Thanks.
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I'm Jill Maase, vice-president of plant biotechnology, government and public affairs, for CropLife Canada. With me is my colleague, Peter MacLeod, vice-president of crop protection chemistry.
We certainly appreciate the opportunity to appear before the standing committee today as you deliberate on the impact of input costs on farmers nationwide.
CropLife Canada is the association representing the developers, manufacturers, and distributors of plant science technology, pesticides and plant biotechnology. Our members aim to be at the leading edge of agricultural innovation by providing valuable inputs to our farmer customers, who in turn, through agriculture, are providing solutions to society's needs and challenges. Food, feed, fuel, industrial products, environmental solutions, and even pharmaceutical products can all be produced from plants, and inputs are needed to grow these innovations and commodities. The committee is very familiar with the benefits that biofuels are bringing to Canada. Our members deliver the grains and oilseeds that are feedstock for today's ethanol and biodiesel production.
Here are some other examples of where plant science technology is taking agriculture today: high-yield, high-starch corn for biofuels; insect-resistant corn; herbicide-resistant soybeans and canola, and no-till agriculture, enabling more efficient weed management and reduced fuel use overall; reduced risk pesticides, ideally suited for integrated pest management; and there are others.
Our products are delivering real value to farmers, the environment, and consumers. For this current study, the standing committee has heard a great deal already from witnesses, such as the PMRA and grower organizations, about the own-use import program and the new grower-requested own-use program taking its place.
CropLife Canada, and my colleague Peter MacLeod, were active in this and participated in the own-use import task force, and we would like to offer some comments on what led up to the task force and how it came up with its final consensus recommendations.
Let's look at the history of the issue. The own-use import program was first conceived as a price discipline mechanism at a time when record low farm income was the norm and farmers were understandably seeking the lowest input cost possible. Many pricing studies were conducted, and some products were cheaper in Canada and some were cheaper in the U.S.
From the start of OUI in 1993 to 2004, only one product was approved for importation through OUI. In 2004 the PMRA allowed intermediaries or agents to act on behalf of farmers on the basis of the chemical equivalency of the product with one registered in Canada. In 2005 permits for over 5.7 million litres of unregistered pesticide were issued and the pesticide imported, and the farmer own-use importation program was now on a commercial scale.
With the program's growth, concerns were raised by a number of stakeholders, including farm groups, our own manufacturers, dealers, environmental NGOs, provincial governments, and grain merchants.
The OUI task force was convened by Health Canada in November 2005 to address these concerns, including: the potential for trade disruption through the use of unregistered pesticides on commodity crops being exported; safety, including being offside with environmental farm plans and other safety measures; farmers having to bear all the liability for the performance of the imported product; an investment chill and the potential to increase the technology gap, something we hear a lot about from farmers; and intermediaries not bearing any Canadian registration costs or responsibility.
The end result was that a permit-based system through OUI overtakes the registration-based system. Our members wondered, which way was it going to be? Why jump through the registration hoops when others get around them?
The OUI task force quickly realized that the issues facing farmers moved well beyond price discipline mechanisms, and those issues included access to the latest technology at the same time as U.S. competitors and the role of regulatory harmonization in achieving this goal; how to fill the technology gap with a greater number of minor-use products; environmental stewardship and the management of containers; intellectual property protection and how it supports new technology development; and improved access to generic products.
CropLife Canada supported the task force consensus because it took the larger perspective of long-term needs of both farmers and the industry. As the standing committee knows, all members of the OUI task force signed on, including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, other farm groups including Pulse Canada, the Farmers of North America, as well as our industry and government representatives.
This makes it a very powerful document of consensus, delivering recommendations on the following: to initiate a pilot GROU program, where growers identified 12 potential candidate products, and this was done in 2007; access to OUI was continued during the pilot program; stewardship programs, including container management, would be worked out through discussions with our CropLife Canada members, Agriculture Canada, and provincial government representatives; the PMRA would move forward with an improved generic product registration system; and price monitoring would continue by Agriculture Canada.
So where are we today with this?
Now we have the only product approved from the OUI program. It's now registered as a generic product in Canada and is also a candidate for the GROU program for this year. We have some seven products already approved for GROU, as well as another half a dozen under consideration for this year. We have improvements to the generic product registration system now in force. We have CropLife Canada members embracing North American registrations for many new pesticide registrations, and we have a minor-use pesticide program that is bringing in more minor-use products. We have our industry's commitment to provide the necessary data, which is both detailed and expensive to compile, for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency to assess GROU applications and our commitment to collect those containers from farmers. Our industry even supported the extension of the current OUI program until GROU was up and running.
This is, by any measure, tremendous success, in providing growers access to the products they need, expanding the potential for importation of products, and maintaining the health, safety, and environmental protections that Canadians expect. But part and parcel of this success is the implementation of GROU and the winding down of OUI. By having the two programs exist in tandem, there's little incentive for our members to participate in providing the information needed to approve GROU candidate products, to financially support a container stewardship program, and to continue to develop new products for North American registration under joint reviews or with a NAFTA label.
In closing, CropLife Canada members are committed to delivering the best technology to Canadian farmers, and we strongly urge the committee to support the implementation of the GROU program for this coming season and evaluate its success based on the outcome following this season. With the season behind us, farmers and parliamentarians alike will have a better sense of the value of GROU.
Thank you.