Health Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2015

[Pierre Petelle]

I think that's becoming less and less of an issue with global harmonization and with many of these countries now involved at the OECD level. You're getting a higher standard globally in terms of what's acceptable, how to do risk assessments, and how to regulate these products. With the stringent import requirements and maximum residue levels set by countries like Canada, it's more and more difficult for countries to fly under the radar.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Do you believe that harmonization can be a race to the bottom where everyone will have to meet the lowest common denominator, or do you believe that countries like Canada and the European Union are raising the bar high enough so that the countries that hitherto had unsustainable practices and huge MRLs have to meet that? How does that work when you're talking about trade and other countries are fighting to bring the level down and we're fighting to keep the level up? How does harmonization affect that?

[Pierre Petelle]

Our experience with harmonization is that it has not been a race to the bottom, as you put it.

It certainly brings more scientists to discuss each topic and more expertise from different parts of the world. You actually end up with the best science as opposed to the least stringent, in our experience.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Okay, so you don't believe harmonization in the Americas, for instance, is a challenge.

[Pierre Petelle]

No. The other thing to remember is that many of the CropLife Canada members—which, by the way, are both generic and innovator, just to touch on a point earlier—are global companies. Their products are being used in these companies just as well as they are in Canada and the U.S. These companies have a very strong stake and a very direct interest in making sure there aren't safety issues even in the developing world. Many of at least the CropLife members are global players. That has helped raise the bar as well.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

There was a recent article in The Globe and Mail about what's happening in certain parts of Sri Lanka in the desert areas and with rice production, and with kidney failure in many of these groups. I wondered if in any way, shape, or form you have been informed of whether or not it's a pesticide issue. What are the reasons that we have this huge rate of kidney failure in places like Sri Lanka? We buy rice from places like that. Do you know anything about that?

I know you only have 20 seconds left to answer that, but it is a concern for me. I just wanted to know if you knew anything about it and could expand on it.

[Pierre Petelle]

In terms of that specific example, no. We do know, through our CropLife international affiliates, that there are parts of the world where obviously they don't have the type of equipment Corey was describing for applying pesticides. We know it's much more rudimentary. Our industry does a lot to try to train. We have programs in place where millions of farmers doing subsistence farming have been trained on how to properly store and properly use these pesticides. There are things that people do—for instance, using their empty pesticide jugs to haul water—that we would never think of here in Canada. Our industry is trying to make sure that this isn't happening in these parts of the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Young, go ahead.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to everyone for coming today.

I'm interested in the bee population issue, and I know that my constituents in Oakville are as well, because they ask me about it. It's essentially an urban riding, so I think it's very interesting. I think everybody would agree that it would be a terrible tragedy if the populations were diminished permanently or disappeared. It's unthinkable.

Ms. Dyer, you recently said that you think we need facts, not fear, when it comes to the debate on bee health. I certainly agree with that. I wonder if you can just expand on that. How do you protect bee populations?

[Jan Dyer]

That's a complicated question, and I don't think anybody has the complete answer to that yet. A huge number of factors affect bee health—habitat loss, parasites, diseases of bees, management of hives, and pesticides play a role in acute deaths—but I don't think we actually have a complete answer to what all is contributing to pollinator health. The Senate's doing a big study now.

I think it's a combination of a number of factors that are leading to the current situation. I think in Canada we haven't seen any widespread reductions in colonies, or reductions in the number of beekeepers or in honey production. It's very local, as Pierre said. It's targeted at some very concentrated areas with a couple of crops. We just aren't seeing those kinds of deaths associated with canola production. Canola production and bee production seem to be thriving equally in the western provinces.

We believe there have been some problems with acute incidents that have been largely rectified by changing formulations of seed treatments and by changing agronomic practices, but in terms of overall pollinator health, it's very complicated in terms of what is actually causing deaths when we see colonies collapse and things like that.

I would probably defer to Pierre for more of the science—

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I'm going to ask Mr. Petelle.

[Jan Dyer]

—but certainly we're not seeing that in canola.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you; that's helpful.

Mr. Petelle, a 2013 CropLife news release stated that:

...bee health in Western Canada is strong despite the fact that there is approximately 20 million acres of canola planted every year, the majority of which has been treated with neonicotinoids. Additionally, honeybee colony numbers in both Ontario and Quebec have steadily increased since neonicotinoids were introduced approximately 10 years ago.

Could you please update the committee on any additional evidence you have regarding bee health, based on perhaps the populations?

[Pierre Petelle]

Yes, and we understand that population or colony numbers aren't the only measure of bee health, but those numbers are independent, traced by Statistics Canada. They're not our numbers, so they're easily available to anyone in the public. When we look at the numbers that are published every year—and they've been collected since the 1920s—colony numbers in Canada have been steadily increasing. The Canadian Honey Council, which represents beekeepers coast to coast, has affirmed that at the agriculture standing committee on a couple of different occasions, and the numbers from Statistics Canada show that.

In fact, if you look at the latest numbers from 2014 for Ontario, where the bulk of the issue is—as you mentioned, you're hearing it from your constituents—you will see that colony numbers since 2003, when neonicotinoids started to become widely used, have gone up 59%. Honey production varies from year to year. It depends how many producers are into producing honey versus pollination services, so that number varies year to year. On a year-over-year basis, it's gone up close to 30% just on honey production. We can only go by what the numbers are, and these numbers tell us that there isn't the crisis that maybe some your constituents are—

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Are the total populations now larger than they were in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s?

[Pierre Petelle]

There was correction in the 1980s. I don't know how much time we have, but in the 1980s the border was closed to the U.S. What used to happen is that beekeepers in Canada would generally let their bees die over the winter and then in the spring bring in fresh colonies from the U.S. When that border was closed, we saw a lot of beekeepers get out of the business. It's a lot of trouble keeping bees alive in this -30° weather, as you can imagine, so we saw a big correction. But ever since that time, 1983 and 1984, the numbers have been steadily increasing, and those numbers are very clear.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you have any comments on the importance of bees to our natural ecosystem?

[Pierre Petelle]

First of all, just in food production, if you're just talking about the agriculture and industry that we rely on as crop production companies, many of the crops, especially in the fruit and vegetable sector, rely on pollination as step one. Without that pollination step, there's no fruit or vegetable to use our products on, so we have a very vested interest in making sure there's enough healthy pollination services for those crops.

But even in canola production, our members produce canola seed and it requires a pollination step by beekeepers. In fact some of our members are the biggest contractors of commercial honeybee hives of anyone in Canada.

Again, there's a very vested interested in healthy honeybees for our industry.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

All right, thank you.

Mr. Loessin, first of all, welcome. I grew up in the city, and my parents always taught me the greatest respect for anybody who farms. I love that expression that farmers feed cities. I'm so glad you're here.

When the pulse association came up on the Hill one day, I went to the reception. They're not just receptions; I learned so much. I didn't even know what a pulse was when I went to the first reception five years ago. They told me about all the lentils they were sending to India and stuff like that. It's really fascinating.

But I wanted to ask you about crop rejection. Can you buy insurance against crop rejection? How do you handle all that risk?

[Corey Loessin]

As an individual farmer, you really can't. We would typically market our product through a licensed processor or dealer, and basically that's the point of sale for the grower.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Then you're out?

[Corey Loessin]

Then we're out.

However, as that product carries on and moves through the stream and ends up at the end user, in theory if a problem is detected, it can get traced back to where the product originated. So we have a risk but we can't cover ourselves for it, basically.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Yes, you said a shipload is $10 million to $40 million. That's a huge loss if it's rejected for any reason. So who would take that loss?

Mr. Kurbis, is that your people?

[Gord Kurbis]

Yes. It's the commercial operators that have bought grain from many farmers.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

You must have a pool of insurance, right?