I'm the director of research and innovation at Grande Prairie Regional College. Formerly, I was the dean at Fairview College for agriculture technologies and with responsibility for the commercial beekeeping program. I'm currently responsible for the National Bee Diagnostic Centre, of which Carlos Castillo is the applied scientist manager.
Bees and other natural pollinators are essential in order to maintain healthy and diverse ecosystems. The commercially raised honeybee is the most important pollinator in our food production systems, contributing well over $2 billion to the Canadian agriculture sector by means of improved yield and quality.
In the last 10 years there has been a well-documented deterioration of the health conditions of both commercial and wild bees. Beekeepers are reporting higher than expected colony losses during the winter and there is significant reduction in the presence and numbers of native bees.
The high honeybee losses are affecting the beekeeping industry and their services to the agrifood sector. A complete understanding of what is producing this decline has yet to emerge. However, the scientific community agrees that losses cannot be assigned to one single cause. There is a complex of conditions and factors, including but not limited to, and in no particular order, hive management practices, monoculture crop production systems, habitat loss, exposure to pesticides, weather conditions, endemic and exotic diseases, pests and parasites, as well as poor-quality queens.
The National Bee Diagnostic Centre was created by Grande Prairie Regional College in response to requests from the regional beekeeping industry for more robust diagnostic capacity and services. GPRC built the National Bee Diagnostic Centre at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Beaverlodge research farm specifically to facilitate collaboration with the national honeybee management program led by Dr. Steve Pernal. The Beaverlodge research farm and the NBDC are located in the county of Grande Prairie adjacent to the town of Beaverlodge, 40 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, Alberta, in the Peace Country, one of Canada's leading honey-producing areas.
The National Bee Diagnostic Centre is the only comprehensive laboratory in Canada focused exclusively on the diagnostics of pests, pathogens, and parasites affecting honeybees. It uses microscopy, microbiology, and molecular biology techniques in order to achieve its findings. Its primary objective is to provide independent, confidential diagnostic services and analyses from which evidence-based decisions can be made in order to contribute to both a healthy, competitive, profitable, and dynamic beekeeping industry and to food security concerns.
The NBDC was the first initiative to result from an April 2010 memorandum of understanding between GPRC and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's science partnerships directorate. The Beaverlodge research farm-based initiative was supported with investments from the Rural Alberta Development Fund, Western Economic Diversification, and GPRC. Construction started in November 2011 with completion in December 2012. While the laboratory was being commissioned, the college was able to secure a technology access centre grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council college and community initiative fund. Thus the NBDC began operations in April 2013 with an expanded mandate as a technology access centre.
Since then it has been providing comprehensive, reliable, accurate, and timely diagnostic services as the NBDC as well as applied research and innovation services, training, and outreach as a TAC. This dual mandate enables the NBDC, which I will refer to for this presentation, to serve beekeepers and the beekeeping industry, industry professionals, government, and university researchers from across the country. In 2014 and again in 2015 the NBDC increased its diagnostic capabilities through specialized equipment grants from NSERC. The NBDC is guided by a national-level industry, government, and university advisory committee sponsored by NSERC. It is one of 30 technology access centres within the emergent NSERC-sponsored Tech Access Canada network.
Within its applied research mandate, NBDC has established relationships and collaborations with researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, and the University of British Columbia, and it has an emergent partnership with the University of Saskatchewan.
As in the case of the national research project on sustaining and securing Canada's honeybees using “omic” tools, led by UBC and York University, NBDC provides the diagnostic services critical to the research agendas of these scientists. However, the primary applied research relationship is with the beekeeping industry, which receives diagnostic services and support for its research needs.
The most significant industry project, the Canadian national honeybee health survey, is currently being conducted on behalf of commercial beekeepers. The Alberta Beekeepers Association is leading on behalf of the industry and its government funding partners. The Canadian national honeybee health survey is a four-year initiative that started in 2014. It's aim is the design and verification of country-wide sampling procedures in order to establish a country-wide baseline of endemic pests, parasites, and diseases affecting honeybees. In addition, apiaries will be sampled for exotic pests considered to be high risks to the beekeeping industry. Pesticide residue analyses are scheduled for year four.
The NBDC is currently operating beyond its initial capacity targets, growing from 1,800 diagnostics in year one, to 8,000 in year two, to over 20,000 in this year, year three. Staff complement has doubled to five full-time employees, and depending on the time of year, the NBDC is host to students, interns, visiting scholars, and bee professionals.
Additionally, it has established relationships with leading international honeybee diagnostic scientists and laboratories in Europe and the U.S. Recently, Grande Prairie Regional College has initiated steps to expand the facility and its capacity to meet this growing demand for service. It envisions a national centre of excellence for bees in collaboration with existing and additional industry, government, and university partners in order to serve the critical needs of Canadian beekeepers and Canadians.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.