Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
I am very pleased to appear before you this evening as a representative of the organic sector in Canada. The Canada Organic Trade Association is the member-based organization representing the organic value chain, from producers and manufacturers through to retailers and exporters.
The organic sector is relatively new, but it is growing at a tremendous speed. The recently released Statistics Canada census of agriculture data showed that while total farms in Canada have declined by 17% since 2001, the organic farms have increased by 66.5%. So we now have approximately 5,000 certified operators in Canada, including handlers and manufacturers.
Our domestic market is worth over $2.6 billion per year, making Canada the fifth-largest world market for organic. Globally, organic sales are now valued at $59 billion per year.
In 2009, COTA welcomed the government's new regulations for the organic sector, controlling and defining organic claims in the marketplace and making the national standards mandatory. Subsequently, the government established progressive trade agreements through the world's first equivalency arrangements with the United States and the European Union, giving Canadian domestic certification and Canadian producers unparalleled access to 96% of the world market.
Although it's a quickly growing market, the organic sector in Canada still faces many challenges, including supply shortages, especially in seed. It's an impasse in which we are obliged to meet our regulated standards but have no formalized government mechanism or funding to innovate or respond to opportunity in those standards, which is similar to the issue Mr. Kingston raised. A particular risk to our business model is posed by the unmitigated introduction of prohibited genetically engineered products. This can cause our members to lose the organic designation of their product, with loss of market access.
On the current changes proposed in Bill C-38 pertaining to the Seeds Act in division 26, COTA notes that the role and authority of the president of CFIA are increased significantly. The proposed changes would give the president of CFIA the ability to grant licences to any person to perform any activity related to controlling or assuring quality of seeds, including sampling, grading, or labelling. Under the current legislation, the only other role described by the Seeds Act for the president of CFIA is the designation and oversight of inspectors.
It's important to note that the proposed changes, in our opinion, do not remove the powers of the CFIA inspectors, but may provide CFIA with the avenue to outsource review services for specific functions or aspects. That outsourcing could go to industry groups, private enterprise, or individuals, as far as we know.
I should note that the Canada organic regime is delivered via a system of third-party inspectors, accredited certifiers, and conformity verification oversight bodies enforced by CFIA and its inspectors. Therefore, I cannot speak against third-party delivery of certain services and functions that have regulatory oversight. However, without more details, which we don't yet see in Bill C-38, on who would qualify for such licences and how they would be overseen and enforced, it is prudent to caution that there could be an inherent risk due to lack of transparency, accountability, or neutrality. This is dependent on the limits and parameters established by the Governor in Council.
It's also feasible that this new role for the president of CFIA has the potential to enable external criteria or purity standards to come to bear on the introduction of new seed varieties. That could lead, for example, to the introduction of new genetically engineered seed that has been approved by a foreign government but has not been reviewed or assessed for environmental release in Canada.
Such a shift within CFIA and the Seeds Act certainly echoes sentiments expressed by the biotechnology sector calling for a low-level presence policy in Canada to allow unapproved events from genetic engineering appearing in shipments below a certain threshold to enter Canada without action or mitigation. But as you know, seed has a tendency to grow and multiply, so for the organic sector, the introduction of new GE seeds into our environment, without at least the check and balance of due process and review by government agencies, threatens the integrity of our quickly growing and high-value market. And this market, I'll remind you, is directly responsive to consumer preferences and concerns.
Thank you for your invitation to speak and your attention tonight.