Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to appear.
I'm here today on behalf of the Canada Grains Council. My position in the industry is as president of the Canadian National Millers' Association, which is Canada's national association of cereal grain processing companies and plants. The Grains Council, as I think you will know, is the national federation of grain industry organizations. The council represents seed developers and growers, producer organizations across the country, railways, grain-handling and transportation companies, research foundations, ports, and others who are participants in the supply chain.
I'd like to comment at the outset that the Canada Grains Council has been an advocate of and supports fully the establishment of a low-level presence policy. The Grains Council and its members see the establishment of a low-level presence policy as being enabling, as being a strategic objective that has to be realized if we want to preserve and enhance market access and make it predictable market access globally.
So the Grains Council is very much about and in favour of establishing a low-level presence policy.
The trade goals that the LLP policy brings to mind are not elusive but have been already achieved in the past. In some cases, the circumstances we're dealing with that are changing, such as the aforementioned ability and the moving ability of science and scientific methods to detect ever-lower levels of substances, are changing the environment. The overarching purpose of the LLP policy that the Canada Grains Council supports is that we would like to see Canada set a valuable precedent for other jurisdictions to follow.
What the council believes to be at risk, as a participant in an international grain trade coalition, is the ad hoc adoption of standards for low-level presence that are never going to be practicably achievable. In the absence of internationally recognized standards that can be met by the participants in the international grain trade, we are going to have unpredictable market access.
The LLP policy, about a decade in the making, as released and shared for comment in recent months, is vital to Canada's grain industry and supply chain. That is why the Canada Grains Council endorses it.
The LLP policy indeed is new, but it does not alter the pre-market evaluation requirements or the pre-market evaluation process for genetically engineered traits; it does not change that. We acknowledge at the Grains Council that if it takes a lot of resources on the part of Health Canada or CFIA to manage the LLP policy, there's a potential for those resources to take away from the business-as-usual pre-market evaluation process. This is a comment that we submitted online to the federal government.
The subject of recognizing or accepting the safety assessments of other jurisdictions is pretty important. This is something we already do in Canadian regulation of drugs and will do increasingly in the future. We need to support and negotiate mutual recognition agreements with other jurisdictions in food-producing and exporting countries. We need to recognize the competence of their regulatory agencies and would expect their countries and agencies to respect the competence of our agencies. Mutual recognition agreements are going to have growing importance, and in doing business internationally in the future, we will have no alternative but to recognize, multilaterally or even unilaterally, the competence of regulators in other jurisdictions.
Part and parcel of the low-level presence policy, which can be reviewed in detail, if you haven't done this already, is that we're talking about a policy that applies to genetic traits that have been approved for unrestricted, 100% food use in other jurisdictions—and by competent jurisdictions: part and parcel of the policy is the identification of countries whose regulatory agencies are deemed and considered by Canada to be competent. LLP policy as proposed does not apply to unapproved events.
With those over-arching comments, here's what the Canada Grains Council has to say about the proposed policy. As I said, we expect it to be enabling. We think it's a strategic step that has to be taken.
We would cautiously advocate that Canada lead the parade in this. We think that if all else fails, once we have a policy that we believe is actionable, comprehensive, clearly understood, and capable of being implemented without unforeseen consequences to anybody in the grain supply chain, perhaps Canada ought to go first.
Clearly, it's ideal that Canada be among a number of trading partners who adopt a policy that can be implemented in all of those countries; this would be more strategic in terms of facilitating trade and market access. We would see a precedent like this as being strategic. But “a precedent only if necessary”, I would say.
We've commented to the consultation team that the proposed action levels of 0.1% or 0.2% are pretty low. Those are below the levels one would normally have to be working with in the management of co-mingling of commodities in domestic and international grain trade. Additionally, those levels are near the limit of quantification—not detection, but quantification—and so there are analytical uncertainties. We have thus commented that it has to be at least 0.2% plus an allowance for analytical uncertainty. Again, we've noted that this applies to 100% food-use approvals.
We've also commented that the policy as drafted to date needs more work. I think all parties that would be affected by this policy need to have a better understanding of what the whole thing looks like. How will we implement this? What kinds of oversight and monitoring will we have? What are the sampling protocols? What are the analytical methods?
These are questions that have been asked of the federal parties by a number of stakeholders. To date, these details aren't there. It's not that they're not susceptible of being outlined, because we know what works and what doesn't in terms of sampling and analytical methods.
We also need to know what means are at the disposal of industry that would allow industry to restore compliance. If the policy is implemented and there is an action level established, and then a threshold level—which is actually a maximum limit—and you are outside of the maximum limit, what are you allowed to do to restore compliance, if you have in your possession an imported commodity that you can't re-export? You paid a great deal of money for it, you paid the transportation to get it in position, so what are you allowed to do to restore compliance?
We've also recommended that the action level not be cumulative. That is, each genetic trait would have its own action level; they would not be lumped together.
The final comment I would make—this is the last comment we have provided via the Grains Council's submission—is that no bulk handling system, no channeling system, no identity-preserved system can meet such low levels. Although the policy states that LLP thresholds will be higher, it's important to note that these need to be established as soon as possible so that governments and industry internationally fully understand the difference between an action level and a threshold.
I'll leave it at that. If there are any questions that I can't answer today—I would observe that this submission was prepared by a committee with various industry backgrounds—I'd be happy to take them under advisement from the clerk and respond with written replies.
Thank you.