Thank you for appearing at committee today.
I'll refer to what my colleagues have said, Mr. Richards specifically, about unintended consequences if we place a ban on pesticides. We're concerned about beehive populations in Canada; the numbers are dropping.
I'll quote from an article in the U.S., and this is the one you referred to, the EPA and the Ag study. It says:
But officials in the United States Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and others involved in the bee study said that there was not enough evidence to support a ban on one group of pesticides, and that the costs of such action might exceed the benefits.
The EPA is quoted as saying:
“At E.P.A. we let science drive the outcome of decision making,” said Jim Jones, the agency’s acting assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention.
There are non-trivial costs to society if we get this wrong. There are meaningful benefits from these pesticides to farmers and to consumers as well as for affordable food.
With that in mind, can you comment on the unintended consequences if we place a ban without having the solid stats. I'm absolutely behind this. If we have science that proves this is a problem without a shadow of a doubt, then we should act. By banning without a scientific basis, those unintended consequences will hit us. It's not going to be a small hit. It'll be a big one.
Can you comment on the unintended consequences of a possible ban?