Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and MPs for this opportunity to share what we have been hearing from the public, and what we have observed and concluded from a decade of public engagement on this issue of genetic engineering specifically, and a decade of our own research. I work as the coo

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Certainly the issue of malnourishment is in fact the product of poverty. It's less a problem of agricultural productivity and more an issue of wealth distribution, access to land, and access to the tools to work that land. This is an important question when we look at

Agriculture committee  I would say that it's excellent that such studies are done and that there continues to be investigation in the international community. That includes the continued safety studies that, unfortunately, there are not enough of—that is, long-term independent studies on different GM p

Agriculture committee  We're very concerned that the price of seed continues to rise, as does the price of all agricultural inputs. Seed prices are rising faster than most. With the potential merger of Bayer and Monsanto and the increased consolidation of not just six top seeds and pesticide companies

Agriculture committee  Already in the major crops of corn, canola, and soy, farmers are in some cases having a difficult time finding non-GM seed. Given the investment in genetic engineering by the big seed and pesticide companies in whichever crops they decide to focus on, whichever traits they decide

Agriculture committee  What we heard from regulators was an implication that the regulators are performing the function of peer review in the absence of peer review. What's happening is that corporations are providing data packages to Canadian regulators. Those data packages are kept as confidential bu

Agriculture committee  I think it's really important that we look to regulators in terms of what they're examining, which is product-by-product regulation. The question of GM food safety is actually about the GM trait and its application, and each product is different and requires its own regulatory pr

Agriculture committee  I do think that if Canadians are asking to know whether genetically modified foods are on our shelves so they can decide whether to put that product in their grocery basket or not, I think it's incumbent on the Canadian government to provide that information. I think part of the

Agriculture committee  Yes, I think we would need those facts in order to ask that question.

Agriculture committee  Not directly, no. There are various partnerships and community-based alliances and discussions that happen.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for that question. In the case of fish, there's an ongoing court case that's asking that question, and it's saying Environment Canada needed to assess what the impact of escaped fish would be on the environment and not just look at the containment facility itself and d

Agriculture committee  We wouldn't describe that as the conclusion of our work, no.

Agriculture committee  Yes, we're very concerned in a number of different ways.

Agriculture committee  We have discussed, in one of our reports, the question of scientific consensus in the scientific literature, which does not exist. We see in the public that there's a discussion back and forth about what the science tells us, and there's controversy. We also think there's the iss

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I think this is a really important question, because we have heard a lot about this question of consumer confidence and the role of Canadian regulators in bolstering consumer confidence. It's been 20 years that over 80% of Canadians have wanted labelling. It does the