Agriculture committee  Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Dennis Prouse, and I am the vice president of government affairs for CropLife Canada. With me is my colleague, Ian Affleck, vice president, biotechnology. CropLife Canada represents the Canadian manufacturers, developers and distributors of pest control and modern plant breeding products.

Finance committee  Yes, you did.

Finance committee  Yes. What we're looking for is speed and predictability, because that is what investors are looking for. The predictability part is important too.

Finance committee  You can't have a system that's erratic. Without that predictability, they'll go elsewhere.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  You referenced that external advisory committee on regulatory competitiveness. I saw that they were appointed and that, in fact, there was an agriculture leader placed on that committee. We thought that was a really positive development. There has been some good progress. It started with Barton, went to the agri-food economic strategy table, went to the fall economic statement and went to the budget.

Finance committee  As I mentioned in my testimony, gene editing is.... There are going to be several examples like this coming, which is why we are beseeching CFIA to have clear, predictable rules on products with gene editing.

Finance committee  In this particular case, it's CFIA and its rules about seeds with novel traits, because it is the one that ultimately holds the key for approvals. As I say, this is just one example. There are potentially many more coming down the pike in the next few years, which is why it's so critical for their mandate to receive some clarity from government.

Finance committee  It's Sevita. They may even be in your riding; I'll need to check.

Finance committee  Yes. We grow a great deal of soy in Canada.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes, it would have. The cherry on top, the added bonus, is that it had a healthier oil profile. That's the great thing about ag innovation. It's developing healthier strains.

Finance committee  No, they weren't able to determine whether this was a seed with a novel trait. All seeds with a novel trait have to go through the approval process. It's worth keeping in mind that nowhere else in the world was there a regulatory body that thought this needed to go through an approval process.

Finance committee  I don't think they waited to get an answer. They simply moved the operation to the U.S. because there was a market opportunity in Japan. These things tend to move quickly.

Finance committee  Yes. For us, it's an example of what is potentially coming down the road on gene editing.