Agriculture committee  That is why we've said that farmers are dealing with the effects of climate change now. This isn't an abstract. In many ways, as you've seen, they're seeing it now. You can parse words and you can call it what you like but they are having to deal with the here and now. That just speaks to the research on seeds.

Agriculture committee  I'll ask the farmer to go first.

Agriculture committee  I think that the grower groups themselves would be better positioned to speak to that. We don't represent those grower groups. Much as with Susie's group, everybody that we work with is committed to sustainability, and we're working toward sustainability broadly. Those more specific competitiveness issues would probably be best addressed by the actual grower groups that represent those farmers.

Agriculture committee  Sure, I can start, and I'm sure Ian can finish with anything I may have missed. You're right. If China, which is the most important market for canola, doesn't approve a trade, that means a Canadian farmer can't grow and does not get the benefit from those technologies. When I tell people that story, they find that fairly shocking, but that would be true of any number of markets.

Agriculture committee  I ran into a grower at a conference who was growing quinoa in Manitoba. It surprised us, but this was happening. To Susie's point, it's going to be a mixed bag. There are going to be positive impacts and there are going to be negative impacts. How do we help farmers manage those?

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. As Mr. Easter said, I'm Dennis Prouse, vice-president of government affairs for CropLife Canada. CropLife Canada represents the Canadian manufacturers, developers and distributors of pest control and modern plant-breeding products. Our organization's primary focus is on providing tools to help farmers be more productive and more sustainable.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Richards. I would say the biggest issue flagged by our members is re-evaluation of existing products—existing pesticides—by PMRA. It's a very large and onerous job. The number of re-evals coming through are increasing and will be increasing over the next 10 years.

Finance committee  Actually, there's a very good example, very close to Ottawa. It's a company called Sevita seeds. They developed a soybean that has a healthier oil profile to meet a market demand in Japan. It doesn't need pre-market assessment anywhere else in the world. It's not a GMO. It's not a product of gene editing, but unfortunately CFIA couldn't decide whether it needed to go through the two-year assessment process or not.

Finance committee  It's Sevita. They may even be in your riding; I'll need to check.

Finance committee  Yes. We grow a great deal of soy in Canada.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes, it would have. The cherry on top, the added bonus, is that it had a healthier oil profile. That's the great thing about ag innovation. It's developing healthier strains.

Finance committee  No, they weren't able to determine whether this was a seed with a novel trait. All seeds with a novel trait have to go through the approval process. It's worth keeping in mind that nowhere else in the world was there a regulatory body that thought this needed to go through an approval process.

Finance committee  I don't think they waited to get an answer. They simply moved the operation to the U.S. because there was a market opportunity in Japan. These things tend to move quickly.

Finance committee  Yes. For us, it's an example of what is potentially coming down the road on gene editing.