Evidence of meeting #47 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pmra.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Richard Aucoin  Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health
Andrea Johnston  Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Scott Kirby  Director General, Environmental Assessment Directorate, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health
Pierre Petelle  Vice-President, Chemistry, CropLife Canada
Paul Thiel  Vice-President, Product Development & Regulatory Science, Bayer CropScience Inc.
Chris Davison  Head, Corporate Affairs, Syngenta Canada
Paul Hoekstra  Senior Stewardship and Policy Manager, Syngenta Canada
Maria Trainer  Managing Director, Science and Regulatory Affairs, CropLife Canada

11:30 a.m.

Director General, Environmental Assessment Directorate, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Scott Kirby

I would say that agricultural producers have to make decisions based on the pests that they have, and they make them, so I can't really speak to whether or not they're overusing them.

11:30 a.m.

NDP

Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Okay.

How much time do I have? Oh, it's over.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Ms. Brosseau.

Now we go to Mrs. Lockhart for six minutes.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today.

Ms. Johnston, I have some questions about the multi-stakeholder forums that you mentioned. Who's been involved in those, and how has the ag sector been engaged?

11:30 a.m.

Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Andrea Johnston

Immediately following the proposed decision by Health Canada, AAFC created a multi-stakeholder forum, and it includes participants that are most impacted by this proposed decision. Those include grower groups, academics, research scientists, industry associations, and federal and provincial governments. We've had two face-to-face meetings, one in mid-December and one in mid-February. The real intent is to bring people together, share information, and figure out possible solutions so that we can inform the government's decision-making process.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

Can you expand on some of the suggestions or concerns you've heard at those two face-to-face hearings? What has come up from the ag sector at this point?

11:30 a.m.

Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Andrea Johnston

We had a really good discussion with the growers. They indicated how they're using these pesticides and the importance of these pesticides. We talked about some of the alternatives, and how effective or not effective they could be. These are important pesticides. They're important to the competitiveness of the sector, and growers feel that this is a serious issue and they welcome the opportunity to share their experiences as well as look at alternatives and potential solutions moving forward.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

Farmers have told us that there isn't a lot of access to alternatives at this point, so are they coming up with next steps? Where do we go from here, and what are the timelines from their perspective?

11:35 a.m.

Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Andrea Johnston

The alternative working group is working on an Excel spreadsheet or database of all the alternatives to imidacloprid for different crops. That provides an opportunity for growers to assess whether an alternative will really work in real life based on their experience, as well as understand whether other markets accept these alternatives. They will submit that database by the end of the consultation period, and that provides an opportunity to have the growers' perspectives on the alternatives available to growers.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

Do they feel now that they're getting the scientific information they need to be able to make suggestions? Is that forthcoming? Is there enough information out there to start planning a path forward at this point?

11:35 a.m.

Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Andrea Johnston

Do you mean in terms of the alternatives?

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

Yes.

11:35 a.m.

Director General, Sector Development and Analysis Directorate, Market and Industry Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Andrea Johnston

I should put a caveat around it that the alternatives will be used in the event that Health Canada makes a decision to go with the phase-out, so it is looking at the alternatives only as a precautionary approach. Further discussions will have to be held in the event that Health Canada does decide to proceed with a phase-out.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

I also had a question about pesticides and their approval. We've had environmentalists suggest—out of concern—that certain pesticides were authorized for sale without adequate scientific research.

Can you speak to those concerns?

11:35 a.m.

Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Dr. Richard Aucoin

Certainly. As with our comments on the conditionally registered pesticides, I think that's at the heart of that issue. There was a perception that when we approve a pesticide and give it a conditional registration, there is somehow information missing or data gaps, or there's a lot of uncertainty remaining. But as I indicated earlier, when we do make a risk assessment decision, we make sure that we're satisfied, we're confident, that the long-term risks will be acceptable for people and the environment.

We don't believe there was any different assessment at the time. We registered the neonics for the first time, by and large, based on all the available information that we had. We believed that the human and environmental health risks of the neonics would not be unacceptable, and we made a decision on that basis.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB

The flip side of that is that we often hear from farmers as well that they don't have access to the new pesticides, that they're already approved in other countries but may not be available here.

Has PMRA made improvements to expedite that process to have those approved?

11:35 a.m.

Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Dr. Richard Aucoin

Yes. Certainly over the last decade, for example, we've worked really closely to align our regulatory and registration approval processes with, for example, the United States specifically, so that we could both have access to the best science on both sides of the border and help address some of these access issues that Canadian agriculture was pointing out to us.

We think we've come a really long way on the joint review alignment process, and as a result of that, farmers on both sides of the border have very close access to the same pesticides. It's not perfect, but it's very close. We've taken that exact same approach working closely with OECD countries in Europe, for example, such that Canada and the United States and a lot of our global partners actually have now a global joint review process that most of the major manufacturers are taking advantage of. They're putting these new pesticides into this global joint review process amongst many countries at the same time, so that all countries essentially get access to these new pesticides in a similar time frame.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Mrs. Lockhart.

Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.

March 7th, 2017 / 11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to clarify a point. I'm just reacting to some of the comments that I saw yesterday within the media. This process is not tied to PMRA. PMRA is doing its own process. What we're doing here.... We don't report to the Minister of Health; we report to Parliament. I think it's important for people who want to appear before this committee to know that we haven't denied access to anyone to come forward. If anyone wishes to come forward, they can do so by sending an email or calling the clerk.

I thought it was important to put that on the record.

My question is for Mr. Aucoin or Mr. Kirby.

You've talked about better alignment with the U.S. on the registration side for pesticides. In the bigger picture, we have the Regulatory Cooperation Council. We're trying to align our interests. On the front end, I get that you said you've done some good work with the U.S. in terms of aligning interests, but what about on the back end, when it comes to banning pesticides, for instance? How much work are you guys doing on the back end with the U.S.?

If Canada is proposing to move forward with a ban, how is the U.S. EPA reacting to that, and what are their thoughts?

11:40 a.m.

Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Dr. Richard Aucoin

Just to clarify, we co-operate very closely with our partners at the U.S. EPA and other regulatory authorities around the world. The focus of that co-operation is typically a little more at the front end, as you describe it, in terms of understanding how we use all the available science and how we do our assessments. However, at the end of the day, we all recognize that we're all going to be making our own independent decisions.

In the case of imidacloprid, as an example, we completed our assessment of imidacloprid some time ago, and we made sure that we collaborated with the U.S. EPA. It essentially peer-reviewed our risk assessment, and came to essentially the same conclusion we did in terms of the level of risk that it posed. The U.S. also published its own risk assessment on imidacloprid recently, and it essentially agrees with the outcome of our risk assessment on imidacloprid.

We've done a lot of work with the U.S. EPA on the front end, if you're talking about pre-market authorizations. If you're talking about our re-evaluation program, post-market, many years down the road, we still collaborate with the U.S. EPA as much as we can. For example, on the pollinator issues around the neonics, we collaborate very closely. For many of the older chemicals, we are in contact with it. Sometimes our re-evaluation schedules don't fully align with those of the U.S. Both in the United States and in Canada, we have a statutory obligation to re-examine old pesticides on a 15-year cycle.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Is work being done to ensure that our re-evaluation periods align? One of the complaints we hear is that we're putting people at a competitive disadvantage or that they won't be on a level playing field with the U.S. if we ban this first and it comes in after.

11:40 a.m.

Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Dr. Richard Aucoin

In terms of the schedule, older chemicals typically tended to be authorized for use in the United States first and in Canada much later, which resulted in a lot of access concerns for Canadian agriculture. However, because we both have this statutory obligation around the cyclical re-evaluation, the timing is out of sync for us to work together on a lot of the older chemicals. As we do new chemicals jointly, we anticipate that we're going to be picking up those chemicals together in the future.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

I want to ask about the mitigation strategy and again how it relates to that of the U.S. You said that the U.S. reached conclusions similar to those of PMRA, but have you had any signs of what the U.S. is proposing? Now that it needs to react to the science, what is it proposing to move forward in terms of mitigation? Is it proposing a ban, or is it proposing a different use of the pesticide?

11:45 a.m.

Executive Director, Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Department of Health

Dr. Richard Aucoin

The United States has released its risk assessment, but it has not made a determination on how it's going to manage that risk yet, which is to say that it hasn't proposed phasing it out, for example.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Does PMRA do any field testing to ensure that when you decide to propose a ban as opposed to a mitigation strategy to using the pesticide...? How does that decision come forward? Do you do on-field testing to see whether if you use the pesticide in a certain way you get different results? Is that done through PMRA?