Health Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to get our meeting started.

Before we get too far into our meeting and have our guests start their presentations, we have some committee business to take care of. I'll turn it over to our clerk and he'll take it from here.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Andrew Bartholomew Chaplin]

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition. I'm now prepared to receive motions for the first vice-chair.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I would like to nominate Murray Rankin as the vice-chair.

[The Clerk]

It has been moved by Ms. Moore that Mr. Rankin be elected first vice-chair.

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion carried and Mr. Rankin duly elected as first vice-chair of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay, good.

We won't be taking any acceptance speeches on that, but congratulations.

We have three different organizations that are here today to talk to our Pest Control Products Act review. We're going start from my left and go across.

Mr. Petelle, you're up first.

[The Clerk]

Would you please start with the canola growers because we're making copies of the other two presentations?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay, we're going to change the plans. We're going to wait for the copies of the speaking notes.

First off, and hopefully we're not putting you on the spot, is the Canadian Canola Growers Association.

Jan Dyer, go ahead.

[Jan Dyer, Director, Government Relations, Canadian Canola Growers Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, we thank you for the opportunity to be invited here today to speak to you about the review of the Pest Control Products Act.

The Canadian Canola Growers Association represents 43,000 canola growers. We are governed by a farmer board of directors, representing all provinces from Ontario west to B.C.

Canola is the number one cash crop in the country, contributing about $19 billion a year annually to the Canadian economy. About $8 billion of that is in cash receipts to growers alone. Over 16 million tonnes were produced this last crop year, surpassing the industry goal to increase production to 15 million sustainable tonnes by 2015. So we are a growing industry.

Crop protection products, which include herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, are critically important tools for farmers' production. They allow farmers to produce more per acre by helping control yield-robbing weeds, diseases, and insects. Maintaining access to current crop protection products and facilitating access to new technologies is critical for canola growers to be competitive in a global market. Equally important is that the products farmers have access to be safe and environmentally sustainable.

The Pest Control Products Act is a key piece of legislation that both facilitates access to products that farmers need to remain competitive in a global market, as well as ensures these products are safe for farmers and all Canadians. It also provides an open, transparent framework that instills public confidence in Canada's regulatory system and the safety of crop protection tools being used in Canada. This is particularly important to canola producers, as the public's acceptance of modern agricultural practices is becoming more and more important.

At this time we don't feel that this act requires major changes, as it is serving farmers and Canadians well.

A key pillar of the act is science-based risk assessment. The canola industry and its successes have been built on the same foundation of predictable and science-based regulatory approval processes. This system encourages continued investment in agricultural innovations that have been critical to the development of new crop protection products. These advancements in science are continually facilitating the introduction of new crop protection products that offer benefits to farmers and to the environment.

New, more targeted products are more environmentally sustainable. New, less expensive products improve farmer competitiveness. New products that are easier to apply can reduce exposure of the product to the farmer, and the discovery of new modes of actions aids in the effort to reduce weed resistance, which is a benefit to both farmer profitability and the environment. These advances are all facilitated by a predictable, science-based regulatory approval system, which the Pest Control Products Act provides.

The current science-based regulatory system does a good job of risk assessment while encouraging continued investment in agricultural innovation. Any erosion of this science-based risk assessment would have serious consequences for canola farmers. CCGA strongly supports the PMRA in carrying out its mandate and upholding these important principles.

While it's not necessarily stipulated in the act, the PMRA also plays an important role in maintaining global access for Canadian agriculture products and ensuring functioning international markets. With 90% of canola exported annually, canola farmers rely on trade for their success, and both our industry and the government have invested significant resources to maintain and grow our trade opportunities.

Some specific examples of important PMRA work for us are the identification of Canadian priority pesticides for the establishment of Codex maximum residues, the joint product reviews through the Canada-U.S. Regulatory Cooperation Council, the joint global review process where OECD members cooperate to register products, and finally, the promotion on an international level of sound science in decision-making. These initiatives not only ensure continued access to international markets for our farmers, but also ensure they have access to the newest and latest crop technologies.

CCGA and our growers believe the key to PMRA's ability to effectively administer the act is having an appropriate funding level. Cost recovery consultations have been ongoing in the last few years with the latest rounds last week, and CCGA supports the modest user fee increase they have proposed and believes more funds are needed to ensure PMRA can continue to operate its current suite of programs, and meet its objectives and established performance measures. An increase in user fees to industry players would complement Government of Canada funding and ensure a strong, independent system and public confidence in the approved pesticides.

PMRA plays an important role in ensuring safety of new and existing crop protection products in Canada, creating public confidence in our regulatory system and influencing an effective global pesticide framework. The Pest Control Products Act continues to provide a good framework for bringing new crop protection tools to market, for ensuring open and fair processes, and most important, for protecting human, animal, and environmental health and safety.

I thank you for the opportunity to come to this committee today to speak about the act. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Next up, from CropLife Canada, we have Mr. Petelle. Go ahead.

[Pierre Petelle, Vice-President, Chemistry, CropLife Canada]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I would like to thank you for inviting us to be here today.

I am Pierre Petelle, and I am the vice-president of Chemistry at CropLife Canada.

On behalf of the association's member companies, I am pleased to provide these remarks on the review of the Pest Control Products Act. I will also be pleased to answer all of your questions following my presentation.

CropLife Canada is the trade association that represents the manufacturers, developers and distributors of plant science technologies, including pest control products and plant biotechnology, for use in agriculture, urban and public health settings.

We strive to ensure that the benefits of plant science innovations can be enjoyed by both farmers and consumers. CropLife Canada promotes sustainable agricultural practices, and we are committed to protecting human health and the environment.

Our members are continuously innovating to provide the most effective and the safest tools for food production, public health protection, utility rights-of-way, and green spaces. Canadian agriculture generates more than $100 billion annually in economic activity. Crop protection products and plant biotechnology improve crop quality and increase yields, which lead to over $7.9 billion in additional value for farmers of field, vegetable, and fruit crops. It also contributes off-farm value worth over $6.4 billion in areas such as processing, shipping, and manufacturing.

Without pesticides and plant biotechnology tools, we could lose up to 40% of our crops in Canada to weeds, insects, and diseases. On average, Canadian families save over 58% on their weekly grocery bills thanks to those plant science innovations, but these products cannot exist without a modern, predictable, and timely science-based regulatory system.

The current version of the Pest Control Products Act, brought into force in 2006, has unprecedented protections and transparency provisions for Canadians. Despite the significant changes that the new act meant, CropLife Canada and its member companies supported these measures when they were introduced, as a means of increasing the confidence of Canadians in their science-based regulatory system. We were and we remain confident in the science that supports our products, so we welcomed the additional safety provisions and the unprecedented openness of this legislation.

We believe that, on balance, the act is still working well today, and we do not support major revisions to it. The primary objective of the act is to prevent unacceptable risks to people and the environment and to measure those risks in a predictable, timely, and science-based fashion. This is an objective that we as an industry share, and we believe that the act is well positioned to continue to meet those goals.

Canadian farmers compete on a global level. They face ongoing challenges from weeds, insects, and diseases and must have timely access to the most modern pest control products in the world. They need access to those tools in order to remain competitive and to ensure our food supply remains abundant, affordable, and safe.

We should not take this for granted. Some jurisdictions have allowed their regulatory system to become driven by ideology and special interest groups, rather than relying on the robust, risk-based scientific assessment that is prescribed in our Pest Control Products Act. The results of non-science-based decision-making are numerous: declining food production, diminished trade, higher food prices for consumers, and a lack of consumer confidence in the regulatory system.

Another objective of the act is to encourage public awareness in relation to pesticides. We feel that this has been an area that the government can and should improve upon. Canada has one of the most highly respected regulatory systems around the world. It balances the need for farmers to have timely access to new technologies while protecting the health and safety of Canadians and the environment. This is something that we as a country should be proud of; however, in the face of ongoing activist attacks on the safety of pesticides in Canada, the regulator remains relatively silent.

We would encourage the government to stand up for the regulatory system and help educate Canadians about the safety of the products farmers are using to produce their food. We're concerned about the erosion in public confidence that is being orchestrated by some special interest groups. Rather than improving public confidence with this modern piece of legislation, we have seen these groups openly criticizing Health Canada and second-guessing the rigorous scientific assessments, sometimes without any scientific evidence. Indeed, Mr. Chair, they are conducting these campaigns without using the very provisions they lobbied for in the act, provisions that allow them to have new scientific information evaluated.

Some groups are also attempting to use the transparency provisions of the act to bog down the PMRA and reduce their ability to deliver the safe and effective tools that farmers and others need. While transparency is vital, and we as an industry support that, the PMRA must have the ability to do its job as a science-based regulator.

There are some who will recommend to this committee the greater use of precaution or the use of the precautionary principle in Canada when regulating pesticides. Most experts, however, would argue that our system is highly precautionary, from the requirement for a full pre-market assessment to the post-registration controls that are in place. In fact, the precautionary principle is enshrined in the current act in section 20.

Scientists around the world are raising red flags about the misuse of this precautionary principle. It is being used by some as an excuse to block all progress and innovation. In fact, if we were to apply some groups' interpretation of precaution, there would be no tools available to growers. We must not allow this distorted view to get a foothold in Canada. Canada is a major food exporter, and this agricultural trade is critical to Canada's economic prosperity. No other sector is as keenly interested in, or as heavily impacted by, trade rules as agriculture is.

Regulatory harmonization, including joint reviews, is critical for agriculture. Harmonized maximum residue limits, or MRLs, are essential to ensuring the smooth flow of trade across borders. There is no point in bringing the latest technologies to farmers if they can't use them for fear of trade disruptions when they export their commodities. We need harmonized mechanisms to establish MRLs with our trading partners.

We strongly support the leadership role that the PMRA has played at the international level. The regulatory harmonization and cooperation for pesticide regulations is the envy of other sectors. This has allowed Canada to play a significant role in joint reviews and in work sharing, and has brought new technologies to Canadian farmers at the same time as their global competitors in much bigger markets.

We support the efforts of the Government of Canada to expand and safeguard trade globally, and we appreciate the efforts being made through initiatives such as the red tape reduction strategy and the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council both to ease the regulatory burden on farmers and our industry and to facilitate trade. These initiatives have a very positive impact on Canada's reputation globally as a place to invest and create jobs.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, CropLife Canada and its member companies believe the act in its current form is largely meeting our needs. In general, any changes and improvements we might like to see can be achieved through regulation and policy rather than through legislative change.

We thank you and the committee again for inviting us, and we welcome any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Our third guest today is Pulse Canada.

Go ahead.

[Corey Loessin, Vice-Chair, Board of Directors, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, Pulse Canada]

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is Corey Loessin. I am a farmer from Radisson, Saskatchewan, and I serve as a member on the Pulse Canada board. Our farm has grown peas and red lentils for more than 20 years, along with grains and oilseeds, on land that has been our family farm for more than 100 years.

Pulse Canada is the national industry association and is funded by farmers like me who grow pulse crops, lentils, peas, beans, and chickpeas across Canada. A farmer levy is collected by the provincial organizations and combined with funding from processors and exporters of pulse crops, so that farmers and the trade work together as Pulse Canada.

Canada is the world's largest producer of peas and lentils, and a leading producer of beans. Canada is the world's largest exporter of pulses. As a trade-dependent sector, the Canadian pulse industry is an advocate of trade-enabling policy and regulatory processes in Canada and at the international level. Crop protection products like herbicides and fungicides protect crops from weeds and diseases that reduce yields. These yield-enabling technologies are the key to growing enough food for the entire world on the existing land base. They are part of a sustainable food production system.

As you know, crop protection products are available to farmers only when they have been thoroughly evaluated from a human health and environmental perspective. Each crop protection product is assigned an MRL, maximum residue limit. By definition, the MRL is the maximum amount of residue that can be detected on the crop that is harvested and is an indicator of proper use of that product. Importantly to consumers, the MRL is an indicator that also shows that the food product is well below the level of concern for health or environmental safety. A science-based risk assessment system is as important to farmers as it is to the pharmaceutical industry and the health care system. Efficacy and safety are both the cornerstones of building public trust in food systems, just as they are in the health care system.

The challenge is that unharmonized assessment systems between Canada and importing countries are making it difficult for farmers like me to be sure that the grain we grow can comply with a multiplicity of different regulatory systems on MRLs. The risks are high. A shipload of grain that could be rejected could be worth $10 million to $40 million. Of note is that 90% of our peas go to three countries in the world, and about 86% of our lentils go to five countries in the world. These are critical markets. At the same time, lentils are shipped to over a hundred different countries around the world.

The risks are getting higher each year as testing gets more sensitive, into parts per trillion, and as more countries are moving toward their own custom systems. The leadership that Canada has shown in this area globally, through Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency, needs to continue. Canada's leadership in this area will need to increase to keep up with mounting challenges, and the PCP Act review needs to ensure that the act is not a future barrier to harmonization.

With me is Gord Kurbis, Pulse Canada's director of market access and trade policy, who is prepared to describe some of our key opportunity areas.

[Gord Kurbis, Director, Market Access and Trade Policy, Pulse Canada]

Thanks, Corey.

Our messages today are that harmonized international systems are critical to our industry, and that cuts at PMRA have put that at risk. The act is workable in its current form with one potential caveat that I will elaborate on.

As Corey has described, the international regulatory landscape around food trade is becoming more challenging and complex. While there are many technical issues, the key for us is not what international regulators decide vis-à-vis certain technology, it's when.

We're in an era of increasing technological innovation, giving us the ability to test for substances right down to parts per trillion. In cases where an importing country has not completed its assessment, it is common for a zero or near zero default to be applied. This means that advanced technology could show that traces of a product are present but at levels that have never been shown to be of any concern from a health or environmental perspective. Still, cargoes can be rejected. Let me illustrate this point with a practical and real life trade example.

In 2011 the pulse industry experienced a high profile non-compliance on lentils going into the European Union, which has been known to have a sensitivity in this area. The issue was that farmers were using a crop protection product, glyphosate or Roundup, which is fully approved for use in Canada. Residues were well within Canadian and other established international food safety standards. However, the EU had never gone through the process of establishing an MRL for glyphosate on lentils, and consequently it applied a near zero default of 0.1 parts per million that resulted in the rejection of the shipment.

This also created the threat of a product recall off retail shelves, so this was a non-compliance that was treated as a food safety issue. All of this happened solely as a result of a lack of regulatory harmonization around the timing of approvals. I want to be clear to all committee members, who may not be aware of the detail and policy and processes around establishment of crop protection product tolerance levels, that Canada is among the toughest regulators in the world when it comes to establishing safety margins and the lentil shipments in question were easily compliant with Canadian standards.

I would again emphasize that the issue here is that regulatory gaps cause shipments of safe, nutritious lentils to be treated as a food safety breach and rejected randomly and unpredictably. Rather than seeing a strengthening of alignment at the international level, we see more national approaches to food safety with some countries moving away from Codex to establish their own national systems. Recent examples include China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with a few of Canada's other key export markets signalling they may follow the same path. This is all making harmonization even harder.

We would suggest two positions for your committee to consider. The first is that PMRA's leadership to date on harmonization internationally must continue, and it must be fully resourced, including consideration that cost recovery fees be funnelled back into PMRA. Examples that Jan touched on of the progress that PMRA has made toward harmonization of science-based approaches include work within the NAFTA Technical Working Group on Pesticides and OECD global joint reviews.

The second is the need to find creative ways in the future to employ other competent authorities' risk assessments, in the interim, in cases where timing poses a problem and to ensure that at that point, if we go down the road or choose to go down the road of recognizing other risk assessments, that the PCP Act doesn't stand as a constraint at that time.

We favour a global approach to food safety standards. Clearly many countries including Canada will feel the need to establish separate national approaches, but we would also suggest that Canada and other countries must develop processes to allow for recognition of standards that have been established by equivalent competent authorities. This will only be acceptable to the public if there's acknowledgement that the science-based risk assessment of another competent authority, such as the World Health Organization, provides adequate protection to the health of Canadians.

If at some point in the future Canada requests that its trading partners follow this approach, we can expect to be asked how Canada would react to a similar request. Would Canada be willing to recognize a World Health Organization-driven risk assessment or tolerance as an interim tolerance in a case where an MRL had not been established by Canadian regulators?

The challenge is clear. Adoption of new technology is the key to sustainable intensification of food production. Canada is a trading nation and needs to export. Regulatory gaps are putting trade at risk increasingly, and Canada needs to continue, and even strengthen, its leadership role in this area.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

That concludes our presentations. Now we're on to the questions and answers.

Mr. Rankin, go ahead, sir.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank everyone for their really helpful presentations and for coming today. I really appreciate it.

My first question is for Pierre Petelle, of CropLife Canada.

Sir, during your presentation you talked about transparency, and you said some groups are bogging down the PMRA. I've been told by some groups that access to documents that the PMRA uses to evaluate pesticides is problematic. The data evaluation records, for example, don't include the studies that were looked at to see whether the agency has accepted or not particular documents or whether independent scientific literature was consulted.

There seems to be, according to those I've spoken to, a real problem with transparency, yet you've asserted that some groups are bogging it down. I would like you to elaborate.

[Pierre Petelle]

In actual fact, what I also said was that some groups are not making use of the provisions in the act. In the act there is a provision to access all of that information in detail in a reading room. Obviously, confidential business information is removed, but anyone can request to go and look at all of that data in its rawest form, and if they have the understanding of the science, to come to their own conclusions as to whether or not PMRA did the assessment according to how they're supposed to. Those provisions are in the act, and very few people, as I understand it, have even made use of that reading room availability.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Right. The reading room is there, absolutely, and your point is well taken about confidential business information, and the declaration that you're not going to use information that's competitive has to be done, and we respect that. But the claim has been that they have access to what the industry submits, but not to what the PMRA itself looks at in the data evaluation records. That's really problematic. Have they looked at the pros and cons in the scientific literature, or have we focused only on what industry in a particular case has submitted?

There seems to be some dissonance as to whether or not transparency is a problem in this legislative regime.

[Pierre Petelle]

From our perspective, regulatory data is one thing. Regulatory data is what's required for your submission, and it's outlined very prescriptively by the PMRA in terms of which data are required to satisfy which elements of the review. Those are the data that our members provide as part of the registration. Any other studies—public studies, academia studies—that the PMRA looks at as part of, for example, a re-evaluation, are all looked at as part of their package.

Now, how they reference those in the final document is, I think, what you're getting at.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Right, the extent to which PMRA has even looked at that literature remains unknown. Have they simply looked at what industry has submitted? That's a gap in the transparency regime, if you will, that others assert to exist.

[Pierre Petelle]

But the act is very clear that any data pertaining to an active ingredient that is provided to the PMRA or that the PMRA is made aware of has to be part of the decision-making process. It may just be a procedural thing rather than a gap per se.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I know time is short, so I want to make sure I ask about the comment you made about the red tape reduction strategy. l was really quite surprised to hear CropLife Canada talk about that in the context of a review of the pesticide legislation.

Are you suggesting there are problems? Are you suggesting that somehow the red tape reduction strategy should apply to this health and science evidence-based regime? I wasn't clear where you were going with that.

[Pierre Petelle]

Just in broad strokes, we support the fact that things like the Regulatory Cooperation Council work, and in terms of the red tape reduction strategy, where regulations take into account the burden they're putting on industry, that this be taken into account.

But no, in terms of the current provisions of the act and the regulations, we're not asking for any specific reductions.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

My next question is to Mr. Kurbis of Pulse Canada. Thank you for your helpful remarks.

You mentioned that the cuts to the PMRA have put, as I think you said, international harmonization efforts at risk, if I have that right—

[Gord Kurbis]

That's correct.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

—and you elaborated with a really excellent example about glyphosate in lentils in the EU.

Is it your suggestion, then, that the government has inadequately funded the PMRA at the international level? What are you saying specifically about cost recovery? I don't understand that part of your submission.