Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming here this morning. I apologize for my tardiness. The flight here from Ottawa this morning took a little bit longer than we expected, so I apologize to Dean Emes for missing his presentation. I look forward to reading it later on.
First of all, we've already beat up low-level presence. At every meeting we go to, everybody says low-level presence needs to be addressed. I think the minister understands that, and I think the Europeans are starting to understand that. I think there are minds smarter than mine that are going to decide what that low-level presence should be, but I understand that's something everybody has identified as something that needs to be worked on, on a global basis.
I'm kind of curious about a couple of things. First of all, it seems that a study on biotechnology always turns into a GMO study. That's unfortunate, because GMO, as Wayne said, is one tool in the tool box, yet we're going to see new technologies, like genomics and other ideas, coming forward, which could produce exactly the same traits you're getting through GMO. For example, I wonder what the response would be if we used genomics to make alfalfa Roundup resistant instead of a GMO. Would that be there?
In fact, there are some people in the ministry who are telling me that once some of the patents come off on the GMO side for Monsanto, the people who are opposed to GMOs will all of a sudden not have a problem with them, and that it's more of an anti-Monsanto trait than anything.
It's unfortunate that, as you said, Mr. Penner, that is a reality that you live in and have to deal with it.
Wayne touched on something that I think is important, which is the communications through the regulatory process. In Saskatoon, we saw how they did their cuts in the petri dish and took those through to get the traits, which was interesting. It seems to me that the regulatory system is very closed and controlled. Is that a fair comment? So before a new product even goes into commercialization, we've gone to the regulatory system in a very closed environment so that there's no threat of contamination from outside. Is that a fair comment?