Since your committee will be visiting various campuses next week, I simply wanted to point out that Agriculture Canada has excellent research institutes on wheat, among others. The institutes have been subsidized by Canadian taxpayers. A lot of research is being conducted at these institutes, such as the Université Laval in Quebec City. Unfortunately, over the years, this research has been decreasing in favour of companies like Monsanto, an American company, which have commercial interests in marketing GMOs rather than other products. However, there are already many other very interesting methods that do not require gene transfers into another plant. I strongly encourage you to meet with people from Agriculture Canada's research laboratories who are working on conventional wheat and who are getting very interesting results.
We should also look at genomics, which are indirectly related, but are present. We shouldn't put all our eggs into one basket, the gene transfer basket that, to tell the truth, is controversial from the consumers' point of view and represents only a minute part of genomics' benefits.