Agriculture Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Could we check the interpretation service, please?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Do you want me to keep talking, Pat, so that we can see if they can do the translation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Is it working, Mr. Perron?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Could you repeat your last question, Mr. Blois?

Mr. Chair, could you roll back the time on the clock?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay. Try it again, Kody.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I'm happy to ask it. I have about 45 seconds on my clock. I just want to make sure that's about what you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Yes, that's about it. We stopped the clock.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Okay. I'll quickly ask my question.

We talked about business risk management programs. Minister Bibeau, after the conference between her ministers, had talked about making improvements around reference margin limits and the compensation amount. You just talked about the importance. Is that something the government is looking at, at the provincial level, to be able to improve these programs?

[Jamie Curran]

The province has committed to looking at long-term reform, not short-term reform.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Okay. I appreciate that.

The last thing I'll mention—and I might not be able to get it out in my 20 seconds left—will be to the gentleman with CropLife. You talked about the different plant breeding aspects and how some of the canola crops went to the United States. Obviously, yes, there's probably room on regulatory reform. Is that also just due to the bigger consumer market? How much has that been happening in the past just because of the size and scale of the consumer market?

I'll stop, Pat. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you. I'll have to stop you there, but hold that question. Perhaps you'll have a chance, Mr. Affleck, to answer it with another member.

We'll continue with Mr. Perron for six minutes.

You have the floor.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I will allow Mr. Curran to respond quickly to Mr. Blois' question, because I'm interested in what he has to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Was that question for Mr. Curran or Mr. Affleck?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I don't know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I believe the question was for Mr. Affleck.

Mr. Affleck, go ahead.

[Ian Affleck]

Thank you. I would say that the opposite applies, where it would make more sense to commercialize in Canada because there's more acreage for canola here. That's where you would want to commercialize. For small and medium-sized enterprises, they need to get that commodity into a marketplace and start returning investment. It's what pushes it into the U.S. first, and then Canada will get it once we figure out how to get it through. It might not even need any approvals in Canada. It's too opaque.

You have your product. You have to get it in the field somewhere and you get it in the field where you can. The North American consumer market is basically one market. Canada has the advantage in canola, when it comes to acreage, to get it into the field.

[Dennis Prouse]

Yes, I would say, Mr. Blois, really quickly, that's why we're so passionate about this subject. Canola is ours. That is a triumph of Canadian agriculture and Canadian biotech. The regulations that were first in place in the mid-nineties allowed that industry to flourish. Now they need a reset, which is to Ian's point.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I had not thanked the witnesses for being here, because I wanted to hear the answer to Mr. Blois' question. I would therefore now like to thank all the witnesses for their time and for making themselves available.

You spoke about regulations to be amended. If you had one specific aspect in mind that needed changing, what would it be?

You're giving evidence before a committee that can have an influence on the government. What would your recommendations be?

[Ian Affleck]

What we're seeing globally as a regulatory trend is that, instead of saying if things are inside and outside of ranges, which is very vague.... That's the problem. People aren't sure what they have to do in Canada so they go to places where they are sure. The global regulatory trend is this: Are you working inside of the genome of a plant, or are you bringing things in that are outside of the genome? Are you working with the DNA that's already in the plant or are you bringing in some new DNA?

If you're bringing in new DNA, there's more oversight. If you're not, if you're just doing conventional breeding, onwards you go. That's the competitive space we're in. On that specific canola example, they look like conventional breeding. They were not regulated anywhere else in the world, so they moved to those jurisdictions.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I understand from your response that the regulations are not precise enough. We might do well to more clearly identify which constituents have been genetically modified.

Should these be more highly regulated?

I'd like to have some details about this.

[Ian Affleck]

Yes, it's understanding what a plant is capable of and using that as a barometer of when you need to look and when you don't. Other countries are lining up behind that. Europe published their food safety report two weeks ago that said gene editing provides no additional risk above conventional breeding.

We need not only to be clear and more precise, but we need to update ourselves, as Dennis said, to the modern state of the science that the rest of the world is kind of beating us to. This is the opportunity we see in front of us with the consultations coming in January.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay.

What would you say to the movements demanding clearer identification of GMOs? I assume this would not be a problem for you.

[Ian Affleck]

I think, if you're speaking of labelling specifically, of how we label products, it's important to preserve the Canadian approach that we mandatorily label for food and safety issues: food, nutrition and safety. Once you move to consumer preference issues, then you're no longer preserving that integrity of health and safety as your mandatory labelling requirement.

Following what is safe is first key and then consumer preference. We should facilitate that through private industry approaches to marketing.

[Dennis Prouse]

I was going to say that there is a private labelling system that's available now for consumers. In our view, that works well. We think we'd be heading down the wrong road and contrary to what Health Canada's policy has been by moving to a mandatory system.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay.

Don't you think that the people who want this are entitled to know, particularly if the research proves that there are no impacts? In any event, we're getting into matters of opinion.

I'd also like to hear what you have to say about consumers who want more organic crops.

Is this kind of farming in conflict with yours or do you see it as another form of production that might be complementary?