Mr. Speaker, last week I questioned the Minister of Agriculture about the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, or PMRA. This agency is being created from services in three departments: Health, Agriculture and Environment.
The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, or his colleague at Health Canada, wants to recover 60 per cent of the costs from the sales of pesticides. Our American neighbours only recover 15 per cent of the costs, which means that Canadian companies will move to the United States to develop their products in that country or that farmers will buy their chemicals directly in the United States, because they will cheaper there, probably much cheaper. With such a cost recovery level, the price of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides is going to increase dramatically.
Let us now look at the services provided by the PMRA. Il will test product safety and also product effectiveness. Companies already test the effectiveness of their products, but the government wants to redo the testing. The results must show an 80 per cent effectiveness over two crop seasons. This type of test was not carried out before, but the government now claims that it will improve public safety. Does it mean that the public is not safe at the present time?
Farmers believe that it is up to the market to determine whether a given product is effective or not.
If a product is known to be ineffective, it will be quickly eliminated from that market because of a lack of consumers. The PMRA also wants to reassess every two to five years all the products that it has already certified and not only those that require certification. Thus, the PMRA will do costly audits that are not really necessary. Producers never asked for such measures and these will entail major costs for the agency.
Moreover, this 60 per cent cost recovery will be difficult to apply to industries that develop low volume consumers' products. Consequently, my estimation is that between 21 and 30 per cent of products used in pest management will no longer be available to agricultural producers if the PMRA goes ahead as expected with its cost recovery policy, that is, 60 per cent of the costs.
I just outlined very briefly the most important elements of the PMRA issue, particularly as it pertains to cost recovery. Thus, in light of all the available data, the PMRA will function less quickly than its American counterpart. It will cost more, will be less efficient, will perform more audits than necessary and there will be less products available on the market. Thus, there may be job losses and our producers will be less competitive.
For the sake of fairness for agricultural producers in Canada and Quebec, I challenge the government, particularly the ministers of health, environment and agriculture, to review the way the agency recovers costs associated with the certification of pest control products.
