Agriculture Committee on June 18th, 2018

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

There are no mass thefts of opium poppies. The state government has made it quite a lucrative industry. I believe Australia provides half of the world's legal supply.

I know you want to get into the culinary aspect, but in the short time I have, I was wondering if you could maybe tell us about some of the lessons we can learn from other jurisdictions. Also what is the potential we're looking at? Poppies, as a plant, do not need a lot of inputs. They are a pretty hardy plant; they can look after themselves. In terms of selling culinary seeds, the oils, and other value-added products, really what is the potential we're looking at if we can get your industry off the ground in Canada?

[Glen Metzler]

Basically you're looking at an industry in which the seed is about three-quarters of a billion dollars, so it's substantial. It's not small.

Australia was the poster child for the development of this industry. They started back in the 1960s. When GlaxoWellcome or GlaxoSmithKline was first interested in growing poppies, they wanted to grow them in Europe, in the U.K., and the climate was too wet, so they went to Australia. The mainland wasn't interested but Tasmania said, “Pick me, pick me”, and it became a state industry for the province. It has been a huge success, and in the last three years, they have actually expanded production of poppies from Tasmania. They are now growing in three more states in Australia as well.

They produce over 50% of the alkaloids used for pharmaceutical production worldwide, but from the seed perspective, their seed is also going in—and in fact the bag of poppy seed bag that's been going around is probably poppy seed from Australia. We'd like to change that though.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thanks, Chair. I'll end there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I think somebody ate it all. It never made it here.

I'm just kidding.

[Ryan Mercer]

There's one here. I'll bring it to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

No, that's fine.

On that note, we're going to end this interesting session on both the opportunities and the challenges with growing our exports to $75 billion.

I want to thank Mr. Wallener, Mr. McAlpine, Mr. Metzler, and also Mr. Mercer for being with us today.

We will suspend this portion for two minutes, and then we are back in committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]