Agriculture committee  If I may say, just very quickly, segregation did not work in canola. GE canola contaminated so widely that even pedigreed and certified seed stocks could not be certified as GM-free. That's the reason why over 90% of canola is GM and you can only grow organic canola or non-GE can

Agriculture committee  I think there are a number of platforms from which the government ends up speaking about these issues with other countries. Certainly one of the platforms that was established, as was mentioned by Monsieur Bellavance, is the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. It's a protocol on bio

Agriculture committee  It comes back to what I mentioned, which is that we really don't think that the segregation systems were given enough thought or really were invested in before the technology was allowed onto the market. There was some very necessary infrastructure. There were assumptions made th

Agriculture committee  If I may also respond to your question about this issue of safety, by bringing forward a critique or recommendations for improving the system for evaluating safety, we're not necessarily saying that the crops on the shelves now are not safe. That hasn't been said. New studies ari

Agriculture committee  I was just pointing out that zero tolerance comes from this issue that some countries, say Canada even.... If we have not approved a GM crop for safety, then that's why zero tolerance exists, or any tolerance level. It relates to the regulatory decision. It actually has some grou

Agriculture committee  I would think it's up to countries to decide what they think is a tolerance level they can allow, either scientifically or politically. That would be based on what their population is willing to accept from contamination from a non-approved GM event, which is what we're talking a

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I do think it's very important for us to remember that this is actually more than just an issue of transparency, but an issue where the science that government is evaluating is not accessible to the public, and not even accessible to independent scientists, and, more

Agriculture committee  I think it's possible that there are a number of models around the world, Argentina being one, where countries are also looking at what the issues are for them with genetically engineered crops. Argentina and Brazil are huge producers of GM soy, and Argentina chose to look at the

Agriculture committee  It's a very interesting and exciting idea to bring forward at this time, because we have 15 years of experience with genetically engineered crops. The Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee was established by the Canadian biotechnology strategy, which also will soon have an

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee members, for inviting me here today on behalf of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network to speak to you about the issue of genetic engineering. It is important to evaluate what we have learned about genetic engineering from our 15 year

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry, the question didn't come through. I am sorry.

Agriculture committee  We haven't. No.

Agriculture committee  To conclude, in response, we have at least two very distinct concerns in relation to genetically engineered crops. One is the adequacy of the regulation to determine the health impacts and then the problem of contamination of the environment, which is ending up with these unsuita

Agriculture committee  Those are not a product of genetic modification.

Agriculture committee  We define genetic engineering as the exchange of genes from one organism to another.