You've asked the big question of the 21st century. How do you normalize science? How do you take all these different ideas and come to some conclusion?
There are a lot of processes. There isn't as much diversity in the scientific world as you might think. There's a strong central tendency to believe that so far, the technology as it is used has not generated differential risk in our food system. Remember, our food system isn't risk-free now. Most of the things that kill us have nothing to do with biotech.
That seems to be the norm, but the basic question that I think you're getting at is where you, as members of Parliament and the federal government, can play a role in normalizing and assisting us to understand this profusion of knowledge.
I'd make two points: one, I don't think you want to chase after every story in the newspaper, because the science is moving in fits and starts. Seldom is one new article going to change the general opinion on what science is about.
The second point is that I think the bureaucracy itself has a lot of capacity, but for the better part of 15 years it has not been part of normalizing the science in any substantive way. In the early days of biotech, Canada was very aggressive at the OECD. We normalized a lot of the science through consensus documents. We brought all that knowledge into a common platform so that people understood what it was about. I think we've devolved that responsibility to others. If we're going to be a player in the 21st century, we have to take some of that responsibility back in Canada.