Agriculture Committee on March 7th, 2013

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Harrison, I'm always enthralled by this. This is a fascinating conversation.

[Gordon Harrison]

By me or the subject?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

No, no, by everyone—but also by what you said, Mr. Harrison.

I'm always enthralled by Blake's pieces of diatribe.

[Gordon Harrison]

You've been a patient listener, and I say that with respect.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Zimmer, on a point of order.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Chair, I take objection to what Mr. Malcolm Allen has said about one of our colleagues over here.

He has the right to ask whatever questions he wishes, and without criticism of us. We give that latitude to you, and I think you deserve to give respect to this side as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Allen, on the same point of order.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Sure. I'll withdraw the fact that it was a bunch of blustering diatribe. How's that?

Mr. Harrison—

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

It's not a point of order, but I would ask all members not only to show respect for each other but also for our witnesses who are here today.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

That would be a novel trait, but I think that's different legislation.

I'm always fascinated by the numbers and by the term “sound science”. Let me interject with what my family says about that. My youngest daughter, who is in her late twenties and has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, says, “Science better be sound or there's a lot of trouble”. It's not a question.

There's no such thing as sound science; it's science. You apply certain criteria to the science and you come out with something. You start with a hypothesis. You do some testing. You get a result, draw a conclusion. That's science. There's no soundness to it; it's just science. It's a wonderful term, but it's just a term.

Here's why I say that. Today, Mr. Harrison, you told us what percentage you thought it should be. Yet somebody else over here is telling us another percentage that it should be, and everybody tells us it's sound science. The reason it's difficult for me to get my head around this is that if it's really about science, then how come you all have different numbers? Either you've done the science and there's a number, whatever that low-level number is—and that's what you believe it to be, based on a peer-reviewed piece of science that's been done—or we're into marketing, which is about saying that “Only this can happen here”.

I'll let you all answer that one.

The second piece of it is—and this isn't a science piece, but a decision piece—that it doesn't matter why they make the decision, right? It's not an issue. It's about what you hear around here: “It's my five minutes and I get to do what I want with my five minutes”.

So if another market, on that is your customer, says, “I don't want it”, then who cares about your science? If they say “No, thank you”, it's their decision. I they are the customer and don't want it, they will say they don't have to have it. If it means that your market says “No, thank you”—which the EU is doing at the moment—we can say they're wrong. The issue is that if they don't open it up, what do we do about that? How do we square the circle?

My friends have heard me say I don't think there's an absolute zero. If you try to measure that as a temperature, there's no such thing. People have been trying for hundreds of years to get to absolute zero, temperature-wise. There isn't one. It's too hard to do.

I get “extraneous materials”. The issue is about GM, and extraneous materials have another issue to them. How do we do that? What is the number?

I hear it might be this for that, or this one for that one, but it seems to me that until the science is done, really done, and we're all agreeing about a number, scientifically speaking, don't you think we're in a bit of a bind?

[Gordon Harrison]

Well, there's ample—

[An hon. member]

Was that a question, Malcolm?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Yes, it was. It was a question.

[An hon. member]

It sounded like a diatribe.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Yes, no problem. You'll know a diatribe if you hear it from me, let me tell you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Order, please. Order, please.

You know that we have a very limited time with our guests and I'd like to hear what they have to say.

Mr. Harrison.

[Gordon Harrison]

To your point, there is current science and there is ample current science in many disciplines. Science evolves. There's no question about that, but today, in the context of this policy that we're talking about, we're talking about current science, internationally recognized principles, internationally recognized methods. There's no analytical method that I would know of that competent statisticians could not evaluate in terms of its reliability, its integrity, and the predictability of the results.

The coefficients of variation are the standard deviations, meaning that the uncertainty in any analytical method can be established. The grains council has submitted to the federal government that we need to take those quantifiable uncertainties from analytical methods into account in layering on top of the 0.2%.

For example, we further stated that the numbers that have been put out here are inconsistent with the usual domestic grain trade. The grain-grading standards that we have under the Canada Grain Act and regulations are questionably achievable, and under Canada's federal regulatory policy, the regulated parties have to have the means to achieve.... If a country or a customer in a country says they don't want it, and they are prepared to pay the costs of ensuring that it isn't there, then commerce can proceed. If the customer says he doesn't want it and it's not practically achievable, then responsible vendors say, “I'm sorry, I can't sell to you”.

It's that simple.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I have to stop it there. We're past the...

Mr. Richards, on a point of order.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to very briefly apologize to Mr. Harrison and Mr. Groeneweg. Due to the constant interruptions from the other side during my questioning, I wasn't able to get to my questions for them. I apologize.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Richards. That's not a point of order.

Thank you to our guests for being here.

Franck, do you have one small comment?

[Franck Groeneweg]

With the thresholds, it all depends on where you put the decimal, right?

So on science, if we're going to talk about science.... We have, for example, the GM side, but as was said before, for example I have a market like canary seed, where a small amount of buckwheat is going to Mexico and that border has been shut. It's putting a lot of financial pressure on us.

So if a customer is ordering a load of X commodity and is ready to have that, we need to have a low-level policy so we can actually tell if we need to bring that load back or do something with it. We need to have that policy, otherwise it's costing everybody a lot of grief.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and I'm sure you'll see in our final report a lot of the comments that have been made.

Committee members, next week is break week. I wish you a good week back in your constituencies, and when we return our first meeting will deal with the beverage industry. We have also set a second hour aside for a subcommittee meeting on future business.

The meeting is adjourned.