Agriculture Committee on Sept. 20th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Welcome, everyone, to our committee meeting this morning, as we continue our study on advancements in technology and research in the agriculture industry that can support Canadian exports.

Before we start, I certainly want to welcome Mr. Shipley, and also Mr. Terry Duguid, who is replacing Eva. We're certainly wishing her mom all the best. I know she had some health issues.

This morning we have with us Mr. Andrew Casey, president and chief executive officer of BIOTECanada. Welcome, Mr. Casey.

We will also be hearing, via video conference, Mr. Simon Dugré, who is the director of the Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture.

Good morning and welcome, Mr. Dugré.

Can you hear me?

[Simon Dugré, Director, Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture]

Good morning. Yes, I can hear you very well, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We also have, from Richardson International Limited, Jean-Marc Ruest, senior vice-president, corporate affairs and general counsel.

Welcome, Mr. Ruest.

Can you hear me?

[Jean-Marc Ruest, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Affairs and General Counsel, Richardson International Limited]

Yes, very well, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

We will start with opening statements for seven minutes.

We can start with Mr. Casey, if you're ready. You have up to seven minutes for your opening statement.

[Andrew Casey, President and Chief Executive Officer, BIOTECanada]

Absolutely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the committee for this fantastic opportunity to testify on this very important subject. I understand this is your last hearing. Hopefully we can help out at the very last day and get you on the road with some great suggestions.

I thought I might start by introducing BIOTECanada, not because I think we as an organization are particularly interesting but I want to focus on our membership. We have 250 member companies. They are across the country and they occupy a number of important baskets or buckets.

We have a large health care component. That's the area where you would see large multinational pharmaceutical companies, but also a lot of small companies that are developing new drugs, medicines and therapies to keep people healthy. We also have in our membership industrial, agricultural and environmental biotech companies. They are also right across the country, usually in clusters spread out in the different provinces. Each province focuses or has a specialty. The companies are usually around universities or research institutes, as you would expect.

What are they doing? They're doing biotechnology, which is essentially taking living organisms and turning them into useful things. The earliest form of biotechnology are things that are near and dear to most of our hearts—beer, wine and bread—but we've come a long way since then. They are developing biotechnology solutions for the world, and I think the key here is to understand what the challenge is that they're addressing.

When you look at the world we see a global population growth. We expect to be somewhere in the nine billion person area probably within the next 30 to 40 years, maybe even more, maybe 10 billion. That brings with it some enormous challenges, not the least of which is how we feed all of those people on a landmass that is shifting on us, in the sense that some land is becoming less available and some land is becoming more available. Part of the reason for that is the climate is changing.

Why is the climate changing? We know that with the global population growth along comes a massive economic growth, particularly in countries like China and India, where you see those economies really taking stride and ramping up. With that economic growth comes the burgeoning middle class, which spends more money and demands more consumer goods, and that proliferates the economic growth.

That kind of economic growth puts enormous pressure on the planet as well, as factories manufacture more goods and more people waste. We have to find ways to address those challenges. We cannot keep living the way we have. We have to change fundamentally how we manufacture, how we grow, how we live our lives. Ultimately, the planet is going to be just fine, as the dinosaurs can attest. It is us that are in danger. We have to find a way to save ourselves and biotechnology is the solution that's going to help get us there. That seems like a daunting challenge and, of course, it is and we must address it.

It's also an enormous economic opportunity for a country like Canada. In the agricultural space, when you look at our history, we are in a really fantastic space to bring forward amazing solutions for this global challenge. We have a lot of companies in this country that are building on that history of innovation and also our agricultural heritage and developing some fantastic solutions.

I'm going to use two to illustrate the point because I think it's the most effective way. One is a company called Agrisoma. Agrisoma takes a genetically modified mustard seed or a version of a mustard seed. That seed can be grown anywhere you cannot grow other plants. You can grow it in fallow fields. You can grow it in places where there's not enough nutrients in the soil, where there's not enough sunlight, not enough moisture, so that spreads out exactly where you can put this thing.

Once you've grown the seed, the seed is crushed and you extract the oil. The oil is processed into jet fuel. There is no fossil fuel in the mix. The jet fuel can go straight into a jet engine and the plane will fly. There's the NRC plane. Many of you as you've gone out to the Ottawa airport have seen there's a little hangar off to the right as you pull into the airport. There's a little jet in there and there's also a sniffer plane. They've flown the jet with the fuel. You don't have to alter the jet engine in any way. They send a sniffer plane behind it and because there's no fossil fuel in the mix there are no emissions.

It's a fantastic story that gets even better. If I go back to that seed I told you about, once you crush it there is meal that's left over afterwards. That meal then gets put back into the food chain. It's used for protein to feed cattle and other animals.

It's a wonderful life cycle. You use the whole product. It's put into fields, and so farmers, if they have a field in fallow, can use it to put nutrients back into the soil while growing the seed, and it provides an income. Obviously, from a transportation and from an environmental standpoint there's a fantastic benefit, and then it goes back into the food chain. That's a great example I think, but as you hear that story you can start to understand all the different parts of government that have oversight from a regulatory standpoint.

You have transport, environment, agriculture, and at the very end you have Health Canada through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which takes care of the genetically modified meal that's going back into the food chain.

The other example I'm going to leave you with is a company called Okanagan Specialty Fruits, out in the Okanagan Valley. It figured out a way to stop apples from turning brown. I'm the father of a 12-year-old and I would like him to eat apples, but he won't take any apples to school because the minute they're cut at home, they turn brown. Kids don't eat them. You can't put them in fruit salads at school, and sometimes you can't give them to kids because they don't want to eat brown apples. Thousands if not millions of pounds of apples are basically discarded every year because they get bruised and turn brown. This is a way to stop food waste.

Like you, when I first heard this story I wondered if this was really all about just stopping an apple from going brown. I got the idea that this may not be the ultimate goal, and it's not. If you look at that company, the other thing these scientists and orchardists discovered is a way to stop something called “fire blight”. Fire blight is a fungus that will rip through an entire orchard and destroy it if not controlled. Using the same sort of technology, they have figured out how to stop that, and that's what they're working on. It's a step change. You develop certain things and you improve on what you've already discovered and use that for further discovery.

When we think back to the challenge we're facing as a civilization in having to deal with the global population and the need to be more efficient and effective in how we grow, manufacture and live our lives, these are the types of solutions that are going to help us get there. We have a fantastic history of doing it through innovation in our agricultural departments. We also have a great amount of support from government. As you've probably heard, there are a number of programs that have been enormously supportive. The most recent large one is the protein industries supercluster, which is going to develop a lot of fantastic innovation out of the Prairies. It's a great development. It's an exciting industry, and it's a great opportunity for Canada to be at the forefront and be a leader in solving some of these problems.

I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. I thank you very much and look forward to the questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Casey, for the opening statement. It was very interesting.

I will now yield the floor to Mr. Jean-Marc Ruest for seven minutes.

[Jean-Marc Ruest]

Good morning.

It's a great pleasure for me to take part in this morning's meeting from Winnipeg.

On behalf of Richardson International Limited, I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to appear before you to address an issue that is both critical and timely in Canadian agriculture, namely advancements of technology and research in the agriculture industry that can support Canadian exports.

To provide context to my comments, I think it's important to provide a bit of background information on Richardson International. Richardson International was founded in 1858, which was 10 years before Confederation, by James Richardson in Kingston, Ontario. The company continues to be privately held by the Richardson family and is headquartered in Winnipeg. It has grown to become Canada's largest grain company with operations spanning from the sale of inputs to producers who are required to grow their crops, to the purchase of those crops for export to over 50 countries around the world, or for further processing in our own canola oil processing and packaging plants and oat processing plants situated in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

This background is important, I think, because we have long been at the forefront of Canadian agriculture and the export of Canadian grains and oilseeds, and more recently, processed grains and oilseeds. Our experience has shown us that when it comes to the export of Canadian agricultural commodities, we are operating in an extremely competitive global marketplace.

Unfortunately, when we look objectively at that global marketplace we have significant disadvantages to contend with. Our cost of production, in particular labour, is high. Our growing season is short. Our winter climate is harsh. Our production is far from tidewater and the geography required to get there is challenging. We have also, unfortunately, in the recent past had significant rail service failures that have negatively impacted our reputation as reliable suppliers.

How, then, can we possibly compete and succeed given these significant challenges? The answer is the very issue that you are considering: technology and research. Technology has provided, and continues to offer us, the possibility to increase the quantity of grains and oilseeds produced in Canada, thereby reducing the overall cost of production. It offers us the opportunity to improve the quality of grains and oilseeds and to reduce the environmental impact of farming, in particular carbon emissions.

Canada has world-class public and private researchers, and we have producers who embrace new technologies in inputs and agronomic practices. However, this advantage that we have, that we need to be able to compete in the global market, is currently, in our opinion, under very significant threat domestically and internationally.

Our industry is under attack domestically by individuals and groups who want to eliminate the use of certain products, the most recent being glyphosate and neonicotinoids, in Canadian agriculture. They do so by making alarming claims that are not borne out by rigorous scientific analysis as an attempt to disparage the innumerable reports that confirm the safety of these products.

Unfortunately, too few people, including government, speak up against these tactics, and as a result science and the benefits of technology and research in food production are frittering away.

In the case of a recently announced eventual ban on neonicotinoids, we see a regulator, the PMRA, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, changing its approach to product registration, we believe, as a direct result of this pressure. Let us be clear. This is not an attack limited to glyphosate and neonicotinoids. It is an attack on technology, science and modern agriculture.

While government's failure to actively promote and support the safety of these products and technologies is problematic, things get significantly worse when provincial and municipal governments jump on the anti-technology bandwagon by adopting measures such as cosmetic pesticide bans, which, again, are not supported by scientific fact. You may ask what cosmetic pesticide bans have to do with Canadian exports of grain and oilseeds. The connection is actually quite direct and leads to my second point: the international attack on Canadian grain and oilseed exports.

It is obvious that we are currently in a phase of global trade protectionism. While the most obvious trade barriers are typically monetary tariffs imposed on imports, in agriculture, equally effective if not better barriers are the non-tariff trade barriers, which often manifest themselves through phytosanitary regulations or technology approval processes.

For example, countries will use their domestic regulations to limit the quantities of pesticide residues—known as maximum residue levels or MRLs—on Canadian crops to impossibly low levels as a means of preventing the entry of Canadian crops, usually at times when the importing country has a domestic production surplus.

Canada's ability to challenge the legitimacy of these measures on the basis that they are unreasonable and not backed by sound science is completely eviscerated when, on a domestic level, we have regulations that prohibit the use of these products on lawns on which we walk. How could we say on the international front that regulatory decisions must be science-based when we fail to do so domestically?

I opened my remarks by saying that the issue of advancements of technology and research in the agriculture industry that can support Canadian exports is a critical and timely issue. We are truly at a tipping point. We need to decide, from a policy and strategic perspective, where we stand on the development and application of technology and research in agriculture. We are currently, in our opinion, veering down a dangerous path where we say that we support technology and research in agriculture, but then fail to stand up to their domestic and international opponents and, more significantly, adopt regulations that run contrary to the primacy of scientific basis. Without a clear and conscious decision on where we stand, the current and future advantage that Canada has in the fields of technology and research in agriculture will inevitably be lost.

As a result and in closing, rather than considering the advancements of technology and research in agriculture that can support Canadian exports, I urge you to consider the issue through a somewhat different lens, namely the support required for advancements of technology and research in Canadian agricultural exports.

Thank you very much for your time and attention.

I thank you once again for the opportunity to take part in this meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Ruest.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Simon Dugré, from the Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture.

[Simon Dugré]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for this unique opportunity to introduce the work of the centres collégiaux de transfert de technologie, the CCTTs, the college centres for technology transfer, of which the Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture, or CISA, is a part.

Forty years ago in Quebec, research at the college level was just beginning. Today there are more than 59 college centres for technology transfer located throughout Quebec. Our mission is to support industry in its innovation efforts in order to help it develop and be more profitable. The partners involved must contribute effectively to the complementarity of this mission.

CISA is linked to the Cégep de Victoriaville, which is located in the Centre-du-Québec region, a rich agricultural area. I would say it accounts for about about 15% of Quebec's production. We are funded by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, since in Quebec, the CEGEPS are the first level of higher education. We also receive some core funding from the Ministry of Economy, Science and Innovation.

CISA is a young centre; its status was recognized in 2009. That year, Quebec and even Canada were getting over a crisis in the pork sector. In the Centre-du-Québec, several producers had been affected by the consequences of the crisis. At the psychological level, producers were dealing with fatigue, and the suicide rate among them was alarming. Social innovation allowed us to design innovative solutions.

What is social innovation, and what is our definition of it? It consists of any idea, approach, intervention, service, product, law or organization that provides an appropriate and sustainable response to a social, economic or environmental need. I'm talking here about a solution that has been adopted and provides a community with measurable advantages. It is a systemic solution with a transformative scope. It's a methodology that supports innovation. In our opinion, when people work with technological and social innovation right from the outset to develop programs and meet the needs of enterprises, those innovations allow the enterprises to acquire work methods that are much more productive, commercially. That is in fact one of our first recommendations.

According to Grand Challenges Canada, the joint work of organizations that specialize in social innovation, together with technological enterprises and commercialization firms, is likely to allow innovations to have a worldwide reach and viability, if, at the outset, organizations are developed in parallel with appropriate social and commercial innovations. In this regard, a good example is the iPhone. That is exactly what happened there, several years ago. At the social level, people are now even studying the impact of the iPhone on human beings.

I'll give you a concrete example. We are currently developing a self-driving, electrical weeder in co-operation with another CCTT, l'Institut du véhicule innovant, which is associated with the Saint-Jérôme CEGEP, as well as with the ELMEC company, from around Shawinigan, which specializes in the design and manufacture of electrical charging stations. The CEO of that company loves the Tesla model, and decided to ask a CCTT with a technological vocation to work with him in developing an innovative solution. We were contacted and we got together with this business as well as with that college centre for technology transfer in order to determine, with them, the social and technological needs of the agricultural producers, who will be using this technology in the near future.

Our project was funded in part by a small Ministry of Education and Higher Education program whose objective is to support transfer and social innovation. We received about $100,000 for a project that represents, in total, more than $3.5 million in the context of federal government technological programs. I'm referring here to NSERC and anything involving the CFI in connection with infrastructure.

Our work has now taken this project to the prototype phase. The Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture is now an industrial partner, together with the Victoriaville CEGEP, in testing this product at the pre-commercial level on the land close to our research infrastructures. Consequently, we hope to see a strengthening of technological innovation capability through the contribution and joint efforts of social innovation from the very outset of the creative process.

I'd like to add a few brief words about the Cégep de Victoriaville. For 25 years, this CEGEP has been providing training to agricultural producers in the areas of traditional agriculture and organic farming. We have developed an organic farming diploma, with a new three-year technical program leading to a DCS in agriculture.

I'd simply like to add that the joint presence of research and college-level training has allowed us to attract a large number of students to our college. About 15 years ago, the Cégep de Victoriaville had about 15 students in its agriculture program. Now we expect to have 250 students by 2021. The federal and provincial governments provided $20 million in funding for our infrastructures, which were delivered this year.

Despite this, we still have some important challenges to meet regarding the functioning of these devices and infrastructure. We are constantly looking for funding from our partners, be they at the municipal, federal or provincial level. It's important to fund training to properly meet the short and medium-term needs of enterprises. We would like to see the federal and provincial governments make that one of their priorities.

We would like you to note the importance of supporting the Institut national d'agriculture biologique of the Cégep de Victoriaville, as well as other infrastructure needs in Quebec.

In closing, I would like to mention labour. In my opening remarks, I spoke about the psychological needs of producers. I'd also like to address the well-being of Quebec producers and processors. Currently, market pressures—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Unfortunately, Mr. Dugré, we are out of time, but you will have an opportunity to answer our questions.

[Simon Dugré]

That's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you for your presentation.

[Simon Dugré]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Shipley, before we start, I just want to highlight that you were part of that motion when we first introduced it, when you were on the committee way back, so it's fitting that we have you here on our last day today. Again, you are not just a replacement this morning, you are now permanent, so welcome to you.

Mr. Berthold, you have six minutes to put your questions.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our three witnesses very much for being here, either via video conference or in person.

Mr. Dugré, I want to say good morning to you. We live quite close to one another. I'm happy you are here with us, and pleased to discover that agriculture in the Québec region is doing so well, particularly at the Cégep de Victoriaville.

Today's topic is at the very core of our study. It's a topic we probably should have addressed a bit earlier. There are two competing trends.

Mr. Casey, you said in the beginning that the population, and demand, were growing. The answer lies in technology, but the trend is for people to reject technology. It doesn't make sense.

How did this conflict develop? What caused the gap? Why do people no longer trust technology, Mr. Casey?

[Andrew Casey]

I'll answer you in English, so that I can be more precise.

That's entirely correct. These are fantastic innovations. They are based in science. They are moving very rapidly.

Generally speaking, people are always hesitant about new things that seem incomprehensible. In our case, we're talking about biologics and using biology to change structures of different things. I think the key to that is to ensure that our science and our regulatory system is as stringent and strong as possible. In this industry's case, I see it as a competitive advantage for our industry because Canada is world renowned for its regulatory capacity. It struggles sometimes to keep up with the pace of change, but it is well known around the world as one of the leading jurisdictions from a regulatory standpoint. If our regulations are based in science and are science-driven, then I think we stand a very good chance of changing minds. Over time, people will understand.

As an example, I know that the sun is bad for my skin. I know that if I put sunblock on my skin it protects me against the sun. Is it possible that in 10 years a study will come out that says sunblock causes a cancer of some sort? Absolutely. What I do know now is that it protects me from the sun. That's what the science tells us.

It's the same thing when you're talking about genetically modified foods or any other type of produce. Science tells us that it's absolutely safe. It's been consumed for hundreds if not thousands of years. When we're talking about food that is genetically modified, we're essentially doing a more surgical version of what we've done naturally over hundreds of years. If you look at corn from a thousand years ago, you'll see that it looks like a little grain of wheat. It does not look like the corn we have today, but over time, we were able to selectively breed and grow the kind of corn we have now. Now we're doing the selective breeding in a much more refined and specific way, which provides you with something more quickly, and it's based in science.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Ruest, I'll follow up on Mr. Casey's answer.

People do indeed seem to fear technology. I worked in government for a long time. I won't name names, but it's quite a widespread trend; at a certain point, people start to bring in excessive regulation, they yield to public pressure, and they listen to popular opinion and not the science. We have to develop more and more regulations, because people were hired to do that. It's similar to what you described. Canada may wind up losing its international advantages because it has become stricter than its competitors, and that is simply due to this tendency to analyze, overanalyze and bring in too much regulation. Is that correct?

[Jean-Marc Ruest]

As I said, in Canada, the advantage our technological, scientific and other capabilities give us are being threatened by sociopolitical pressure.

To follow up on Mr. Casey's point, I would say that as a society we are willing to accept the use and application of science in a multitude of areas, such as aviation and transportation. No one fears the use of biotechnology in health care. However, when it comes to nutrition or food production, attitudes seem different. People who lie about certain facts are given a hearing.

With regard to regulation, we have to make sure that it rests on proven scientific facts.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

In your opinion, this is not the case in Canada. At this time, we are going too far.

[Jean-Marc Ruest]

There are two things I'd like to point out. First, at the government level, we have to make sure that the debates that take place are fact-based, and not based on anecdotes or fabrications. Secondly, regulation should be applied with scientific rigour.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dugré, you heard Mr. Casey and Mr. Ruest's testimony. The Centre d'innovation sociale en agriculture has an interesting challenge to meet. Indeed, technological progress goes hand in hand with the evolution of social thought.

I know I don't have any time left to put a question to you, but I just wanted to give you that opening, because I think you are going to have a role to play, and this may be a growth opportunity for your centre.

[Simon Dugré]

Yes, indeed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

Mr. Breton, you have six minutes.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank all of the witnesses for their superb presentations.

This is the last day of our study. Throughout our various meetings, I realized that research and development plays a large role in the development of technological innovation. We saw that R and D is often focused on production. People want to produce more, and faster. We may want to replace human beings, and that's fine. There are a lot of improvements in that regard.

However, how can we see to it that this R and D happens upstream from production? In Canada, we have an extraordinary competitive advantage: we have knowledge, experts, space, and high-quality products. Explain to me how all the actors could cooperate so that more R and D happens upstream.

Let's start with Mr. Casey, and then I'd like Mr. Dugré and Mr. Ruest to answer as well.