Agriculture Committee on June 20th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mrs. Nassif.

Mr. Dreeshen, you have six minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Gorrell, for being here today. I just have a couple of things. First of all, I went through the report. I think it's excellent. It goes through all of the different details.

The questions we've had so far today—I had written down a lot of them—have more or less been answered. A couple of days ago I had a chance to be at the U.S. embassy, where they were talking about food safety testing and that type of thing. I think some of the folks from your department would have been there as well. The technology we have to be able to determine this, with DNA tests and so on, is amazing. I think people should recognize that what you've done and what you've been able to determine certainly should give everybody some comfort in that regard.

I'd like to turn to some information provided by the library. Between 2013 and 2016, there were three incidents of unauthorized GM wheat releases. These were in Oregon in 2013, in Montana in 2014, and in Washington in 2016. Here we have it kind of spaced along these three years in different places. How and where were those found? Do you have information about that?

[David Bailey]

Each of those events were slightly different. We can provide this committee with a bit more detail on those and post it.

One was related to a field trial. It was an experience in which there were things you could quickly identify in relation to what was being tested. They were able to manage that relatively quickly. Another was a find of a fair amount of plants in a fallow field. They were able to understand what it was right away. They were able to deal with it more quickly. Then they had one that was very much like it was for us—an isolated event, but they were unable to identify where it had come from. It had not been near any field trials, so they were able to manage it similar to the way that we are managing this particular issue.

Each of them was unique in its own way, but I think the relationship to field trials in the other two is an important distinction between what we are experiencing and those particular trials.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

But field trials that take place in the U.S. or take place in Canada are dealt with under certain security protocols. I'm wondering if you could perhaps go through what you might know about that and certainly what you know about the ones from the 1990s.

[David Bailey]

I can speak a little bit to our regime around field trials. Field trials are heavily regulated. I think one of the important points for this committee is that there are buffers put around those field trials. There are 30-metre buffers put around anything that's field-trialed. That is based on science and potential pollen flow so that you don't have contamination into other areas.

Once those field trials are completed, everything is destroyed in relation to the field trial. The field is monitored for two years thereafter to ensure that nothing persists. There is a process in place for ensuring that nothing, for lack of a better term, gets out of the field trial or escapes from that space. It is a very disciplined approach, with follow-up from the regulator and management by the proponent for the research being done.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Is that similar to what is done, or had been done, on any Canadian trials as well?

[David Bailey]

That's correct. I've described the Canadian regulatory regime. Our American counterparts have a very similar process.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

When the plants were found, had they gone through to maturity? Obviously, you don't spray them when they're headed out. You spray and then take a look later. At what stage were people alerted to it, and were those seeds viable?

[David Bailey]

They hadn't reached maturity when they were found and when they were picked up off the side of the road.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Okay.

The last part goes back to one of the questions from Mr. Barlow with regard to the industry wondering about the amount of time they had to respond to this. As we saw, it started back in the fall of the year before. The Alberta government had an opportunity to be engaged in it. I believe that April was another time frame in which a discussion of these things was taking place with the farmers.

I understand how a person might want to deal with the individual farmer to make sure that the job is done right away and you're solving it, but again, I still think people in the industry are wondering if there are lessons to be learned here about being able to let them know, because they have expertise as well.

[Fred Gorrell]

Thank you.

In every instance like this, there are always lessons learned. We take that. We understand it. We're always wanting to do better in things, so we capture all of these points from both your committee and the industry. We capture them and review them. Right now we're much more focused on dealing with the issue, but I can promise you that those types of things will not be lost and we'll be looking at them so we don't have to come back and have the same questions from you again.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.

Now we go to Mr. Peschisolido.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses appearing before us.

What do we do now? We've heard a pretty good technical analysis of testing and what would happen. I think our credibility is at stake with some significant trading partners. What are the next steps on the regulatory side at CFIA? Also I'm interested in hearing from the department on how we proceed, maybe not on the regulatory side but on public policy and how we create a narrative.

[Fred Gorrell]

You can start.

[David Bailey]

In terms of what we're doing now and going forward, as I mentioned, we will focus very much on the monitoring and mitigation plan to ensure there is no persistence in the environment, and that what we have isolated and controlled remains that way and that it does not move into the system.

We will also continue with our partners at the Canadian Grain Commission to do sampling around everything that's going through the system, and by ensuring that no cereal crops will be planted on those fields, we will also ensure there is no persistence.

As Mr. Gorrell mentioned earlier, we always take lessons learned, so as we get out of this period of time, we will sit back and look to see if we need to refine any of our programs or policy approaches, and we'll learn those lessons as we often do for that continuous improvement so that we can maintain a world-class, rigorous regime when it comes to agricultural innovation.

[Fred Gorrell]

I would also add what I think is important for Canada. We have been open and transparent. That's been one of the mottos of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as well as just overall how we handle.... We're continuing that and having a dialogue, as we've indicated, with the industry and with Canadians.

Relative to the trading partners, I think our being forthright, making sure they have the information, and opening our books, so to speak, so that they see everything allows them to trust. There always are consequences in the sense that they have to look at everything, but at the end of the day, they know our science, and they know what we're doing. I think going forward we will learn whether we need to have different dialogues, different conversations, but at the end, we want to assure all of our trading partners and Canadians that our products continue to be GMO-free for wheat. The idea would be that they can have assurance of the high quality of wheat around the world, as they have. That is one of our trademarks. As well, it is a large economic driver for farmers and producers as well.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Ms. Donohue, if I may, we've heard about the regulatory set from CFIA. I assume you're from Agriculture Canada. Is there some thinking on how we move forward? Will this impact our negotiations on a variety of fronts? The agriculture minister has been wonderful in having a lot of bilateral meetings with quite a few countries in a variety of places in the world. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and the department's thoughts on how we can respond to this.

[Kathleen Donohue, Director General, Market Access Secretariat, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

You mentioned a trade negotiations perspective. We don't see any link between this isolated incident and our negotiations. They're really very much two separate issues.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

I'm assuming what you are implying is that this is a one-off and it won't have an impact. How do we get that across to our trading partners?

[Kathleen Donohue]

As my colleague Mr. Gorrell has mentioned, we're already in discussions with some of our key trading partners. Japan is currently visiting Canada, and it's quite clear that they are motivated to resume trade as soon as possible. They simply need to go through their appropriate levels of due diligence to reassure themselves of the scientific evidence that has been extensive on the part of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and they may need to reassure themselves by conducting their own testing of shipments. I think that is to be expected.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Chair, that's all I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Peschisolido.

Mr. Barlow, you have five minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will likely not take all five minutes.

Again, thanks to the group for being very transparent and forthright. The report is excellent. It really walks us through everything that occurred.

I have just a couple of really quick questions. There were a lot of questions out there about why this took a year. I'm assuming, looking at the timeline you put together, that this was discovered very late in 2017 in Alberta. By the time Alberta Agriculture had approached CFIA, we were into the 2018 calendar year. This didn't sit around for a year.

[Fred Gorrell]

Right. It wasn't brought to our attention until January 31 of this year. The process, which has been outlined, went very quickly from the testing there.

Now, when you look at it, some people might ask why it's taken a year, but that's not putting it in the right context—how it was found in July, how it wasn't really considered to be a problem, how it was just a sprayer who was looking at it, and how, when it was brought to our attention, we immediately grew it and tested it. When it was found to be GMO, that's when things moved rather quickly between April and going forward.

So no, I think that's a good point and a good question. It's something that we're making sure people understand.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you. By all means, I want you to do your due diligence in the research, the identification, the traceability, and all that first before we make that public. I appreciate having that timeline there.

I'm not sure if you can answer this question, but we've talked about, and my colleagues have asked questions about, the future or the implications with regard to other trading partners. There's CETA, and then I look at the CPTPP. If that is signed, dispute resolution is part of that agreement. Could Japan do something like this, once CPTPP is signed, without a science-based decision behind it? Would they have to go through the dispute resolution process first and prove it's a science-based decision before blocking imports of something like this?

I'm just curious if that is the case. To my understanding, that is the case, but you may know that better than I do.