Maybe I'm a little older than some, because my knowledge of the consultative mechanisms for biotech actually precede the days of CBAC. I was one of the members, in the early nineties, before anything was commercialized in Canada, of what was then called the National Biotechnology Advisory Committee. It then essentially morphed into the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee. I think that was put in place at that time by the minister because they saw these technologies coming. They recognized that there could be flashpoints with their introduction and that they needed to involve the public in consultations on this subject.
Certainly I remember the members of that committee, very much expert members--deans of medicine, universities, and those kinds of knowledgeable folks--recommending to the government back then that we'd better be very proactive in our consultations with stakeholders. And in fact that was put in place.
I also recall that back in those days it was hard to get anybody out to the meetings. When some of the stakeholders were called in, at the end of the day a group of them said to heck with it. It wasn't the industry. Others that maybe weren't so favourable to technology walked out of those stakeholder processes. They said that they would have nothing to do with them and that they thought they were biased and so on.
It then morphed into CBAC, which has dissolved.
There have been other consultative mechanisms over the years to tackle some of the thorny issues. One I would refer you to that I know we sat on for two or three years, because it was pretty painful, was the standard on labelling, under the Canadian General Standards Board, which we have today: the national standard of Canada voluntary labelling and advertising of foods that are and are not products of genetic engineering. It was quite a mouthful. The voluntary standard had to be informative, understandable, not false, not misleading, and verifiable.
So there have been consultations. It has always intrigued me that the public didn't engage to the degree that one might have thought they would until some many years later. If there's need for another consultative mechanism that can actually be meaningful and that can work, that certainly would be something I think we would consider. I mean, we've been involved in the past. When others walked away, we stayed at the table.