Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate this morning. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Kamloops.
The motion before the House today deals with proof of transparency in genetically modified foods and labelling to permit the public a clear choice in this matter. I congratulate the member for Louis-Hebert and her colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois for bringing this interesting debate to the House today.
Some significant witnesses will appear before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, beginning in a couple of weeks, to look in depth at the issue of labelling. Certainly we will be looking forward to that. I suppose today's debate serves as a preamble to it.
I listened with care to what the minister of agriculture said in his remarks a few minutes ago. To paraphrase it I think he is clearly saying, and we all agree, that the onus is not on the Monsantos, Novardis and DuPonts of the world to prove the safety of foods but it is government that must regulate those. He believes and we all hope he is right when he says that we are well served and that Canadians do have a very high standard and can rest assured that the food they are ingesting is regulated well in advance of its going to the public.
The issue seems in many ways to come down to one of the environment. As has been noted several times already, there has been lots of discussion on this topic.
We know for example of the battle between the giant Monsanto versus a farmer in Saskatchewan, Mr. Schmeiser, about pollution from a GM crop that went to Mr. Schmeiser's field. Today in the Toronto Star Thomas Walkom has a column based on a report out of the New Scientist about a farmer in Alberta who grew three different fields of GM canola, one that was seed resistant to Roundup, another from Cynamid and a third for Liberty. What has happened over the last three years since he first planted those crops is that he now has weeds that are resistant to all three. He is looking at an extensive cocktail solution to try to dispose of the supermutant weeds that have been created in the wake of using these.
A lot of questions are being raised by Canadians. I think there is a growing market concern as a result of that and perhaps even a rebellion by some farmers to the giant chemical and pharmaceutical companies that are busy promoting these products.
Consumer resistance has certainly come to Europe in the wake of the mad cow disease, to the extent that the European Union is prepared to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars a year for importing North American beef into that continent. Because the beef may well have been injected with hormones, they are not going to allow it to come in and they are prepared to pay a significant penalty under the WTO provisions in order to keep that product off the European food shelves.
It is fair to say that consumer resistance is also spreading to Canada and North America. We have seen a significant growth in that in recent years. In recent months giant Canadian companies such as McCain, McDonald's hamburgers and Frito-Lay have indicated they want to ensure that their consumers are not ingesting genetically modified products. Even a company like Monsanto is obviously aware of the problems. It is hiving off its agricultural division because of the spate of bad news and it is changing its name. It is interesting that Novardis, one of the leaders in GM food, now has a baby food is labelled as GM free. Marketers and big business are doing what they always need to do to ensure they have a strong market.
Ninety-five per cent of Canadians say that we should have the right to purchase non-genetically modified food and a corresponding high percentage say that there has to be labelling. We know that in a few very well to do Canadian households there is the opportunity to purchase non-GM foods, but without labelling the vast majority of us would not necessarily know where to go, although we did hear about the flour that a member talked about previously.
What I am trying to say is that the precautionary principle should still prevail in this area. Lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures. That means it has to be science based and not based on science fiction.
At the New Democratic Party convention last year I was pleased to take part in a resolution that dealt with this topic. The points contained in that resolution which was passed overwhelmingly at the convention were that there be a full scale public discussion initiated on GMO foods; that the labelling process to make consumers aware be mandatory; that there be adequate protection for farmers; that liability for genetic pollution shall rest with the huge companies, the Monsantos et cetera; and that for food safety there must be the capacity to evaluate GMO food and to ensure that this evaluation is independent of the food producers and the food producing industry and government food marketing.
Recently the government in its wisdom, or lack thereof, dispensed a booklet that was referred to by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, “Food Safety and You”. This has generated a lot interest in my constituency. I had a recent letter, an e-mail, from people who are very concerned and unhappy that the government had put out this product. To quote in part from a letter from the Hjertaas family:
As for “labelling,” it seems to me that Allergy Associations have been fighting for years to get all ingredients labelled for health reasons and I'm not sure we are there yet. For instance the unlabelled practice of putting corn grits on the bottom of bread has made my son sick more than once!
And why in the world would the Government of Canada use the organic standards developed under the Canadian General Standards Board as a model for the development of labelling for foods derived from biotechnology? Biotechnology has no place in organics as is well illustrated in the new U.S. organic standards.
The writer concludes that the Government of Canada has absolutely no business supporting the corporate agenda.
There was a very recent interesting article by Brian Flemming, a Halifax writer and columnist, in the current issue of Policy Options Politiques . He talked about the huge government conflict of interest brewing in Ottawa where genetically modified foods are beginning to trouble both bureaucrats and the Canadian public. He indicated, as I have said, that a majority of Canadians would be less likely to buy GM food if they knew it had been modified. The same Canadians would no doubt also overwhelmingly demand that the country's food regulator be just that, a regulator, and not a promoter of GM foods like canola. He said:
Ethically, the federal government has a duty not to extend its regulatory reach any further into the GM food world without first divesting itself of its current, conflicting roles, of promoter of, or financier for, GM foods.
He ended by saying:
—the following “regulatory commandment” should be posted on the walls of the offices of all ministers and deputy ministers: Thou shalt not simultaneously regulate and promote, regulate and finance, or regulate and insure any industry.
In closing, I think that would be a very good commandment for the government to follow on this lively issue of genetically modified foods.