Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today about the important topic of pollinator health. My name is Pierre Petelle. I am the vice-president of CropLife Canada's chemistry sector. We represent the developers, manufac

Agriculture committee  I wasn't aware that the Quebec federation had passed a resolution also calling for a ban. Would you like me to answer in French?

Agriculture committee  This is news to me, and it's very unfortunate, because we have been working very closely with that group and many other stakeholders in Quebec at a round table. We felt we were making progress with that group, sharing information, with constructive dialogue, and, as you started w

Agriculture committee  CropLife organized two round tables in collaboration with the Canadian Honey Council, one in October and one just recently in March, bringing together all the various stakeholders. At the last session we had the equipment manufacturers, we had a number of different grower groups

Agriculture committee  The industry has been working since these products were developed to continually improve the actual technology of how to adhere the chemical to the seed—the various polymers being used. That's an ongoing process each of the registrants are continually working with to try to make

Agriculture committee  The science on pesticides generally is very robust. The difference between a lot of chemicals on the market is that with pesticides there is a very detailed data set that helps regulators make very informed decisions. The science on neonics, the weight of evidence of all the scie

Agriculture committee  We have had some dialogue with the Ontario Beekeepers' Association, especially early last year. More recently, we've made an overture to sit down again and have more dialogue with them, between our industry and the OBA directly. We haven't heard back yet, but we're still hoping t

Agriculture committee  I think you have some actual beekeeper witnesses later that might be more qualified to answer this, but simply based on what we have as public information...Statistics Canada does track the number of colonies in Canada. Other than a few dips for a number of reasons, when the bord

Agriculture committee  Again, I don't profess to be a bee expert, but John mentioned a study. The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released a fairly significant paper, and in it they're very clear that this is multifactorial. Pesticides are one very small component. In fact, I think they said it's o

Agriculture committee  In terms of research into new products, that's an ongoing initiative. Especially our R and D member companies are continually looking for new solutions for a variety of different pest pressures that growers face. It's not just to replace products that are currently on the market;

Agriculture committee  With the acute loses that were seen last year in Ontario, PMRA did some analysis and did find levels of neonic insecticide in some of the dead bee samples. Clearly the insecticide was in those bees. It was detected. Was it a contributing factor in their deaths? The conclusion fro

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I think as long as pneumatic planters have been around it's been used as a lubricant to make sure that seed gets delivered right in the proper—

Agriculture committee  No. Again, I think you have some western beekeepers speaking to you later, but the colony numbers increased as the acreage did. The other thing I'd like to point out is that in our industry many of our member companies are into canola seed production as well, and canola seed pr