Agriculture Committee on Feb. 26th, 2013

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

I was co-chair of the coexistence conference that we had in Vancouver in 2011 and we had a guy from Minnesota who runs a family-owned business in exporting organics who spoke at the conference. He said yes, it takes some time, it takes some effort, it takes a little extra cost, but we're able to deliver the commodities that our clients look to buy on a regular basis. Based on what he was saying, I think it's probably applicable between Canada and the States in the organic sector that with due diligence they're able to meet their markets.

The biggest export market for organics is Europe. I think the fact Europe is so fixated on 0%, it really puts a gun to the head of the organic industry in North America to say domestically we may be willing to discuss low-level presence of 0.5% or 0.75% or something like that interprovincially or between Canada and the States, but when we have to serve our European export market, the demand is consistently and constantly 0%. Therefore we don't really have the option to even enter into negotiations domestically about thresholds. I think that's the unfortunate thing. They're export-focused, as are all the other commodities, so because of the EU insistence on 0%, it really comes back and dictates what type of policy discussions they're able to enter into.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Valeriote.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Stuart, Jim, for coming up this morning.

I was at an event last night talking to a number of people in the food industry. Interestingly we had a conversation about labelling, an issue that Malcolm raised. Of course there are people at each end of the spectrum on that issue. On the one end, of course, anything containing GM should be labelled, and I understand that may amount to 80% of everything that we eat, given the prevalence of GM product out there now. Others said really it's not necessary because if you're truly organic, you can label yourself organic so people will know there's no GM just by the process of elimination. Presumably even with non-organic you can still have non-GM products. I don't think there are any regulations about that yet. You could label yourself as containing no GM.

What is your opinion about labelling? I'd like each of you just to express...no need, a need? What's your thought?

[Jim Everson]

At the Canola Council, our view is that we have labelling in place in Canada for health and safety and for nutrition. Those are the criteria upon which the labelling process is based. If you go beyond that to other issues then I guess the question is what are those issues and what are the criteria?

It's been framed in terms of a consumer right to know. I would say consumers have a right to know, but there is a lot of information about genetic modification and about biotechnology generally available to the public. In Canada, if the public wants to know what they're eating, they can find that out. They can go to www.canolacouncil.org and there's lots of information about the canola industry and about genetic modification and the products we use.

I don't know that it's a right to know as much as a legislative process where you're going to be told that the product is genetically modified. I'm not sure how much information that really provides. In fact, with canola for example, while the plant is supported by biotechnology, the oil that results from it doesn't have any GM protein in it. In fact the product doesn't have GM in it. The product the person's consuming, if anything, has only extremely trace levels of the product in it.

A label that says this is produced through genetic modification really doesn't tell the consumer that much. I would argue that there is a lot of information for the consumer and there's no barrier to their right to know about what they're eating in Canada that needs to be addressed.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay.

I have very little time so, Stuart, I'm going to ask you a different question. Sorry I'm going to move your brain somewhere else here.

You know the government recently consulted on proposed domestic policy to manage the low-level presence of GM crops in imports. I want to know your opinion about that policy. But I'm more curious...do you support an action level of 0.1% or 0.2% and why? I have to tell you, to me it's kind of arbitrary. Why is 0.1% less problematic than 0.2%? At which point does one scientifically assess risk, because apparently there is no risk? Can you tell me why we come up with these numbers and how?

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

I think that's probably on the trade side of things. Where can you get agreement between partners to allow commodities to be exchanged at something the market feels they're able to do? So if a market can serve a 0.1% economically, that might be what's negotiated. Or they may say 0.2%, 0.5%, or even 1%. I think it comes down to what industry feels it can economically undertake transactions at, whatever that threshold is. That's where these things tend to be negotiated.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

But if it's 0.2%, and for some reason a shipment comes into our country that is above that and the government then has to intervene and do a risk assessment, what are they looking for? What if it's 0.3%? What if it's 0.25%? Does that mean the whole shipment is sent away?

What happens? How do you assess risk?

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

When you're detecting a GM event, it's been through our regulatory system. For example, the flax that I spoke of had been approved for food and feed use in Canada and the States, yet Europe said no. So essentially they dismissed our regulatory system in North America by saying it was not a safe product.

I think if it's an OECD country the shipment arrived from, yes, we should accept that if it's gone through their regulatory system, we trust their system. If it came from a developing country that's run by a dictatorship, I may have less confidence in its regulatory system. To some extent, how much trust I have in their regulatory system would depend on who sent us that product, and that would dictate what threshold I would be comfortable at. So with France or Germany, I'd be quite happy at 1% or 2%. With North Korea, it would be considerably less.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Jim, did you have a comment?

[Jim Everson]

I'd agree with Dr. Smyth. The first test is whether the product has been safety assessed in the market. To qualify as an LLP, it would have to meet that test first. Second, a risk assessment ensures that your regulators are able to demonstrate, based on the data that they have, full application of the technology provided that the product is safe, and it's an application in Canada. So you have a safety measure there. After that, I think a threshold level is mostly about commercial tolerances, and the operations, the grain-handling system. The lower you make that level, the more challenging and expensive it is for a grain-handling system to deal with it.

You are trying to apply a threshold when you know the product is safe, and then from a commercial point of view, what is realistic in terms of managing that product.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Dreeshen, welcome.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's great to be here, to have an opportunity to sit on the ag committee, and to talk about a topic that is very important to Alberta.

Listening to some of the discussions that have taken place, I keep thinking about the difference between a research scientist and a political scientist. There's no way a research scientist will ever say there is no risk. Of course, being able to not guarantee, that is where the political scientist then moves in. I think it's important, and of course some of the things you have spoken about kind of tie into that.

Mr. Smyth, you had spoken of the certified seed and that type of thing. I am a farmer, so I understand that aspect of it. You had mentioned that there are limits up to 0.25% as far as off grades that might be in that particular seed that you get from a certified seed provider. The multiplier effect, though, should still be 0.25% after you have run it through your crop process and so on.

Could you comment on that? Of course, that's where some of the issues do come in, unless it has such better viability that it's going to be higher than the actual seed that you thought you were going to buy. At any rate, that's part of it, and I'd like to get a feel for some of the research you have done in that regard.

There are a couple of other things, just so people will recognize the significance of some of this. If you're buying that certified seed, and you're then transferring from barley to wheat, for example, the farmer is in there and they are ripping that truck apart. They are making sure that they have gotten every kernel out of it. There could have been 40 million kernels in that truck, but they are not satisfied with the one kernel that's going to be in there.

It's the same type of thing when you are delivering your grain in the fall to your grain elevators. You have to make sure that the truckers are going to state what kind of grain was in it, or the last product that was handled in it.

You have a certain security, but then, on the other side, you have the situation where people are saying there is zero tolerance, we can't have anything. I mean, you could pick up a seed on the truck as you drive into the elevator. These are the kinds of things that are, in my mind, so nonsensical when we're talking about this concept of the political scientist versus the research scientist.

I'm wondering if you can talk about that, and then about the trade disruptions and the concerns that exist in that regard. That's another thing that I think is so critical for us to be able to talk about.

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

Certainly you can start with as pure as you can possibly get, but seeds will lay dormant in the soil for, in some cases, up to four or five years until the right germination conditions exist.

For example, you could have a GM variety of canola, two years later you could be growing wheat to export, and you would get a little bit of GM canola showing up in your wheat shipment simply because no combine is capable of containing 100% of the seeds it harvests. Some will go through the system and still exist. Frequently fowl will come in and land in a field in the fall and eat, leaving a variety of seeds. Certainly we spray to control these as much as possible, but in large fields, as we said, you can't control for everything at zero.

You will get minute additions to that 0.25%. One way to get around that at the bulk storage level is to dedicate facilities, and that starts to become a little bit less economical. As a farmer, I could have one bin that I only use for GM canola, and an elevator could say, well, we have one part of our terminal that's only going to be used for canola. That's not very economical for them, because that means it might not be full all the time, or it's only partially full, whereas if they could use it for wheat they could have a higher volume within their terminal.

You could start to have a dedicated facility, but that's a bit of a duplication of effort. You have added cost and it's inefficient. Who pays for that? The importer's probably not going to pay for that. Who ends up paying for that? It's likely the farmer. It would reduce the profitability of farmers to have these types of dedicated systems.

On the trade side, we've discussed this a great deal at the University of Saskatchewan. With the increasing number of GM traits to come over the next five to ten years, I think until the WTO makes a decision on this, you're going to see countries, and particularly the European Union, manipulating this to the best of their ability until somebody—Canada or the States, or together with Argentina—takes this as a complaint to the WTO.

That's a lengthy and expensive process, and there's no guarantee as to what the outcome will be. Until the WTO renders a decision, I think this trade of LLP and minute detection of GM will continue to be a trade irritant until we get a decision on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I have to stop you there.

Mr. Atamanenko, go ahead.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thank you.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

I think the way to really get to the bottom of this, to come up with some position, is to throw arguments at you folks from those who are opposed and vice versa. When people come in who are opposed to this, give them arguments so that we can kind of arrive at what's happening.

Dr. Smyth, you just mentioned Europe, and zero tolerance, and the fact that we need to get the WTO involved because Europe used the word manipulation, and that it could be a lengthy process before Europe brings in low-level presence. If we allow low-level presence in Canada, it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a similar policy in our trading partners, namely Europe. That is the point that I know the organic association makes.

Should we not be approaching this topic on a multilateral agreement basis so that all countries agree to the same standard? This is the question. In other words, if we do this, are we putting our specifically organic industry at risk?

Before I move on here, you also mentioned the standards, and you talked about France as opposed to, say, North Korea. So we allow low-level presence from France, but then we don't allow it from North Korea. Who sets the standard? How do we say which country we will allow low-level presence from, because, in fact, we haven't tested?

We say we're science based but it's not our science. We're relying on science from another country. How do we make that distinction? That goes to another argument that folks have: if we're not testing it through science, how can we possibly allow any kind of presence in our country? Let me just throw that open to you folks.

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

Most of the big companies that develop varieties now have an agreement amongst themselves that they won't commercialize a variety until they have the approval of seven markets: Canada, the States, Europe, Australia, and some of the key trading partners in Asia: China, India, and Japan. They've got an agreement amongst themselves that they won't put a product on the market that has not been accepted for regulatory approval into any of those markets.

I think when we talk about trade amongst the OECD countries, it may not be approved in our country, but we have a very high level of trust in the regulatory system of those countries. Where it gets to be a challenge is in countries that may have less rigorous regulatory systems or systems that are known to be corrupt in some cases. That's where a lot of thought and consideration has to come from as to how to deal with those types of products.

[Jim Everson]

I think we are working very hard at trying to get an international alliance on this, or an international acceptance on this. So in addition to the Government of Canada moving forward with a Canadian policy, they've also shown real leadership internationally in bringing together countries. Canada hosted the first meeting of countries to talk about low-level presence in Vancouver. There's been a second meeting since that time. There have been 13 countries involved in that.

In the most recent meeting, there were some observer countries including countries from the European Union, Japan, and China. Those are the countries that are really interested in LLP from an import food security and feed security point of view. There has been an effort made, and I agree with you that it's really important that there be an international discussion with other nations looking at low-level presence policies as well, not just Canada.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Let me just throw this out to you. This is from a letter by Matthew Holmes, Executive Director of the Canada Organic Trade Association, because we're talking here about market access. He's saying that for the organic sector, the proposed LLP policies will have the exact opposite effect, in that they will result in greater barriers to market access for organic products in Canada. He also says:

We note with great concern that the recent announcement of an organic equivalency arrangement between Canada and the European Union was established following the EU's careful review of our current de facto zero-tolerance policy for unapproved GE events.

So once again, will the organic sector, as one sector of our agriculture sector, suffer if we do this?

[Jim Everson]

Sir, we share a need to be sure that we're respecting the requirements of our export market. In the canola industry we're very heavily dependent on access to export markets that have these zero tolerance policies. We're as committed as anybody to ensuring that we can meet the requirements of these markets. What we're trying to do is initiate a discussion about the fact—the absolute fact—that it's really difficult to get to zero and that there are these biotechnology products exploding around the world, and we need to find a regulatory process that doesn't undermine health and safety but does facilitate trade, and that's what LLP is all about.

We're committed to those export markets. The concern that some kinds of products floating around in Canada might have consequences for our export market is critically important to the canola industry too, but we need to be able to show some leadership internationally, because we are going to get ourselves into a position where this is going to be a serious disruption of trade, to which the Canadian economy is inextricable linked.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I have to stop you there, I'm sorry.

Mr. Storseth.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much.

It's good to see you gentlemen again.

Can you expand on the leadership internationally, how important this is, and whether or not you think Canada has been taking that role?

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

The one other country that has sort of been active on this is the Philippines, but I think Canada has a real ability, because we're the fourth-largest producer of GM crops in the world. Our crops—canola, corn, soybeans—are exported. It's only a matter of time before we export other commodities. Wheat won't be that far off.

I think we could be a global leader around developing domestic LLP policies. Typically it doesn't matter what sector of the economy we're talking about—whether it's education, or health care, or legal reform—countries look for other examples at an international level to base their own domestic policies on. If Canada is the first out of the gate at establishing a very functional and efficient LLP policy, we will be a global example for other countries looking to develop similar policies. Now that's not to say they will adopt ours lock, stock, and barrel. They will make nuances according to their own preferences, but certainly we have much more ability to influence our trading partners by establishing a policy than, conversely, by not.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Absolutely. Now Europe has a policy of zero. Is that correct? We rank fourth in trade. Where would the European Union rank in that?

[Dr. Stuart Smyth]

Do you mean for GM crop production?