Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Once again, thank you to the committee for the invitation to come before you.
I'll take a little bit of a different tack from my colleagues with regard to biotechnology. I'll talk about biotechnology in the context of food.
Undoubtedly, some of the early adopters of biotechnology were the food scientists and technologists. If you think about cheese and the production of beer and wine, those were early uses of biotechnology. In today's world, biotechnology in the food area relates to such things as nutraceuticals, which are biologically active compounds isolated from horticultural food commodities that have a potential health benefit, and functional foods, which are foods that have elevated levels of these bioactive compounds that, hopefully, will produce a health benefit.
As an example of the kinds of things we're working on in the food area right now, especially in Canada, where I think we're doing some cutting-edge research, we're looking at new ways of delivering salt. This is in light of the salt crisis that Canadians and the global community face in regard to salt and cardiovascular disease. In addition, we're doing some very cutting-edge research on trans fat substitutes. Again, this is an issue that has come before the public and is a global problem, as it relates to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
With regard to some of the things I've been charged with talking about by the committee, I'll talk about the regulatory framework. I'll say right from the get-go that an efficient and effective system is critical to successful commercialization and consumer confidence and acceptance. We've made great gains in Canada with regard to streamlining our regulatory system, especially with regard to clinical trial approval and product approval. However, there still are delays, and those delays result in lost opportunities and, probably, a lost competitive edge for Canadian companies entering the global market.
So what do we need? I guess we need enabling regulations that involve early and greater engagement of the whole stakeholder community, from the grower up to the consumer. They need to be involved right from the get-go in the projects and research being developed, not only at the university level but also in the industrial environment.
Part of our efficiency in the system now is a committee called the food regulatory advisory committee, a committee of Health Canada, of which I'm pleased to be a member. This is a broad stakeholder committee. Hopefully, through the input of that committee, we'll have an efficient and effective regulatory framework.
With regard to intellectual property, my colleague Gord Surgeoner talked about intellectual property and the return on investment. It's a critical factor to showing a return on investment. Whether it be through a grant program or through collaborative partnerships with university, government, and industry, or just a university-industry partnership, we need to show a return on that investment. As I said, one of the ways is intellectual property.
But there are some challenges with intellectual property. First of all, at the university level--the community I know best--most researchers are not interested in intellectual property; their passion is research. There are some very creative researchers, however, in university communities. The other challenge at a university is the general lack of recognition of the promotion and tenure procedures of intellectual property. So if a researcher does get a patent or a licensing agreement, his or her colleagues have a difficult time evaluating the worth of that patent or licence, as contrasted with a refereed scientific publication.
We also have non-uniform policies at universities with regard to intellectual property. At the University of Guelph, the intellectual property resides with the researcher, but a couple of years ago, the intellectual property resided with the university. There is no standard for intellectual property across Canada at universities, and this is something on which I think we need to work.
The other thing is that Canada has a wonderful small and medium enterprise community, and we need to be able to capture some of the innovative ideas at the SME level and support these ideas at the SME level. One of the ways we can do that is through university-industry-government collaboration. So we need to invest more in that aspect.
We also need to invest in what I would refer to as the “valley of death” gap, that area between a concept and a tangible product or a technology. We have wonderful ideas that occur at the bench, but a lot of them die at the bench because we don't have a mechanism to support that valley of death so that we can show utility of that good idea and bring it forward to an industry for utilization by the greater community.
What are some of the challenges of adopting new products and technologies by farmers and consumers?
I think this is a challenge with any new technology, whether it be biotechnology or an issue that we're dealing with right now, nanotechnology. We need greater transparency, and again I'll go back to the point of early engagement and input of growers and consumers in research from concept to the product and technology.
Again, as my colleague Gord Surgeoner identified, we need to identify the value proposition to the entire agrifood chain. We need to identify the benefits, but also the potential risks. Of course, a large part of this is that we need to develop effective communication and educational strategies in communicating this information.
Funding is the last topic I'll talk about. I think we need to get greater support--long-term, sustainable funding--for the agrifood nutrition and health community. It's interesting that agrifood nutrition and health does not appear on the federal S and T strategy list. We need to get it onto the S and T strategy list.
Part of that support for getting it onto the S and T list, or STIC priorities, is that we need to recognize that food can be one vehicle to promote wellness. As Gord has indicated, this would be a great avenue to reduce health care costs, which are burgeoning globally.
We need to get greater funding of the value chain from growers to consumers. Oftentimes we have segmented funding to various groups. We need to have integrative funding. We need to have greater support of the valley of death scenario, and to small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Finally, Mr. Chair, I'd like to make this comment. I am a scientific director of a research network called the Advanced Foods and Materials Network, which was part of the networks of centres of excellence program. We addressed some of the issues that I've discussed. Unfortunately, we were not successful in our renewal of the program and the network. Therefore, we need to look for alternative strategies, in light of this decision, to address the issues that I've talked about.
With that, Mr. Chair, I conclude my remarks.