Agriculture Committee on Feb. 26th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming here today to talk about an important aspect of our agriculture and international trade.

We've been talking a lot about some of the benefits of GM and what we've seen over the years. Particularly, we think about some of the crops and the increased crops we've been able to get.

Has that had any impact on our environment?

[Dr. Stephen Yarrow]

Absolutely. It's had a very, very positive impact on the environment. I'll give you an example. I sort of touched on it in my presentation around the herbicide-tolerant crops.

By the way, you can get herbicide-tolerant crops through traditional breeding and other techniques, but the GM ones dominate the market today.

It allows for a much improved and more effective way of controlling weeds. It's also very compatible with the trend to go with minimal-till farming or no-till farming; in other words, the fields are not getting plowed. It allows the stubble from the previous crop to remain in the soil, which has a beneficial impact in terms of vegetative content of the soil, the health of the soil, and so on. It also has some impact, so I'm told, on water evaporation. It's reduced, compared with that of a plowed field.

Also, if you think about a tractor plowing a field and burning up its diesel and all the rest of it, if you don't have to plow the field, you will save a bundle on diesel, and we all know about greenhouse gases and those sorts of things.

This is just one example of where there's definitely a benefit.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I'm glad you added that, because I had that in the back of my head.

You both talked a lot about the safety of the seeds and the rigorous research to ensure they are safe.

When you talk about how rigorous the testing is, does it mean it was tested in a week, a month, or two years? Is there anything in particular you could tell us about that? What types of tests did you go through to ensure the safety of the seeds so the product, when it goes to the consumer, is safe to eat?

[Dr. Stephen Yarrow]

If I may say so, I see we have only 20 minutes left, and I'd need two hours to answer your question fully. The tests are very extensive, depending on what we're talking about. For environmental safety, it's a test to discern whether the plants are more weedy than the predecessors, if there are going to be gene-flow issues, if there are going to be allergenicity issues. There are tests around nutritional quality, toxicity—I think I mentioned allergenicity already, but it depends on whether you're talking about livestock animals' allergenicity, human allergenicity, and so on—biodiversity risks, and all these sorts of things. There are years of testing in the field, in these very strictly confined field trials, that allow the developers to test all these sorts of things.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That's very positive to hear.

Do you have anything you want to add on that, Susan?

[Susan Abel]

I think I'll defer to Stephen on that, because it's certainly at an earlier stage in the supply chain.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I know CropLife has a number of member companies. Where do you get your research dollars from?

[Dr. Stephen Yarrow]

Where does CropLife get its research dollars? They're not our research dollars. It's our members who invest the money to develop these new improved seeds. They're on the hook to pay for all these tests they do, or they get other third parties to do them.

It's very expensive. I can't quite remember the number now, but it's something like an average of about $126 million to get a product through the regulatory system over a period of about 10 years. Now, it gets a bit confusing. Are we talking about just Canada or are we talking about across the world? You get a sense of the scale of the investment that's required. A large chunk of that number I'm giving you is to get it through the regulatory systems.

[Dennis Prouse]

I think you're now seeing companies investing about 11% of their profits right back into research and development. That's a number you see in Canada. That's a number you'll see globally. There's a huge premium now placed on innovation.

We want that innovation to take place in Canada. We really believe that Canada's a prime place for that. We need a welcoming regulatory environment for that investment to happen.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

In terms of the regulatory environment, what would you suggest or see as beneficial to getting that investment to take place here and the research to be here? Are there any specific things you could suggest?

[Dennis Prouse]

I think Stephen touched on it. We believe that Canada, by and large, has it right now. We have it right because we have science-based regulation. We are working on and talking about rules-based trade. That's the right environment. That's why you're seeing growth in this industry. That's why this is a growth sector and why this is a good-news story for the Canadian economy.

Science-based regulation, as Stephen points out, is not a given. We deal with many nations that do not have science-based regulation. Their regulations are, as our friends at International Trade call them, “opaque”, which is not a good word when it's being used in the context of trade.

We think Canada has it right now. We're vigorously defending that process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I'm sorry. Time is up.

Madame Raynault.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Abel, in the document you gave us, you describe in detail the crisis that might occur if loads carrying small quantities of GMOs were stopped at our border. However, what do you think the consequences would be of accepting too large a quantity of GMOs that Canada has not chosen and that might end up in our environment? What are the chances that a GMO would contaminate the natural organisms? Are you aware of any cases of that?

[Susan Abel]

Just so I make sure I understand your question, it's sort of the reverse. We have GMOs contaminating—and I hesitate to use the word “contaminate”....we have the presence....

Are you talking more about organic crops when you say natural? Yes. Okay. I think that is part of further discussions and consultations. I know the Canada Organic Trade Association has been very involved in these discussions. I think that's part of what we need to discuss going further. We're still only about halfway through the consultations and discussions. There are still a lot of details that need to be discussed.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Do you know how long it will take to work out the details?

[Susan Abel]

One moment, please.

Regarding the process, we started in 2011 and we've had several in-person meetings. We have just completed an online consultation. We are waiting for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to consider the comments they have received, the feedback, which includes exactly the kinds of questions you've just asked. We hope that within the next month or so.... We know Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is very keen to move this forward, because this is clearly an important policy to have in place for the whole predictability factor and because we've already seen events in Europe that have caused significant disruption to processing.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

You say you favour science-based decisions, but you also say you want to favour predictable and uninterrupted trade. It is certainly possible to reconcile these two needs, but I'm wondering about the importance of science in the way you see things.

Do you think Canada should have permanent scientific research and monitoring agencies to better monitor the proliferation of GMOs?

[Susan Abel]

I think that Canada already has a system in place where they are carefully monitoring the proliferation of GMOs. Certainly we are about to see a fairly significant number of new kinds of GMOs in the marketplace. Although the number is big, it's something that we know Health Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are monitoring very closely. Some of that is part of the further discussions that we're going to be participating in on how to manage some of that.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

I see.

Mr. Yarrow, since loads are stopped at our borders or in Europe, Canadian products don't make it to other countries.

Could this harm the wheat, canola or flax crops? In particular, there's the case of flax, which was refused.

When products are blocked like this, do our farmers pay the price? Will these products have to simply stay in Canada?

[Dr. Stephen Yarrow]

If I've understood your question, and a couple of questions prior to your last one, this touches on the question of effects on the environment of these imports coming into Canada. Let's just remind ourselves that the proposed policy is about grain, feed, and food. It's all about materials being imported into Canada for processing, processing them to create more food and for creating livestock feed and so on. This material is not destined to get into the environment, unlike seed for sowing, which is another question that the Government of Canada is going to grapple with. What's the policy around low-level presence of seed for sowing in Canada? That question is still being discussed and we haven't seen a proposal yet.

As far as the grain story is concerned, as far as we're concerned there is no risk to the environment. There's nothing to monitor, if that's what you were asking earlier, in terms of GMOs in the environment.

Perhaps that helps.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Hoback. You have the final five minutes.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here this afternoon.

Having a global presence in the issues we've been talking about here today is so crucial to the agricultural sector as we move forward and look at new products coming into the market. As we as a country are exporting around the world, we want to make sure that we always have market access and that we see non-tariff trade barriers like items of low-level presence being used to prevent products from going into the marketplace. It's definitely something we need to address to ensure globally that this is not allowed to happen.

One of the things that one of the speakers in the previous panel talked about was the systems used here in Canada being science based, and how to go about deciding whether this product is safe to use and whether it would be allowed in Canada. Do you see the need for any political involvement in deciding whether or not that product should be allowed into Canada?

[Dennis Prouse]

Mr. Hoback, I can answer that as an arts graduate sitting beside a gentleman with his Ph.D. Absolutely not. In fact, let's look at the situation in Europe, where I believe there is now 37 years' worth of backlog of products. These are products that have received their safety approval but have yet to receive their political approval. What is that actually doing? That's hurting European farmers and it's now starting to hurt European consumers. We have an example, a living example of what happens when a political lens, if you will, starts getting put to the safety decisions that are made. What does it do? It hurts farmers and it hurts consumers. We don't think that's a road that Canada wants to travel.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Under that prospect, then, when we start looking at different entities—whether it's organics, whether it's IP industries—is there a role for government to decide winners and losers, when it comes to deciding the product that they're producing is acceptable, what the standards should be as such?

Let me step back for a second. My role as a legislator here now, is it not to ensure that when I put something on this plate or a consumer puts something on this plate—I really don't care whether it's organic, I really don't care if it's GMO—what I care about is that when I put it in my mouth it's safe to eat. Is that a fair assessment?