Agriculture Committee on June 20th, 2018

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Barlow.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you for coming to present the information to us.

I'm going to approach this slightly differently from my colleague across the way to say that it's good to get a complete package with the briefing and the timelines involved, and that if you were to come in early and say you found something and you're not sure what the extent of it is, then you leave room in the market for people to speculate about how things happened, where things happened, and the extent of the damage.

I was interested in one of the pieces.... There were two things that came out for me: the science that was involved, and that it was done quite early and was able to get right down to the product code from Monsanto, the MON71200.

The University of Guelph does bar code research on the Barcode of Life. They have a catalogue of all life forms and are using partial segments of DNA to trace whatever life form we're trying to trace. Was that the type of technology that was used? It was a very.... In terms of lab time, the end of January for the discovery and then April 8 for this detailed scientific reporting isn't a lot of time for labs to do the detailed analysis. How were we that quick on doing that? Was the U of G involved, or can you say that?

[Fred Gorrell]

I'm going to ask my colleague David Bailey to respond to that.

[David Bailey]

Thank you.

We have quite a remarkable group of scientists in our lab, and they were able to do partially what you're referring to at the University of Guelph. We're familiar with that Barcode of Life program. They did DNA extraction to attempt to understand what it was that we had found, keeping in mind that we had found so little of something and we needed to understand what it was and to try to arrive at what the event-specific element was in relation to the genetic modification. Arriving at the trait that was found, the MON71200, took some time, but because MON71200 had been used in field trials in the past in both Canada and the United States, we were able to make reference to our database of field trials.

That allowed the scientists to use their methods but also to make comparisons to things that we did know versus what we didn't know.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's the second piece for me. Your report stated that there were no field trials within 300 kilometres of where those samples were found. That makes you jump to other conclusions about whether they were intentionally planted beside a side road for people to discover later. Were they carried on animals, trucks, or vehicles? I think that part of it has been ruled out in terms of transport of the seeds.

Do you have a map of where GM trials on wheat have occurred in Canada when they've occurred? I'm assuming that you are able to keep track of any field trial work that's ever been done on any GM wheat product in Canada.

[David Bailey]

Yes, in fact we do. We have a database that contains all applications on field trials. We know the locations of all the field trials that we as the regulator have approved.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

There will still be the question of how this sample occurred in a ditch on a side road beside a field that had never had that seed in it, and we may never know the answer to that. What you're now doing is confirming that what is in the field doesn't have GM traces. You've used large sample sizes over many years to confirm that there's no trace of any GM product still in the fields.

[David Bailey]

That's correct. We have, over the period of time of our analysis, done significant analysis. We have sampled everything that came off those fields on that farm in 2017—so the 2017 crop. Everything was negative. We're talking about nine fields or approximately 1,500 acres. We have also done detailed surveying in the immediate area, on the field that's adjacent to where the find was, and we have found all negative results from what we've tested with the exception of the ability to confirm the location of and reconfirm the find that was originally found.

We can say with confidence that it is not on that farm. It's not in the discovery site, and it has not entered the grain system, the seed system. We can be absolutely certain about that. So we've isolated it, controlled it, and destroyed it.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

There's one other thing. I am originally from the Prairies. I grew up in Winnipeg and I travelled the Prairies extensively. I know that the last week in January isn't the warmest week to be travelling on the Prairies. This was found in January. The tests were done in February and March. We had a really brutal winter on the Prairies. How would this be occurring in the middle of a brutal winter? It would have been there prior to the winter, I'm guessing, and it was somehow discovered. Could you walk us just briefly through that, in about 20 seconds or less?

[David Bailey]

Yes. Just to bring some clarity to the find, it is from the 2017 season. In the summer of 2017, a contract sprayer who was doing work on this access road, which is an access road to a Husky oil platform, after spraying discovered some plants that had survived. This is not necessarily unusual in an agricultural context. It could be due to weather. It could due to be a spray-application error. They provided those to the Alberta government, which did further tests. They were not looking for a genetic modification, but in the process of that scientific analysis, they discovered that there was one. As you can imagine, that took many months.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Bailey. I'm going to have to cut it there. Perhaps you can continue, but I'm not going to put that in.

Mr. MacGregor, you are up for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I can see from your report here and I understand why you wanted to complete extensive testing. I mean you went through 60,000 square metres, 284 wheat heads, nine fields, and 1,500 acres. You want to do your due diligence and I can appreciate the sensitivity of this in relation to our market partners. That said, I'm just sort of following up what Mr. Longfield said. Page 5 says that you don't have any evidence “that would explain how or if the current GM wheat finding is linked to the previous trial.” Is there a leading theory that is guiding you?

As a follow-up to that, with the existing trials what kinds of precautions are mandated by CFIA to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the first place, and will you take this example to inform how you regulate in the future?

[David Bailey]

First, I think a point of clarification is that there is no sense of speculating in terms of the potential avenues that this may have come from. We have pursued every reasonable evidence-based avenue to understand where it's not, and we're able to speak with confidence that it's not in our system. It's not in the grain handling system or in the export system. From that perspective we are very focused on ensuring that it does not persist in the environment, so we have put in place a three-year monitoring program that will oversee the fields. This year the fields will remain fallow and have had chemical treatments to prevent any further growth. We will not allow any cereal crops to be grown for the next three seasons. By this method we will ensure that the find, or any of its progeny, does not persist in the environment on a go-forward basis.

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

Thank you.

In the conclusion of your incident report, in the very last sentence, you mentioned, “The CFIA is confident in the results of the extensive testing, but a validated test could be shared with trading partners should they request it.” Given the sensitivity and with how quickly Japan and South Korea acted, why did the CFIA not choose to be proactive with the report? You're saying “should they request it”. Why not just offer it straight up?

[Fred Gorrell]

That's a good question. Just so you know, all the testing kits have been provided to those countries that you mentioned. They've already been done, so between the announcement on Friday and our communication and talking to them through our posts, the kits have been provided and they're using them in their labs. That's why the Japanese are here as well.

It's very expedited and ready. At the same time, with the duplication of all the test kits, we're making sure who we send them to. There was no delay in the sense of.... By this week they will all have the kits. The idea is that we're very confident in our findings, but of course people want to do their own due diligence. As soon as they asked for the testing kit and the methodology, it was sent to them immediately.

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

Thank you.

With South Korea and Japan having temporarily suspended the import of Canadian wheat, are you able to paint a picture for this committee on what that means in terms of daily losses? How long do you expect this to last? What does it look like physically with grain shipments that are already in transit?

We've already just suffered through a pretty brutal winter with our railway companies. I come from a part of Canada where every single anchorage was being used by ships waiting at harbour. Is grain still being loaded onto ships? Are ships still heading to Japan, or are they just being stopped at the port for now? Is that what this looks like?

[Fred Gorrell]

It's a good question. I won't prejudice the concluding comments by the Japanese or the South Koreans, but we do have lessons learned from what we saw with the United States. You're looking at four weeks, six weeks—a month. I think the evidence that we have is very well suited if not better than what the United States had, but that would give us a testing idea.

The Japanese, to put it this way, instead of taking phone calls were on planes on the weekend. They arrived Monday, so they were in Ottawa yesterday with their labs. They're meeting with the CGC in Winnipeg and they're going to be in our Port of Vancouver on Friday. They want to do due diligence and get this done quickly, efficiently, effectively, for all of the questions. If we look at history, they need a number of weeks to do their due diligence, do the testing, and confirm.

In South Korea what they've done is that they are stopping the sale and distribution of Canadian wheat in Korea. They're going to be testing it as well. The idea would be that the two markets that we anticipated, given past contacts, have temporarily suspended. They're here. They're doing the testing. I would say they would be pleased that we are reacting so positively and quickly to them. If we follow forward, I would like to say weeks to a month. I don't want to go beyond, but we're using the U.S. as an example—two weeks to six weeks, somewhere out there.

At the same time, no other markets have reacted, but the products are not going to Japan right now because the Japanese will need to test everything. We will in due course...and we're talking on a daily basis with the grain industry, the traders as well, to understand what the implications are vis-à-vis exports, transportation, etc. These are things that we're dealing with on the agriculture side on a day-to-day basis, and it would be something we would be able to share with you on a go-forward basis.

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

I would appreciate that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Gorrell and Mr. MacGregor.

Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thanks for coming here on such short notice. We certainly appreciate it.

I'd like to go back to the findings and to the U.S. example. How do we understand the fact that these things happen? Will this be a normal occurrence in the future as we continue to...? Can we place the blame solely on testing or at this point is that not really what we're looking at?

[David Bailey]

First, I think we wouldn't want to speculate on what the future might look like. This is definitely an anomaly.

We've had a long history of scientific field trials, both in Canada and in the United States. We have a rigorous regime in place, a regulatory regime, around field trials. As field trials go forward and complete, we ensure, through inspection activities and instructions to those who hold those field trials, to destroy everything that is related to that.

For this particular find, even though the event-specific, the MON71200, was what we found and it was tested in Canada and the United States, it is not linked to the unknown wheat that we found. We know what the unknown wheat is by its fingerprint, but we don't have a name for it and, therefore, on the relationship between that and previous field trials, there isn't any link between those two at this point that we can point to.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay. I guess my next question would be about how to provide assurance to some of our trading partners that these are anomalies. We've seen it in the United States and, now, here in Canada. How do we tell them that Canada is a safe place and that, yes, our wheat does not contain GM crops that were not approved in Canada?

[David Bailey]

I think there are two parts to that answer. One is our ability to identify what we've found, and our ability to ensure that it doesn't persist in the environment. Third—and I think this goes to the professionalism of those who work in agriculture—our system works. It was identified as a small amount on the side of a road. It never entered agriculture. That goes to how the system works in total. That I think protects our system and is a narrative at a science-based level that allows us to talk to trading partners about why our system is safe and is free from this event.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I don't know the answer, but the U.S. continues to export to Japan right now, so we know that Japan has confidence in the U.S. system. There is no reason that Japan would not have confidence in our system, right?