Well, I guess you can say that CRISPR is.... Conventional plant breeding has been happening for 10,000 years. The modern stuff that we're talking about and that we regulate right now has been happening in the last 50 to 60 years. CRISPR is the next 40 years. This is the new technology. It's faster. It's more precise. It's easier to generate the data required for regulations, so it's an exciting new field. It's also far more accessible to smaller businesses, because the cost of innovation goes down. This really could create a much more diverse innovation marketplace.
Going back to the U.S. and how they compare, on average they're faster than we are, but not by a lot. If you look at the average, you'll see that it's, say, 18 months versus 24. They do have some interesting policy tools, whereby if you bring in something that looks a lot like something else, they can bridge it and give you a very quick approval in four to six months for very similar products. Where their system slows down is that it can become very litigious. You can sue those government agencies, which then jams things up for 12 years. It's excellent that Canada stands on science and doesn't have that problem.
The biggest interest is in their proposals about what we are going to do in the future. We have 20 years of history in regulating these products, and never have we or anyone in the world seen a problem. Are we going to put that same level of regulatory barrier in front of the next generation of products when we can learn from the last 20 years and maybe have a more modernized approach? There's an opportunity for Canada to work with the U.S. there, not just to do what they're doing, but to influence what they're doing to make sure it lands in line with what we think the appropriate science is here in Canada.