Agriculture Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

I call the meeting back to order.

I'd like to thank the new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you before speaking, or until you've been directly asked a question by a member of Parliament.

We have only one person on Zoom, MP Harrison, and she knows the rules.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motions adopted by the committee on Thursday, September 18, 2025, the committee is resuming its study on the government's regulatory reform initiative in agriculture and agri-food.

We have three witnesses here today.

From the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, we have Tyler McCann. From Precision AI Inc., Mr. Daniel McCann is joining us. From Vive Crop Protection, Darren Anderson is with us.

You each have up to five minutes, and then we'll open it up in a rotation from each party.

Why don't we start off with Darren.

Are you fine to start?

[Darren Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, Vive Crop Protection]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Great. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

[Darren Anderson]

Thank you.

My name is Dr. Darren Anderson, and I am the CEO and co-founder of Vive Crop Protection.

We're a Canadian agricultural technology company headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. Vive is Canada's only domestic developer and manufacturer of differentiated crop protection, based on technology originally developed at the University of Toronto. We strengthen the agricultural sector and global food security with innovative products that deliver substantial benefits to Canadian farmers. We employ over 65 people in Canada and the U.S.

Despite Vive being a homegrown success, our first Canadian product approval from the PMRA came only in 2023, seven years after the same product was approved in the U.S. That delay meant that Canadian farmers had to wait while American farmers gained the benefits of a made-in-Canada innovation. That can't continue.

Canada needs a regulatory system that rewards innovation, environmental sustainability and improved farm productivity, not one that drives investment and technology elsewhere. I believe that instead of our regulatory system being a barrier to innovation, it can be a catalyst so that Canadian farmers are some of the first to gain access to new innovations.

Canada has the unique opportunity to lead in agricultural innovation and productivity. Canada should be punching above our weight in agriculture. In almost every other industry, companies like Vive should go to the U.S. first, because the market tends to be 10 times larger due to 10 times the population. However, in Canada, our $150-billion agri-food sector is about half the size of the U.S. agri-food sector. This creates an opportunity to build for Canada first. This is Canada's moment to lead.

Other countries are already modernizing their regulatory systems. Brazil recently implemented major changes to its regulatory system, cutting approval times dramatically. There was a particular focus for these changes to encourage registration of bio-based crop inputs, a key area of innovation globally. Biologicals now account for over 10% of Brazil's crop protection market, growing more than 40% annually. Australia has built a system that is rigorous but predictable, and as a result some global companies launch products there first.

The U.S. EPA is currently underfunded and facing growing backlogs. This creates an opportunity for Canada to lead in North America, to become the trusted science-driven regulator that companies look to first. If we move decisively, we can make Canada the best place in the world to develop tests and launch agricultural technologies that improve sustainability, productivity and economic competitiveness. We can become a jurisdiction that combines scientific integrity with speed and predictability.

We have three core recommendations.

First, revise premarket consultations to improve government transparency, predictability and certainty. A more open and responsive PMRA can help applicants navigate the regulatory system. This supports innovative companies, compared to multinationals with significant in-house resources, and will create a more transparent and predictable means of bringing innovative pest control products to Canadian farmers.

Canada's economic and food security hinges on the ability to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global economy. As global value chains become increasingly interconnected and economic nationalism is on the rise—as seen with the tariff issues—the resilience of our economy depends on an efficient, flexible and responsive PMRA that operates with certainty and predictability.

The second recommendation is to leverage regulatory reviews from trusted risk-based jurisdictions. To reduce duplication and red tape, PMRA should rely on risk assessments already completed in trusted risk-based jurisdictions. Our proposed approach is to grant provisional registration while allowing PMRA to require additional data or revoke the approval if needed. This approach maintains high standards while ensuring Canada keeps pace with global competitiveness.

Third, we should be aiming to transform the PMRA into the most efficient crop protection regulator in the world and say so loudly. By properly reallocating existing funding, the PMRA can establish a rapid, transparent and predictable means of bringing innovative pest control products to Canadian farmers while driving a cultural shift to reduce red tape, duplicative effort and overall costs. Modernizing the PMRA is not just about speed or red tape reduction; it's about economic policy, competitiveness, food security and sustainability. It's the difference between being a global leader in sustainable agriculture and being a follower of our own market.

Members of the committee, this is Canada's moment. We cannot afford another lost decade. Canada has already made strides to advance critical areas like oil and gas with a push to improve pipelines in less than two years. These are billion-dollar nation-building initiatives. If those can be approved in two years, shouldn't we be able to build a system where Canadian innovation benefits Canadian farmers in less than half the time?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

Next we'll go to Precision AI for five minutes.

[Daniel McCann, Chief Executive Officer, Precision AI Inc.]

Thank you very much.

I'm Daniel McCann. I am the founder and CEO of Precision AI. We are a Canadian artificial intelligence company that's focused very specifically on building artificial intelligence models for the agricultural sector. We're doing a lot of work in applied agricultural models. We're building them into machinery that also operates on the farm to be able to provide quantifiable reductions in pesticide use and reductions in fertilizer use, and to improve farming economics.

My background is that I was raised in a farming family in Saskatchewan, Canada. Obviously, I'm a very proud Saskatchewanite. I was raised there for about 20 years and then ran off and became a tech entrepreneur. I started a few companies in technology, and I ended up coming back to the farm. The reason is that I saw a generational opportunity, something that comes along once in a lifetime. The application of artificial intelligence to agriculture has the ability to be not just a step change in agriculture but also, profoundly, one of the most important innovations and important step changes in global agriculture that we've ever seen. It's probably equivalent, if not greater in potential, to moving from the horse to the tractor, for example.

The reason I make such a bold claim is that the amount of waste in agriculture is absolutely significant. We over-fertilize. We overspray. We do a lot of things that are bad for farm sustainability and bad for farm economics. Through artificial intelligence, we actually have the ability to take our farming decisions from really inefficient field skills, where we don't really know what's going on, down to individual plant-level decision-making. The amount of economic gain you can get from that is staggering.

I like giving case studies to put things in context. We developed an artificial intelligence model that can recognize and isolate weeds from crops and allow crop-spraying to just weeds instead of spraying the entire field. Through field trials, we were able to quantifiably reduce the use of pesticide by 83% and fertilizer by 60% while improving yield by 2%. In farm economics terms, that's well over $100 an acre—very, very significant economics.

We built this technology into swarms of crop-spraying drones that can use artificial intelligence to scan fields and apply pesticides just to the places where they need to be applied. We can't sell it in Canada. That's a problem. It's largely because of the regulatory environment. A variety of regulatory policies were put in place long before artificial intelligence was even conceptualized as a possibility on the farm, and they don't allow for progress in this area. We desperately need to modernize that in order to be competitive.

I think we have four pillars where we can modernize. The first one is to create a regulatory sandbox where such innovators as Precision AI and other companies can actually go and test these new technologies on very, very limited-scale fields so that we can collect the data we need in order to prove the safety and efficacy of the systems.

The second one, in addition to a regulatory sandbox, is predictable timelines for approvals. As you all well know, when you're dealing with modern agricultural technology, the ability to fund it and see it through to commercialization is very important. With no certainty on timelines, there's no certainty for the investors who invest into these capital solutions. There's a dearth of capital in Canada as well.

As Mr. Anderson said, the other one is to allow research from other regions. With the PMRA right now, you cannot look at research. With drone spraying, for example, there's a variety of data from all over the world that we can't look at. We have to recreate those research studies ourselves domestically. That doesn't make any sense.

The last one is to consolidate approvals. For drone spraying, you have multiple regulatory agencies, such as Transport Canada and the PMRA, that all sort of work together and create multiples of uncertainty. If you could have a regulatory concierge, as an example, it would allow innovators like us to move quickly through these processes.

In conclusion, let me say this: We have the science, we have the technology and we have the talent. Agriculture is one of the most important industries in Canada. We can be a world leader again in this space if we let our racehorses run domestically here, in Canada, instead of having them go down to Kentucky, literally and figuratively, to run in the Kentucky Derby.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

That was a great presentation.

Next is Tyler McCann.

[Tyler McCann, Managing Director, Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, good afternoon.

Thank you for your invitation.

The committee’s work on regulatory reform is essential. The lack of significant progress signals a need to step up our efforts. The all-party support for regulatory reform shows just how important this file is, and should spur action.

CAPI's work is increasingly driven by the need for an agriculture policy reset that focuses on growth by adding value through investment and innovation and adding risk mitigation in an era of increased volatility and uncertainty. Regulatory reform is essential for both.

Not a day goes by without our running into the issue of regulatory reform. We read studies that highlight Canada's poor performance in global rankings, the cost of regulatory accumulation and the potential benefits of reducing regulatory burden. We hear about it when we talk to farmers, processors and the sector about the challenges facing ag innovation, investment attraction and why other countries perform better than Canada does.

In our 2024 agri-food risk survey, the policy and regulatory environment was the highest-ranking risk facing the sector. Not only did respondents identify it as a top risk; they expressed little confidence in our ability to mitigate it. It's not a surprise that there was no confidence in our ability to mitigate extreme weather or geopolitics, but the domestic policy and regulatory environment is entirely within our control. We should be able to do something about it.

In 2025, we asked an additional question about why respondents selected the policy and regulatory environment as a risk. The good news is that the policy and regulatory risk was not the top risk this year; the bad news is that this is because all of the other risks are getting worse. When we asked, “What leads to your belief that policy and regulatory risk is an issue?”, 50% of the respondents selected unnecessary regulatory burden as the driver.

In the conclusions from our first risk report, we highlighted the need for government to do less but to do it better. Smart regulation is a key to doing it better. The need for smarter regulations highlights the critical role that regulations play. A smart regulatory framework provides credibility for customers and end-users, facilitates trade, encourages investment and provides predictability and certainty for regulated parties, but bad regulations work against all of those things.

I think there are four things that are needed for a smart regulatory approach.

The first is enabling legislation. The Safe Food for Canadians Act modernized much of the legislative framework, but there are opportunities for further legislative reform, including in the Canada Grain Act and the Seeds Act.

The second need is an enabling regulatory framework. There is significant room for improvement in delivering a regulatory framework that's focused on health and safety, enables growth and facilitates investment.

The third is ensuring that regulatory bodies have the resources they need to effectively deliver the regulations. Efficient delivery is critical, but it is important that regulators have the resources they need to do their job.

The final need is to have the right regulatory culture. This is often the most challenging part and the hardest to change.

This brings me to six recommendations focused on creating a better regulatory system.

First, the minister should appoint a new CFIA ministerial advisory body. The board should first be given 30 days to provide recommendations on strategic reform of the CFIA and other regulatory agencies, including the PMRA and the Grain Commission. The recommendations should touch on structure, oversight and mandate.

Second, the government should reform and institutionalize the agile regulations table, providing it with independence, the mandate to establish regulatory modernization priorities and the tools needed to hold regulatory agencies to account.

Third, the government should appoint a regulatory ombudsman who can solicit feedback from stakeholders, report publicly on challenges and make recommendations for further reform and modernization.

Fourth, the government should establish a regulatory performance framework that directs regulatory agencies on the need for timely, risk-based regulatory frameworks and decisions.

Fifth, this committee should hold annual hearings to solicit stakeholder priorities, make recommendations and report on progress, or lack thereof, by departments.

Finally, I want to triple the support for amending the legislation so that we can accept provisional registration of feed, seed and other crop inputs that are approved by equivalent foreign regulatory systems.

These recommendations reflect the reality that we will not have meaningful regulatory change when the officials who have created it, managed it and lived within the regulatory framework are the ones who are tasked with modernizing it. There is a need for leadership, oversight and accountability if we really want to reduce the regulatory burden that holds the sector back.

I know you have heard of specific changes from other witnesses, but I believe systemic changes are the only way to unlock the sector's full potential.

I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to the Conservatives for six minutes.

Mr. Barlow, go ahead.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the excellent presentations. I really appreciate when you come with solutions to some of the problems that we're addressing. I found it interesting that our witnesses talked about the fact that we have the science. I would agree with you, but what concerned me in the previous panel—I don't know if you had a chance to hear—was that for every question we asked the minister, the answer was, “Sure, we have the science, but these are geopolitical issues, so we're not going to do these things.” It worries me a great deal that we are making decisions based on geopolitics rather than standing up for the science and the regulations and the protocols that we have here in Canada. I think there is a deeper cultural issue within this government that needs to be addressed.

Mr. McCann, you made an interesting point in one of your recommendations, which was to appoint a regulatory ombudsman. In the previous Conservative government, we had a redress officer within CFIA, whom the Liberal government eliminated.

Would that redress officer be similar to what you're recommending in terms of this ombudsman? As I remember from the statistic previously, about a quarter of the complaints to the redress officer were justified and needed to be resolved, which gave accountability to the CFIA. Would this be a similar role, or would it be different?

[Tyler McCann]

I think the role would be similar. There's an opportunity to make it more independent and provide additional resources for that position so it can look at CFIA and potentially look at the Canadian Grain Commission and PMRA as well. CFIA gets a lot of attention, but let's not forget about the other regulatory agencies that impact the sector too.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

That's my next question. I'm going to ask it of all three witnesses.

Within the Liberal election platform, which I fundamentally agree with, there was a need to change the lens within CFIA and PMRA to ensure that they take into account economic impact and food security in the decision-making. When we asked CFIA and PMRA officials when they were here, their response was, “We don't need to change anything. Everything is great.” It concerns me that this is a mandate from the Prime Minister and the minister that the agencies aren't going to follow up on.

Mr. Anderson, do you believe there need to be cultural and fundamental changes within these agencies?

[Darren Anderson]

Absolutely.

My perspective is that the mandate for a dual mandate was actually quite a positive step forward. It can be quite powerful in driving that cultural and systemic change. One of the things it would do is create a lens internal to the regulatory agencies on whether it's actually improving efficiency and economic competitiveness across the country, in addition to the mandate of making sure the health and environmental benefits to Canadians are maintained from these types of products.

I think it's a very useful signalling effort to drive cultural change.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. McCann, I'll put the same question to you.

Sorry, we have two Mr. McCanns. I'll ask each of you to answer that as quickly as you can, please.

[Daniel McCann]

I fundamentally agree with everything that Mr. Anderson has said.

Largely speaking, at least from my perspective, we need to create a culture within these organizations that recognizes the pace of change that happens in some of these industries.

As you well know, I come from the artificial intelligence industry. That is the fastest-moving industry in the history of humanity. Things go obsolete every six months, and if we don't have some sort of cultural framework to be able to adapt to these types of changes, we are going to be left behind.

It is very important to really consider the culture of how these organizations operate and provide innovators with the things they need to advance through the regulatory process.

[Tyler McCann]

I think when we see this cross-party support for each other's platforms, that's a great thing and a great signal that this is a serious issue.

There is a reason this was in the Liberal platform, and there's a reason it needs to be delivered on. If you hear some of the statements from CFIA officials, it underscores what that reason is. I think they fundamentally do not understand the challenge the sector faces and the need for them to change how they do their work.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thanks.

Mr. Anderson, looking through Vive's documents, you talk about the seven-year delay, and now we're hearing it's taking up to 12 years for new products to be approved by PMRA, which is absolutely unacceptable. Daniel talked about how fast AI moves, and certainly in your business it would be the same.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I saw that of the number of products that Vive—a Canadian company—makes, maybe 14 or 15 are available to producers in the United States, and only one or two in Canada. I really worry that we're losing our best and brightest. As a company, why would you be based in Canada if all your business is south of the border? Talk about the obstacles that you and similar companies are facing trying to do business in Canada compared to the United States.

[Darren Anderson]

Sure, I'd be happy to. We have, I believe, 14 product registrations today in the U.S.—although we've had a couple come in over the last little bit, so that number may be a little out of date—and one product registration in Canada. Your recollection is correct. To be blunt, we would prefer to be commercializing in Canada as much as possible. There's a real need here. Growers are typically, in our view, underserved, because many of the multinationals view Canada as a branch plant type of opportunity. There's an opportunity for a domestic crop protection company like ours to provide them with innovative tools, and we would like to bring them here.

The challenge is around having a predictable and efficient regulatory process so we can get our innovations here faster than we can in the U.S. We're venture-backed, which means we have investors who have invested in us and who are looking to generate a return. They're looking to generate a return within a specific time frame. If we're going to burn an extra two, three or four years to get product approval here, that is just not a decision we can make.

The other element is that when you have barriers to innovation in Canada for companies like ours, it also means that capital doesn't flow to Canada, and investors tend to be based elsewhere. When the capital that's coming into companies like Vive is from American, European and Asian investors, that also decreases the desire to stay here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you very much.

It's over to the Liberals for six minutes.

Go ahead, MP Chatel.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses and wish to add my voice to that of my colleague to congratulate them. The solutions they are proposing today are very enlightening.

All the parties are working together during this study and I’m looking forward with great interest to seeing the recommendations this committee will make in its report.

What the witnesses have told us today is nothing new. The problems are well known. We’re looking for solutions. In this connection, we have heard a great deal about the need to change the culture within regulatory agencies. In my opinion, we need to change their mandates. I looked at that a few days ago. Under their mandate, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are already required to consider the economic impacts of their decisions, and so I think there’s a need to be a bit more ambitious and a bit more specific, and that’s why I’d like to thank Mr. Tyler McCann for his recommendations. He brought up a number of points that other stakeholders have already raised.

Mr. McCann, I’m going to go back to your second and third recommendations. You spoke about the agile regulatory table, whose goals have yet to come to fruition. Indeed, it has identified 150 irritants, but what has been done about these irritants? The proposed solutions lack clarity and ambition.

There was a proposal to transform the agile regulatory table into an actual organization, empower it to make recommendations, and give it very strict 30-day deadlines to resolve issues effectively. There is also the issue of creating the position of an ombud that can intervene if things don’t move fast enough.

Could you give some more details about these recommendations?

[Tyler McCann]

Of course.

The agile regulatory table must be independent from regulatory agencies. It must be empowered to hold the agencies accountable, provide leadership, and issue very clear recommendations based on very clear priorities while working with government officials. This is essential to ensure tangible action.

The issue now is that the agile regulatory table is based within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Government officials sit on the table while departments are responsible for setting the agenda. If concrete actions are to be taken, the agile regulatory table must be given more tools to demonstrate leadership, set its own priorities, and make recommendations. Government officials must be held accountable if they fail to implement recommendations to ensure future decisions and actions are clearly understood.

What we’re missing today are tangible actions. As you mentioned, the challenges are well known. The issue is not that the challenges related to the regulatory burden in Canada are not known, but rather, the lack of action.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

Earlier, my colleague talked about a recourse officer. I’d like to talk about your recommendation to have an ombud. When we talk about an ombud, we mean a fully independent investigator.

Could this type of institution actually make the sector more prosperous and result in more action, as you were saying earlier?

[Tyler McCann]

I don’t really think one solution will fix the problem.

However, I think an ombud is part of the solution because they will at least identify the challenges facing the Food Inspection Agency, the CFIA, and encourage it to modernize its approach. One of the problems facing us today is that there is no way to hold decision-makers accountable for their decisions. We need someone to shed a light on what is going on at the agency and to tell us the rationale for the decisions made. At this point there’s no transparency and we don’t have this kind of information.

I think an ombud could help us ensure performance improvements at the CFIA.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

According to a number of witnesses, Bill C‑5 worked well because the burden of proof was reversed. Regulations were pared down to the basic essentials.

Is the accumulation of regulations without having any processes to reassess old regulations part of the problem? Does the process of recommending an agile regulatory table, among others, have room for some kind of reverse onus? That way, if there are recommendations, we can take action, otherwise these regulations are obsolete.

[Tyler McCann]

I think that’s an excellent idea.