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

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

It's biased.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

No, it's not. I'm fair.

March 7th, 2017 / 12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the position.

I'm going to continue the pattern that we've been developing here with this committee. Could you maybe answer Mr. Anderson's question on where you see this heading in the future for you?

12:40 p.m.

Vice-President, Chemistry, CropLife Canada

Pierre Petelle

For this specific active...?

12:40 p.m.

Conservative

David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Do you think this is going to have an impact on the ban? Is the multi-stakeholder forum participation actually going to make a difference?

12:40 p.m.

Vice-President, Chemistry, CropLife Canada

Pierre Petelle

We're certainly entering into it with that belief. We've put a lot of human resources into the working groups, as have other agriculture stakeholders. We're taking it seriously, and we're putting in the time and effort with the belief that the outcome of that could affect the decision.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you.

First, thanks to everybody for coming. We are scrambling a bit. We also found out about this late in the game.

I want to talk about timing. When we found out... After November 23 we went into the holiday season. When we came back and had to get to work as a committee, we sent in a letter to ask if we could get an extension. We were able to get 30 days. Then we had a motion to do this study to try to get some of the testimony forward that could have been involved previously. As other witnesses have said, that wasn't part of the process this time.

In January, a study came out of Europe from the HFFA. Are you familiar with that two-year study on...? It wasn't specifically on imidacloprid but it was to do with neonics. If any of you have read that study—it came out January 2017—do you any comments on the findings? No?

12:40 p.m.

Dr. Maria Trainer Managing Director, Science and Regulatory Affairs, CropLife Canada

Is that the value of the neonics? It's the European Union—

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Yes, the EU study.

12:40 p.m.

Head, Corporate Affairs, Syngenta Canada

Chris Davison

The Humboldt study.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Exactly.

12:40 p.m.

Head, Corporate Affairs, Syngenta Canada

Chris Davison

Yes, I'll just make a general comment because I referenced it in passing. There have been a number of studies done by different bodies, including government, industry, and other stakeholders, a couple of think tanks, etc., over the last several years. The comment I made was that, while the scope of their analysis and the methodology or the criteria they would have used to do those vary depending on where they were from and what they were focused on, they all came to the conclusion that there was economic and other on-farm value for this class of chemistry.

Yes, we are broadly aware of that particular study as well as a number of others.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

That's good, thanks.

It was something that came up in a conversation at the University of Guelph. I met with the research chair for sustainable pest management from the school of environmental studies, and she is considered an expert in the world on this. She also said that she hadn't been consulted prior to the announcement. She also said that modelling was used more than field data. A concern she had was that data from the field wasn't being used or wasn't being gathered.

As we go forward now, we have three working groups. When were you involved with those working groups, and what's the term of those groups? How long do they have to report into PMRA?

12:40 p.m.

Managing Director, Science and Regulatory Affairs, CropLife Canada

Dr. Maria Trainer

The working groups were formed in late December, shortly before the holiday break, as a result of the first meeting of the multi-stakeholder forum. They've been meeting weekly, or each of them meets on a weekly basis by teleconference. They have work plans developed and I believe that tomorrow is the date that those work plans get presented to the PMRA to give them an update on where the groups are at and what the anticipated timelines for completing the deliverables will be.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

It seems like those work groups are the cart after the horse. We could have had work groups to inform the decisions versus having work groups to try to reverse or defend the agriculture positions. It puts us in a very difficult position because the agriculture committee is reporting back to Parliament to say how this lines up with health considerations, how it lines up with Dominic Barton's report saying that we have this huge opportunity that could be addressed through the technologies that your companies and organizations are working on, but it feels like the legs are getting taken out from under us a bit.

There are nods of the head, which go on the record as nods of the head.

I'm really struggling with this, because there is science that needs to be brought forward. Do we have enough time to get that science on the table and will it make a difference in the final decisions? If you'd been into the work groups and with the progress, we haven't had a lot of time to develop science.

I'll also say that the University of Guelph said to me that they don't have an alternative in the pipeline. I thought that because this decision had been made it must mean that there was an alternative in the pipeline, and they said in order to go through regulatory approvals there's no way that we'd be able to match the phase-out period with the development of a new product.

12:45 p.m.

Vice-President, Chemistry, CropLife Canada

Pierre Petelle

Maybe I'll just touch on that alternatives question because we hear a lot about that, that as long as there are alternatives, the impact on growers will be minimal.

It goes back to what I said earlier. If the regulatory environment is questionable or if the companies are at a fundamental disagreement on the science with the regulator, the ability for them to bring new innovations to Canada will be diminished over time, without question. These are global companies. Canada is a relatively small market. It is a small market. Other than canola, and wheat maybe, every other crop is considered a very small crop, so it's not Canada that's driving the agenda for new chemistry.

Like I said in my testimony, PMRA has played a leadership role in getting those new technologies to Canada, so we commend them, absolutely, for that, but we can't be undoing that on the back end, to quote Mr. Drouin, on our re-evaluation decisions. Otherwise, the regulatory attractiveness of Canada will diminish.

12:45 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you.

12:45 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

Thank you, Mr. Longfield, and thank you, witnesses.

I get a spot, so I'm taking off my chair hat and putting on the NDP member's hat. You can time me, too. I'll be honest and I have

the clerk, who will help me.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their participation at this study. It's a start. We had government officials earlier today. We had Health Canada and we had Agriculture.

This is a complex issue. It's been going on for quite a few years. Neonics have been approved since, I think it was, the 1980s, 1990s. Over the last few years, I think farmers have been using these pesticides and certain other products. There have been studies. There have been a lot of questions by Canadians and environmental groups and I think yesterday brought it to the forefront, talking about the study that is being done at the ag committee and the interest, not just from Canadians but from environmental groups.

I think this is a study that we're starting. We're in our second hour. We're going to have another meeting later on. I think that if there's interest to delve into this a little bit deeper, it would be important that we consider making sure that we have—not all voices heard, that's going to be impossible—a great and deep study on this issue.

I know it was brought up that you don't have very much confidence in PMRA and the evaluation. There was a lot of speculation about the problems with flexibility and transparency.

Mr. Thiel, you were talking about the water samples, 22 studies that were submitted to the PMRA. I asked this question of the previous witnesses: is Environment Canada taking a leadership role in testing waters and doing the real-world data? It's not happening. What would you like to see come forward? I know we're talking about maybe science that will help reinforce mitigation measures that could be adopted. What are you hoping to see in this consultation period that is going on until the March 23?

12:45 p.m.

Vice-President, Product Development & Regulatory Science, Bayer CropScience Inc.

Paul Thiel

Thank you very much for the question and the opportunity to respond.

I think first and foremost we would like to see the PMRA consider more of the data that is available than what is currently in their decision. There is a wealth of data out there that wasn't part of this decision. It was discounted. This included higher-tier risk assessments as well as considerable monitoring data from across Canada that demonstrated there was no level of imidacloprid in the water samples of concern.

I don't profess to be an expert at all on the role of Environment Canada. I know that they have relied extensively on Environment Canada water sampling. One thing that has become very clear, however, is that there is no national program, no national standard, on how this type of work should be conducted. Perhaps that might be a positive outcome here.

12:50 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

Some groups have kind of applauded and praised the decision by Health Canada to phase out this pesticide. Obviously, from a farmer's point of view, there are questions: “What am I going to do? What does this phase-out mean for me?” There's some kind of uncertainty.

Could you maybe comment on what this would mean for you if this got phased out in Canada? This product is being used widely across Canada and all provinces, I would imagine. What would this mean if in the next few years we phased this out? If this would be big losses for your company, you'd then maybe have to improvise, and try to push forward and have other products assessed and hopefully approved to compensate for the loss of use.

12:50 p.m.

Vice-President, Product Development & Regulatory Science, Bayer CropScience Inc.

Paul Thiel

If I may, I'd like to answer that in three parts.

First of all, we constantly look at new innovation for the marketplace. We're constantly trying to introduce new technologies that better serve Canadian production agriculture, be it chemistry, trait development, or biologicals.

With respect to what it would mean to us financially, imidacloprid has a very broad label. It's used extensively for everything from fleas and ticks in your dogs and cats to control of wireworms in wheat production in Saskatchewan. It is a generic product. It's supplied by many people in the marketplace, which is an advantage for growers. It's a very affordable product. It represents good economic value for growers.

What would it mean to us if it were phased out? More importantly, I think, is what would it mean, as Pierre said, to the reputation of Canada when we have a very safe, efficacious product that's been in use for 20 years with no reported negative environmental impact, but it's decided to be phased out by this country? What would that mean to the competitiveness of Canadian agriculture and to the reputation of the PMRA as a regulatory agency?

12:50 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

I guess we could also reflect on the fact that there are some European countries that have banned similar products. We just signed a trade deal. Certain countries are approving it, and gradually it will happen soon enough. Maybe that would help improve trade with certain countries in Europe, because Canada is going.... It can be said both ways, I guess, because in Europe they'd ban in certain places, so maybe it could be beneficial.

With regard to the transition period, obviously we're so unsure. If I'm a farmer and this actually goes ahead, what other products would be used to compensate for this?

12:50 p.m.

Vice-President, Product Development & Regulatory Science, Bayer CropScience Inc.

12:50 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

You don't have to answer. I apparently have 20 seconds left.

I want to be just with everybody, because I don't want to get my fingers slapped.

Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.

12:50 p.m.

Liberal

Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Thank you.

First off, thanks for being here. I want to touch on a comment by the PMRA, that the U.S. is sort of heading the same way as Canada. Do you feel that, or are you speaking with your U.S. counterparts on that? It's just that they mentioned that at the committee an hour ago, and I wanted to see whether you've had chats with your U.S. counterparts and if that's really where they're going.