Agriculture Committee on June 2nd, 2010

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Chair, that's not a point of order, and I want to move on with my questioning--

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

His point is unaccountable.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Just cut him off, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

That's not a point of order.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Maybe Mr. Easter can prepare my opening comments next time, Chair. I'm within my rights to make an opening statement.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Put your comments on tape and we can listen to them without you here. We hear them every day.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I can see that Mr. Easter and the Liberals are very defensive about the position they took. I think it's because they agree with us.

Chair, I do have some questions. I'd like to ask Mr. Atamanenko, first of all, what he means by genetically engineered seed. Can you define that term for us?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

I have my definitions, but if I may, I'd like to comment on a couple of things you mentioned.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, I have a whole series of questions.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Okay. I'll be very quick.

With regard to the Liberals, they voted to have a democratic debate here, as did the Bloc and as did we. I think it's really healthy for us.

With regard to science, I'll say this once again. It's very hard for us to question the science of other countries. There are a number of countries that have banned GMOs. Is it our duty to introduce a new GMO organism and then try to—I don't know—blackmail them into accepting it?

France has banned Monsanto 810 corn because of health reasons. What do we do here?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Alex, can you move on? Can you define genetically engineered seed for me?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Yes, okay. Do you mean GE or GM?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Well, that was my next question. What is concerned in your bill?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

My bill concerns genetically engineered organisms. For genetically engineered seed:

An organism is considered genetically engineered if it was modified using techniques that permit the direct transfer or removal of genes in that organism. Such techniques are also called recombinant DNA or rDNA techniques.

This is a CFIA definition.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

I want to ask you a few questions about the market analysis.

Your bill doesn't specify who is going to do the market analysis. Can you quickly elaborate on this for me? Is it going to be government? Is it going to be industry? Who's doing the market analysis?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

As I mentioned earlier, my intention is to have us, as a committee, come up with some really hard and fast recommendations, but it would ultimately be the government, I would hope, in consultation with industry.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

The second thing is, there's a point of contention. The industry is not of one mind on this. Who's going to make the call on this? Who's going to make the final decision?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

I firmly believe it's our duty as parliamentarians who represent Canadians, and farmers, in this case, to make decisions in their best interests, even if they may go against a giant multinational that would deem otherwise.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Are you worried this might become a politicized process?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

It shouldn't be, if it's done fairly and if the cards are on the table. Remember that industry wants to make money too.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

All right. But how do you ensure that it doesn't become politicized? The eyes of the world will be watching. They'll want to know, is it based on politics, is it based on finances? What's the difference between the two?

What about this grey area? How are we going to do that?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

We have to emphasize that this is based on economics. It's based on economics and on the pocketbook of the farmer. We want to make sure that before we do anything to interfere with his or her ability to make a living, we have a mechanism in place.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, but it's not categorical, Alex. It's not categorical and it's very hard to project.

The canola story is a tremendous success story for Canadian agriculture. Back in the 1970s, there was no way one could have predicted potential harm to the market or, more importantly, success in the market.

I don't understand how we're going to watch the pocketbooks of the farmers. That's great, but practically speaking, how is it going to be evaluated with any degree of certainty, especially when you look at some of our success stories?

Soy is another one. It's a tremendous success story.

Yet all this would be thrown out the window because we're not able to accurately project what the positive or negative impact would be on the market. How are you going to answer that?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

I think the first thing is that we have a number of success stories. Some are GM or GE and some are not. There are soy and canola.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Canola is huge. It contributes $14 billion to the Canadian economy.