Agriculture Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'll call the meeting to order.

I believe we have a quorum here, and because we have five witnesses here today, I'd like to get started.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. We appreciate it. We're spending the next week on the road, so we wanted to make our time in Ottawa valuable before we go.

We're going to move to our first presenter, Mr. Schmitz, from the University of Florida, for ten minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Andrew Schmitz, Professor, Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida]

Thank you very much.

Do we have to speak into the mikes, or can we speak any way we want to?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

The mike is controlled, sir, from back here anyway. When it comes to a couple of our French members—Mr. Bellavance and Ms. Bonsant—you may want to get your interpretive stuff ready when it's their turn for questions.

[Dr. Andrew Schmitz]

Thanks for inviting me to come.

I've been an academic for over 40 years and I've spent my career at the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently at the University of Florida and also at the University of Saskatchewan. I've done extensive work in agricultural technological change, including work on hybrid corn and mechanized agriculture, especially mechanization in California. Also, I've done extensive work in some of the biotech areas.

I'm going to make the comment that I'm not paid to come here to give one side of any story. I find these days that so many consultants also partly give you the answer they want you to hear because they're paid for part of the answer. So I'm not paid by any Monsanto group or any Canadian Wheat Board or anybody in my testimony.

My points will be fairly clear. What I'm going to say is actually in a new book we just published at the University of Toronto. It's called Agricultural Policy, Agribusiness, and Rent-Seeking Behaviour. So in addition to agricultural policy, we also bring in sections on technological change, and also on genetically modified organisms in a chapter.

The literature on biotechnology has grown rapidly, and there are many studies now that have examined GMOs and other biotech products. One of the reasons that the results aren't necessarily consistent is that we sometimes do economics from a different perspective. I've always done economics from what we call “welfare economics”, which is a fancy way to do benefit-cost analysis. And this is a standard approach that's agreed to by most academic economists. I don't know about other fields, but I know it's accepted in economics, in which I have my degree, a PhD.

With that, I'm just going to make a couple of comments from our book and one of the papers we wrote. Actually, I'll leave with you a paper that's written for non-technical people on an overview of the biotech industry.

The first point we make in here is on this whole question about consumer acceptability, and this is where part of the debate comes in about what the impact of biotech is. My colleagues from the University of Saskatchewan—Peter Phillips testified in this group, and I know Peter very well, and apparently this gentleman is part of that group. His assessment is maybe somewhat different from one of his colleagues in economics, Richard Gray, and how he might actually conduct and do benefit-cost analysis for GMOs.

In addition, for example, Colin Carter was my student at the University of California, Davis. He seemed to be a strong supporter of GMO wheats, for example, and he comes out with a totally different conclusion about the benefits and costs of GMO wheats from what Richard Gray and Hartley Furtan do, from the University of Saskatchewan, in terms of the payoffs. Colin is very positive on GMO wheats. Hartley Furtan and Richard Gray and others are fairly negative on GMO wheats.

The big key issue here is consumer acceptability of GMOs. I'd have to agree with the point that it can't be all based on science, whether we're going to make profitability from GMOs. Science only plays a role, but you have to also bring in consumer acceptability for GMOs.

For example, in the wheat business at the present time, committees have evaluated different varieties of wheat. The eight different varieties of bread wheats are actually based on science. But so are the consumer acceptability attributes of wheat based on science. As a result, they have a formal way of actually determining what is consumer acceptability in addition to the scientific aspects of it. So wheat is a good example also about consumer acceptability.

Now, apparently Monsanto did a study, and I think Colin and other people were involved. They make this conclusion, and I think it's well known, that there are big payoff owes to GMO wheats. And we've done this consumer acceptability part of it, but my only question with that is if somebody else did the same study, I can guarantee you that I could show you a benefit-cost ratio of anywhere from 1.0 to 6.0, depending on what assumptions I'm going to make about consumer acceptability.

We could use one of our international trade models, like we do on wheat and other grains, to actually show that. Then it comes back to this question of who did the study, where did they get the numbers from, and who did they talk to. That's the same question as.... At the present time we're evaluating the oil spill in the gulf and we're doing this work on the costs of the oil spill. But the same argument would apply to this sort of thing when you get into willingness-to-pay measures of consumer acceptability from GMO products.

This is the last point I make here in this first paper on consumer acceptability. I've been involved in several lawsuits related to biotechnology and not related to biotechnology. But this issue comes up also with respect to the impact of a power line crossing somebody's property or the transportation of nuclear equipment, etc., in the country.

What happens is the judges always rule that it isn't science that determines whether the electric power lines are necessarily harmful for you living there, it's consumer perception of what determines the damages from the power line. So the whole first part of this paper is devoted to this debate on consumer acceptability.

Then we actually discuss in here the whole notion of producer profitability. Now, it's always been stated that technological change, whether it's hybrid corn, whether it's due to new canola varieties, etc., always results in these huge benefits to producers. That is not true. I can show you models where I can show a negative impact on producers, not a positive impact to producers. That's not being negative or a supporter or non-supporter of the GMOs. It's also part of the market and the dynamics of economics. So it's difficult to generalize.

Now, I enjoyed Peter Phillips' excellent presentation on canola, but I have the problem of trying to generalize from canola across all commodities. For example, canola is specific to the fact that it generated huge human benefits, and I think even his estimates or your estimates might even be low from the standpoint of the benefits from GMOs. Richard Gray and others did some studies on the health impact of the new canola varieties. So that case is very clear.

But one of the cases you likely ask, then, is why does Europe accept oils of a GMO quality and they won't accept other products necessarily from GMO quality? But as he knows from biotechnology, it's the nature of your consuming in wheat, etc., so you'd be consuming the trait directly; but with oil you don't, because it's a residual protein. So that's a huge issue there in terms of why one commodity might be accepted and why another commodity won't be accepted. So we spend most of the time debating this question about producer acceptability.

Then the other point we raise in here is this StarLink case. I was involved as an expert witness against Aventis on the U.S. StarLink case. In that particular case, I guess the Greenpeace movement or someone else discovered the StarLink gene in Taco Bell. The corn growers sued Aventis for releasing a GMO corn that wasn't really acceptable or licensed. What we found in this case and what you really have to recognize is sometimes the transaction costs, the segregation cost, when you introduce GMO varieties and mix it with non-GMOs can be huge. That's especially true when these countries have zero tolerance for GMO products.

Japan, at the moment, is a large buyer of Canadian wheat. I'll guarantee you that Japan would never buy GMO wheat from Canada. That's well stated by them, and it's also well stated in some studies we reference in our book that have studied consumer acceptability in Japan, India, and other countries. Other countries in the world likely will accept GMO wheats, etc., but Japan certainly won't.

So when the StarLink corn got mingled in with the other commodities, what happened was the Japanese were involved too. So the Japanese then requested that a testing be done not only in the U.S. about StarLink corn, but also they tested loads in Japan and they turned down huge amounts of corn actually going into that market. They have zero tolerance, and when you have zero tolerance on a commodity it's going to be very costly to keep these markets segmented so that you don't end up with GMO corn and non-GMO corn all mixed together--or GMO wheats, or whatever commodity you're talking about.

I can go on with a whole host of comments. My comment is that I think products have to be treated separately when you talk about GMOs. And I think you have to engage in a process where in fact you have to be necessarily almost guaranteed that you have an end product that's going to be consumer-accepted.

To have that, you also have to tell me what exactly you're breeding in a GMO trait to even do a study on consumer acceptability. You just can't go and ask a buyer in Japan and say, “Do you accept GMOs or not?” You have to be much more specific of what this product is and what you're actually trying to do with it.

I'm over ten minutes. Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Schmitz; you weren't that far over.

We now move to Mr. Nault and Mr. Darier. Mr. Darier is the Quebec representative from Greenpeace, and Mr. Nault is just a representative—I didn't mean “just” a representative, Mr. Nault.

You have ten minutes between you, please.

Thank you.

[André Nault, Representative, Réseau québécois contre les organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM)]

I am a representative of the Réseau québécois contre les OGM. Greenpeace and the AmiEs de la Terre de l'Estrie form a team. We will explain this to you later.

[Éric Darier, Quebec representative, Greenpeace, Réseau québécois contre les organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM)]

First, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to appear.

Before we start, I would like to introduce our delegation from the Réseau québécois contre les OGM. You've already met Mr. Nault, from the AmiEs de la Terre de l'Estrie. I remind you that you should have a written copy of our brief. My presentation today will be slightly different, so that I don't go over our 10 minutes.

The purpose of our network is to bring all GMO opponent groups together into a strong network that works together to address certain issues and, in particular, facilitate the exchange of information and ideas for a GMO-free future.

We represent some 20 organizations working mainly in the fields of the environment, consumer rights, agriculture and health; a full listing is available on our website. We also work very closely with the Canadian Biology Action Network.

Our network is here today to contribute to your study on agricultural technologies. Our oral presentation will focus on at least one element, that is, the 2001 report by the Royal Society of Canada. We hope that your campus visits next week will be very fruitful. We also hope that, as the public, we will have access to the account of these meetings, so that we can see what you are studying and what people have to say.

The reason I want to focus on the Royal Society of Canada report is because today, or very soon, is a historic date, the 10th anniversary of the 2001 Royal Society of Canada report, which is titled “Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada.” You can have a look at the copy I have brought with me. The French version is about 280 pages long. I will provide you with some background. The report was commissioned by the federal government and was drafted by 14 “arms-length” experts who were not members of our network, but rather scientific experts from the whole academic community. The report lists 58 recommendations. As the title suggests, the report really focuses on precaution.

Reading the 58 recommendations is out of the question, but I would like to at least read a few, to add to the comments of my predecessor:

7.1 The Panel recommends that approval of new transgenic organisms for environmental release, and for use as food or feed, should be based on rigorous scientific assessment of their potential for causing harm to the environment or to human health. Such testing should replace the current regulatory reliance on “substantial equivalence” as a decision threshold. 7.2 The Panel recommends that the design and execution of the testing regimes of new transgenic organisms should be conducted in open consultation with the expert scientific community. 7.3 The Panel recommends that analysis of the outcomes of all tests on new transgenic organisms should be monitored by an appropriately configured panel of “arms-length” experts from all sectors, who report their decisions and rationale in a public forum. 8.1 The Panel recommends the precautionary regulatory assumption that, in general, new technologies should not be presumed safe unless there is reliable scientific basis for considering them safe. The Panel rejected the use of “substantial equivalence” as a decision threshold to exempt new GM products from rigorous safety assessments on the basis of superficial similarities because such as regulatory procedure is not a precautionary assignment of the burden of proof. 8.2 The Panel recommends that the primary burden of proof be upon those who would deploy food biotechnology products to carry out the full range of tests necessary to demonstrate reliably that they do not pose unacceptable risks. 8.3 The Panel recommends that, where there are scientifically reasonable theoretical or empirical grounds establishing a prima facie case for the possibility of serious harms to human health, animal health or the environment, the fact that the best available test data are unable to establish with high confidence the existence or level of the risk should not be taken as a reason for withholding regulatory restraint on the product. 8.4 As a precautionary measure, the Panel recommends that the prospect of serious risks to human health, of extensive, irremediable disruptions to the natural ecosystems, or of serious diminution of biodiversity, demand that the best scientific methods be employed to reduce the uncertainties with respect to these risks. Approval of products with these potentially serious risks should await the reduction of scientific uncertainty to minimum levels.

There are 58 recommendations, so I will stop here. I am not going to bombard you with the recommendations made by the Royal Society of Canada, which, I remind you, is the highest scientific authority in Canada. It does have a certain credibility in this field.

Unfortunately, the recommendations set out in the Royal Society of Canada report were mostly ignored by the government. The government simply threw the report away.

In 2004, three years after the report was submitted, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development published a Canadian Food Inspection Agency audit, which confirmed and gave more details on what the Royal Society of Canada report covered three years earlier.

Almost nothing has changed since 2001. What's worse is that GM plants with multiple gene insertions, such as StarLink corn, have been authorized without a specific assessment. GM animals, especially the GM pig, are on a fast track to becoming authorized. GM salmon could be marketed soon.

Canada has still not ratified the United Nations Biosafety Protocol, while 160 countries have done so. Consumers are still waiting for the mandatory GMO labelling that some 40 countries have already adopted.

The approval of GM alfalfa will lead to a crisis, which I hope you are aware of.

So, what can your committee do? We have formulated five basic recommendations.

First, your committee should encourage all MPs to vote in favour of Bill C-474. The bill will not solve all of our problems, but it will at least enable us to protect farmers from the economic impact of a poor biotechnology management policy.

Second—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Monsieur Darier, we're here about biotech. Bill C-474 is--

[Éric Darier]

Absolutely. Bill C-474 is about an economic study conducted before the authorization of GMOs.

Second, the committee should ask the government to issue a report similar to the one issued in 2001 by the Royal Society of Canada to see where we are 10 years on. This would be an interesting study to conduct, since we are talking about science.

Third, a moratorium should be imposed immediately on GM alfalfa in order to avoid market turmoil and irreversible damage.

Four, we recommend that MPs, regardless of their party, adopt mandatory GMO labelling, which almost 90% of consumers support. That's a fact.

Last, Canada must finally ratify the biosafety protocol in order to catch up to the international community.

I would like to conclude my presentation by distributing two documents. The first is an academic article by Peter Andrée about regulations on GM foods. This article basically confirms that the Royal Society of Canada report has been generally ignored. I will leave one copy for the committee members. I also have a copy of the video “The World According to Monsanto,” which gives an overview of the legislative context within which GMOs are authorized here and abroad. Committee members can watch the video if they like.

Thank you.

[André Nault]

I would like to take our last minute to point something out. The previous speaker talked about science. When science—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Please be brief; your time is up.

[André Nault]

Okay.

When science becomes an important element in justifying GMOs, it must not be based on a substantial equivalence marketing principle. GMOs have been broadly accepted across America on the strength of the substantial equivalence principle, but this is not a scientific principle.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Anything that comes before the committee has to be in both official languages, so providing that's done, you can submit that.

Next we have Mr. Agblor, director of research for the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers.

You have ten minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Kofi Agblor, Director of Research, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers]

I would like to apologize to you, Chair, if you see me leaving before the time is up. I've never done this, and I booked my return flight to Saskatoon to get me home on time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay. We'll understand that.

[Dr. Kofi Agblor]

In a generation, Canada has gone from zero in the production of pulses other than beans to being the world's leading producer, not only in the production but also in the export of pulses. This year we produced about 4.5 million metric tonnes in Saskatchewan alone. That would be mainly peas and lentils. Last year, $2.2 billion worth of pulses were exported from Canada, of which $1.8 billion came from our province.

Most of this success has been possible because of the tripartite group--made up of the University of Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Agriculture of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers--funding research at the university. The growers have commercial rights to all the varieties that are developed at the university, so we determine whether we will release a variety to the growers. We have that right. Because the university is a public institution, they were able to negotiate those exclusive rights to us. In return, we put back funding into the program from a levy of 1% that our growers pay. If you consider other crops, I'm sure those growers are paying more than 1% for the development of technology.

We feel that research and development is the greatest asset we have. It has made a return of $20 for every dollar that the growers have put in. In genetics, it is $28 in return for every one.

We do not have GMOs in pulses at this time, because we feel that our markets do not want them. The signal we get from the market is that they are not interested in a GMO pulse. We've always said, and I've always said, that if India releases a GMO chickpea, we will work on a GMO pea.

Biotechnology is a tool, and it should only be used if it's the most appropriate tool to give you what you need. It's not something that you apply.... It's like plumbing; you don't plumb every part of your house, right? Biotechnology is a tool.

For us, with the kinds of threats we face, most of those threats cannot be addressed by GMOs. Disease resistance is not a trait that pays a lot of money. A chemical firm will not develop disease-resistant strains because then they won't sell you the fungicide to spray. That's why we are concerned with declining resources from the public side of funding research and development. Not only that, but we are concerned that when those resources are available, we'll target them to a particular part of science--applied, pre-commercial.

We believe that the way into the future is to define your problem, do your needs assessment, identify the gaps, and provide resources to develop the knowledge and technologies to address those gaps. It does not matter the spectrum of science, whether it's fundamental, whether it's basic, whether it's applied; if that is pertinent to the solution, you should do that.

We've always felt also that plants with novel traits regulations in Canada are not friendly to smaller crops. It could cost you up to $200,000 to demonstrate a trait for feed use only. If you put it as a food use, it escalates. If you look at the span of crops we have in Canada, if you take the world's top ten by size, by tonnage, wheat might be the only crop in Canada that would make that list. It tells you, then, that industry investment in crops is always by the size you sell. Take the number of seeds, multiply that by the acres, and make your money, or sell a chemical, times the number of acres, and make your money.

We in this country have always based our productivity on the quality. We still have an environment in the west of 120 days frost-free, and we have to design our genetics to meet that.

We think that plants with novel traits, the way they are now, are certainly not very conducive to that and should be looked at again. The public helps bring new traits into the market.

We think that into the future, biotic stresses are going to be key. As the climate changes or the variability in the weather becomes unpredictable, the impact on productivity will be quite harsh, and we will need all the genetics.

What we see in the future is genomics. We believe that understanding a plant's genome and knowing the genes that are in there will give our breeders the tools they need to bring new traits into the marketplace. Some of those traits may come by way of transgenics, but by and large most of my breeders have told me that with genomics they think they can get what they want in pulse crops without GMOs. That's what they have said. But we also think that the public has not responded to the funding of genomics to the extent that other countries have. Look at the United States. It has determined crops as strategic and at the federal level has gone ahead and sequenced.

Sequencing is only one part of the equation. It's very cheap now. The right technologies that can sequence a genome are under $50,000. When you get those millions of reads, making sense of that, bringing that down to a level breeders can use, is where it is at. We are investing in the National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute to put a position in place in bioinformatics to get that kind of translation for our breeders. We think that should have been done by the public.

In conclusion, we view GMOs as a tool that we will only apply when the market is right. We have our signals from the market on an ongoing basis. It's the market that will determine that. A regulatory approach may be a pre-emptive strike that will serve no purpose. I think that every industry in Canada, be it wheat or canola or pulses, has groups that are looking out at the marketplace. And if the signal is that we will take it, I'm sure they will go ahead and develop a technology for it.

We feel strongly, though, that genomics is the way to go in Canada. We have fairly small crops, outside of wheat and canola. There isn't a lot of industry investment on the private sector side for most of our crops. The public should step up, invest in genomics, and let our breeders have the tools they need to develop the traits on the genetic side that will cope with our future climate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Agblor.

Now we'll move to Mr. Richard Gold, a professor at McGill University. You have ten minutes or less, please.

[Richard Gold, Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you.

I'll be making my comments in English.

However, do not hesitate to ask me questions in French.

Thank you for inviting me here today. I'm talking on a slightly different issue from what some of my colleagues have, although it connects up in several ways.

I'm a professor in the faculty of law at McGill University, where I specialize in intellectual property: chiefly patents, innovation, and biotechnology.

Just for the record, all of my funding comes from public sources, mostly grants or governmental institutions. I've provided advice to Health Canada, Industry Canada, Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Health Organization, UNITAID, and the OECD.

I was also an expert on the Council of Canadian Academies' report on nanotechnology, which touched on some of the issues of precaution. In fact, the chair of the royal commission study, Conrad Brunk, was one of the committee members.

My goal here is simply to help the committee. I'll make a few remarks, but I'm open to questions, particularly related to patents and innovation. I have circulated a background document that should have been translated. I won't be referring to it directly, but it gives some background ideas.

First, I'm going to concentrate on patent law. The first thing to say is that Canadian patent law in the area of agricultural biotechnology is for all intents and purposes equivalent to that of our neighbours in the south and in Europe. There are technical differences, but the scope of patent law protects plants and animals, even though the patent law doesn't technically apply to them. It still provides the same amount of coverage.

The issue I want to talk about is uncertainty. I want to quote from Justice Binnie in a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada from 2000, in the matter of Free World Trust and Électro Santé. He said, “There is a high economic cost attached to uncertainty and it is the proper policy of patent law to keep it to a minimum”. So it's on those issues that I would like to speak.

I am not going to be advocating for or against particular biotechnologies. I think most of us agree that there are some biotechnologies, including genetically modified organisms, that are very helpful. I would think of plant-derived vaccines, which provide vaccine production at much lower cost and are much more stable and able to be transported in high-heat areas. And there are other technologies that we would mostly agree should not be pursued. Canada has decided with respect to BST and genetically modified wheat that we do not want to go forward with these technologies.

I'm taking it for granted that some biotechnologies are wanted and others are not, and what we need is a regulatory, including patent, regime that provides certainty so that we get the investments that give us the products we want. We also have laws that protect those who may be harmed by undesired uses of these crops. If we don't do these things, we will have under-investment by industry in the crops we want and under-compensation for those suffering harm.

There are a variety of uncertainties in patent law. I want to note that the uncertainties in patent law may pale in comparison to some of the uncertainties in regulations—the high cost of regulation, the absence of regulation with respect to genetically modified animals, and so on. But in respect of patent law, one of the risks and uncertainties I want to talk about is patent quality.

In the United States there were studies conducted showing that almost half of the patents that actually go to court have been ruled invalid, and I don't think we can say that Canadian patents are any better. In fact, they may be of lower quality, especially in areas of high technology such as biotechnology. So one worry is whether a patent is valid or not. That's a risk both for those who hold the patents and for those who might want to do research in the area covered by the patent.

This is a problem inherent in the patent system. One of the ways people have suggested to fix it is to invest more in the patent office, which Canada has done. Another way is to introduce an opposition procedure within the patent office so that those who wish to challenge a patent can do so. Europe has such a scheme, and the United States for the last few years has at least been debating it. Canada is significantly behind.

Another issue is freedom to operate. Until recently, only a few companies had the ability to introduce products on the market. One of the issues in biotech is that each generation of product sits on a platform of all previous innovations, and that means you need access to the patents that other companies have. For a long time this has been an issue, since only a few companies had enough financial ability to either license the technology in or take the risk that they would be sued. This would limit access to the market and innovation.

More recently, we have seen an increase in cross-licensing, so that more people can introduce products. We would like to see that continued in order to ensure that people are not put at unjust risk. We can do so through government policies that encourage cross-licensing, as well as better enforcement of our competition laws in fields such as this.

Another issue relates to the calculation of damages. This has been particularly important in the area of agriculture biotechnology. If a patent holder holds a patent over a crop over which there sits a patent, the calculation of damages in Canada is very uncertain. The courts, both the Supreme Court and the federal courts, have given us contradictory rules about how to calculate those damages. This could either lead to overcompensation--that is, the patent holder gets too much--or to undercompensation: that is, it's worth violating the patent because there will not be enough return. Clarifying the rules helps both farmers know what their risk is and the companies determine how much to invest.

Further, the entire area of agriculture biotechnology as well as areas such as nanotechnology or health biotechnologies raise an issue that the courts are the final determiners of the validity of a patent. Most judges do their best in trying to understand the science underlying biotechnology, but they are not trained. Most of them went into law because they didn't like science. While they do their best, if you read these cases you realize that there are sometimes misunderstandings and misapplication of scientific principles.

This is an issue that is inherent in any patent system. But again, an opposition process--which allows more disputes to take place within a patent office, which has greater expertise--could be beneficial.

I'm happy to answer any questions on patent law, but I will just end on that note.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gold.

We now move into questioning.

Just as a reminder to our members, we have a little bit of business we need to do prior to our travel. We need 10 or 15 minutes at the end of the meeting. An issue has come up and we'll have to go in camera.

Anyway, Mr. Valeriote, for seven minutes.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

First of all, I want to thank all of you for appearing before the committee.

We've had a rather difficult journey in having this discussion. The idea is to unveil the issue, unveil the industry, so that a better understanding of the issue by the public could somehow be achieved. I'm glad you're participating in it.

Before we rose in December, a group came before us on the issue and described it as being two solitudes, one pro and one anti-GMO. I felt good leaving that meeting, because a number of people from each side had actually come to kind of an understanding that maybe there is a forum that could be created in which those for and against could come together and actually help us look at the issues, and maybe come up with some regulations that might protect biodiversity and the interests of each of them. That forum existed, I think, in the late nineties, then kind of diminished in the early 2000s, and now they don't meet at all.

I'd like to hear from you, Éric, on that, and I'd like to hear maybe from you, Andrew, or anyone else who would have a comment on the value of re-establishing that forum. Clearly, we're not able in a committee to sit around and come up with the actual regulations that are needed, and come up with solutions.

Can I hear from you, Éric, and then someone else?

[Éric Darier]

Thank you for you question, which is very interesting and relevant.

As we said in our presentation, most of the 58 recommendations in the Royal Society of Canada report are very specific with regard to GMO regulations and the authorization of GMOs. It would be very interesting to go over these 58 recommendations in order to really identify the most relevant elements.

In 2001, when the Royal Society of Canada report was published, our group reacted to it very positively. We thought that a dialogue was finally beginning. The Canadian government is always saying that it relies on the science-based approach. I often sit in on discussions held by the United Nations on biodiversity and on the biosafety protocol. The Canadian delegation is always talking about the science-based approach at those meetings. This approach is actually included in the Royal Society of Canada report. We should revert to this approach in order to truly have a solid scientific basis.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I'm going to ask you to be brief, because I do want others to have an opportunity--

[Éric Darier]

Absolutely. I am going to stop here.

[André Nault]

I would like to add something very quickly. It has been pointed out that science is important, and we also feel that science is important. As soon the government starts using science and not marketing as its basis, we will get involved.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay. Very good.

Andrew.