Agriculture committee  Yes, I think from the Europeans' point of view, the key issue is the import side of things, because they're very reliant on imported products from around the world. They're importing a great amount of soybean meal and so on from South America into the European market. They've act

Agriculture committee  Part of the reason LLP is important is that internationally there is a lack of coordination of overall risk assessments and approvals. Typically, if a new canola product is available from one of the seed development companies, it will apply to all our major markets at the same ti

Agriculture committee  Very few—

Agriculture committee  I wouldn't even hazard a guess. I said in my presentation that 97.5% of the canola grown in Canada is a product of biotechnology now, so producers have elected—they have decided that this is a product that really works to their advantage and they've really adopted it in Canada.

Agriculture committee  I think we are working very hard at trying to get an international alliance on this, or an international acceptance on this. So in addition to the Government of Canada moving forward with a Canadian policy, they've also shown real leadership internationally in bringing together c

Agriculture committee  Sir, we share a need to be sure that we're respecting the requirements of our export market. In the canola industry we're very heavily dependent on access to export markets that have these zero tolerance policies. We're as committed as anybody to ensuring that we can meet the req

Agriculture committee  I'd agree with Dr. Smyth. The first test is whether the product has been safety assessed in the market. To qualify as an LLP, it would have to meet that test first. Second, a risk assessment ensures that your regulators are able to demonstrate, based on the data that they have, f

Agriculture committee  At the Canola Council, our view is that we have labelling in place in Canada for health and safety and for nutrition. Those are the criteria upon which the labelling process is based. If you go beyond that to other issues then I guess the question is what are those issues and wha

Agriculture committee  Mr. Lemieux, first of all, in terms of your opening comments, it is true that with these tolerance levels—no matter what issue you're talking about, whether it's genetic modification or it's some kind of foreign material and other seeds and that sort of thing in the grain-handlin

Agriculture committee  Mr. Allen, could I quickly add to that?

Agriculture committee  I was just going to add that on LLP I think with consumers the issue is if there's a trade disruption. Dr. Smyth talked about the flax going to Europe. Well, there were consumers who relied on the product that was going in there, and with that trade disruption resulting from this

Agriculture committee  Sure. That would be fine. Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting the Canola Council of Canada to speak today about low-level presence. The Canola Council is a value chain organization representing the entire canola sector in Canada, which includes 43,000 canola grow

Agriculture committee  That's an example of where public sector research is more appropriate.

Agriculture committee  I would say that again we're looking to play a really key and leading role internationally in trade discussions and in discussions around science-based policies and regulations. It's not a weakness on our part, but it's something we need to improve in terms of the international e

Agriculture committee  I would just add, as Rex said, the point about communications. In terms of research and innovation investment, there are things the private sector does really well and there are things the public sector can do really well. In canola, there has been a large investment by the pri