Agriculture Committee on March 7th, 2017

[Paul Thiel]

I'm in touch with my U.S. colleagues on a weekly basis, as are other colleagues of mine here in Canada. The difference between the action taken by the PMRA versus the EPA is that the EPA has come out and said it wants to enter into a consultation prior to putting out a proposal to take regulatory steps. In this case, the horse is in front of the cart.

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

Is it your opinion that advocating for a total ban versus perhaps revisiting some of the mitigation strategies that may exist...? Have your companies or members gone through their mitigation strategies to see whether or not to work with farmers? I know you guys already do that, but given the proposed decision by PMRA, have you gone back and looked at potential mitigation strategies?

[Paul Thiel]

We're actively participating in the mitigation round table. To be honest, we disagree with the threshold values and we disagree that there's an issue. It's hard to mitigate an issue that we don't believe exists.

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

I've asked PMRA before about better aligning our.... We have the Regulatory Cooperation Council way up at the top, and then collaborating.... I know many farm groups have asked us to provide better collaboration with the U.S. They're claiming they're doing it on the front end, but on the back end and on the re-evaluation of certain products, that's not being done.

Do you see an advantage for the PMRA and the U.S. EPA in collaborating when they suspect there may be an issue, or when they've been provided new scientific evidence of a certain product?

[Pierre Petelle]

As an industry we advocate for working together or harmonization, so, like I said on the front end, we've achieved a lot. On the re-evaluation side, on the older chemistry, there's still a lot of work to do. Richard pointed out the timelines. Some of the timelines are statutory, so it's hard to play with those, but wherever possible, absolutely, aligning those re-evaluation decisions and coming up with approaches and proposals that are consistent for growers in Canada and the U.S. is something we always advocate for.

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

I'm always trying to find a middle ground where parties on opposite sides can come to some sort of agreement. Again, I think the basis has to be found in science. That science conversation, does it happen? Dr. Paul, do you get calls from scientists on the other side, or does that conversation not happen at all?

[Paul Hoekstra]

One thing Canadians should probably be aware of is that we're incredibly blessed with a very talented pool of academic researchers in this country who deal with environment issues. From the University of Guelph to the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba to the University of Saskatchewan, there is a wide range of researchers involved in pesticide and environmental issues as a whole. Have they been engaged on this? I would say, yes, to a certain degree. Have they been engaged on this in terms of a PMRA perspective? I can't comment on that.

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

I'm no scientist. I don't understand the science and I would never claim to understand it, but based on our past study of GMO salmon, it was evident that among those who advocated against GMO, the science just was not there. We asked them to provide the science, and unfortunately all they could advocate for was that we provide more research dollars to do more research. There seems to be a disconnect between some groups, and urban Canada could be concerned about pesticides, especially not knowing where food comes from anymore.

Public trust is built into the new agricultural policy framework. We know there's an issue. I'm trying to see, from an industry perspective, how we can provide that public trust with the other side to ensure we continue having that adult conversation so that we're not constantly confronted with Internet science.

[Pierre Petelle]

You'll note that even in his testimony, Dr. Aucoin mentioned possibly 100,000 submissions. For a typical PMRA re-evaluation, if you get 30 submissions, that's a lot of interest. It's the registrants and maybe a few academics. It's a very technical area.

A possible 100,000 submissions means that 99,000 of those are activist-based “click and send”, as I said in my testimony.

We've looked at those websites, and basically even on this issue, even on this active ingredient, they talk about death to bees and the alarm around dying bees and even human health issues. Things that are clearly out of scope, clearly addressed by PMRA in this document, are being used to scare the public into engaging on this issue.

Our concern is that these 100,000 submissions, or even the fact that they're mentioned here today, is an issue for us.

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

Do you have enough time, with the March 23 deadline, to submit the scientific data that you wanted to submit?

[Pierre Petelle]

I'll let Paul answer that first.

[Paul Thiel]

Yes, Bayer CropScience will have a submission in by March 23.

[Pierre Petelle]

On the broader question of data for this summer, trying to tease out some of the water monitoring obviously takes a season or more to do. It is here that we've asked for some flexibility on the timelines.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Ruth Ellen Brosseau]

Thank you. I would like to thank our witnesses today and my committee member colleagues for great questions and comments.

Thank you, everyone.

The meeting is adjourned.