit to them.
This is a benefit to farmers. We're trying to keep things in a kind of equilibrium here, where farmers have a fallback position that perhaps—and this is a perhaps, there's no guarantee in this—folks may try to deregister material that's already registered.
That's all it's about; nothing less, nothing more. Simply saying if the material doesn't get used over a period of time, it just simply disappears, but indeed if it does have value to farmers, it'll still be there and some company won't simply put it into the chain to try to deregister it.
As it presently stands, based on what I've heard from our expert witnesses, right now they could put it in that chain and the process would follow as to whether you deregister or not. The process would be for farmers to prove there's value, which can be onerous for some of them to do. What does that mean exactly in the longer term for individual farmers to try to prove there's value to that, versus a large company that can show, “Well this one's better for you”? It may well be, but the problem is I'll have to pay more for that than the other one. That's the dilemma they face.
That's why that amendment's here.
I see that our friends across the way have seen the great piece that's in there and that they'll want to actually say yes to this one.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Is there further debate?
(Amendment negatived)
Shall Clause 75 carry?
(Clause 75 agreed to)
Shall Clause 76 carry?
(Clause 76 agreed to)
(On clause 77)
On clause 77 and NDP-12.
Madam Brosseau.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Once again, we've seen somewhere this amendment before and I'm bringing it again for the second and last time:
That Bill C-18, in Clause 77, be amended by replacing line 7 on page 53 with the following: “time to time, with the consent of Parliament.”
I'm moving this amendment and I'm asking for support. It's to limit incorporation by reference.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Is there any debate or discussion?
(Amendment negatived)
Ms. May on PV-5.
November 4th, 2014 / 4:10 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I'm also on clause 77 with Green Party amendment 5.
It's the same basic point that was defeated in relation to the Feeds Act and the Fertilizers Act.
This attempts to amend clause 77 by deleting lines on page 53 in order to remove the permission given to a minister to make the decision solely based on foreign science. It's the way it's worded. I don't object to looking at science from around the world, but again, the way these clauses are drafted doesn't mention Canadian science at all. That's the concern.
That's the recommendation and I imagine the debate has been had.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much.
Is there any debate?
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Shall clause 77 carry?
(Clause 77 agreed to)
We'll move now to clauses 78 through 94. There are no amendments.
(Clauses 78 to 94 inclusive agreed to)
I believe that takes us to clause 95.
(On clause 95)
On that clause we have amendment NDP-13.
I would ask Madam Brosseau to present it, please.