Agriculture committee  Certainly overwintering is an issue, and it has become, really, a public barometer of bee health, but it's very regional in nature. You're right that in certain areas it's 14.8% or 14%, but in Ontario, if we go back three years or four years, it was upwards of 50%. It's regiona

Agriculture committee  I can't really comment on the assessment right now because it doesn't have to do with honeybees. PMRA, in our opinion, has done a really good job of doing pollinator assessments separately from what's going on now. Again, we come back to the alternative products and to ensuring

Agriculture committee  If I can answer, you said “sole negative impact”, and that's correct; it is not the sole negative impact. As I mentioned in my statement, there are a number of different impacts on bee health. Neonics is one class of pesticides that has an impact. We use pesticides within colon

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, on behalf of the Canadian Honey Council I'm pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to your study of PMRA's recent proposed decision on imidacloprid. The Canadian Honey Council represents more than 9,000 beekeepers across Canada, who ma

Agriculture committee  First off, I wasn't aware of the federation's assertion of a 30% decline. They sent the resolution to the office, but they didn't send any background information. I think the federal government through PMRA is addressing the issue. Maybe it's not to the satisfaction of all; mayb

Agriculture committee  Again, it's all information that's handed down to me. You're right; the seed differences—the round seed, versus corn—may have a difference there. I know they're testing new talcs. We do understand that there is an issue in Ontario and Quebec. Davis even kind of said that it mig

Agriculture committee  Certainly. The bee biosecurity standards were a three-year program working in conjunction with CFIA, ourselves, provincial apiarists, and general beekeepers. It's really a development of an overall best management practices plan to ensure risk mitigation for pests, pathogens, d

Agriculture committee  Certainly beekeepers will, just the same as crop producers will, on a dry year, do seeding differently. So it is dependent on late spring, early spring, what's flowering, what's not flowering.

Agriculture committee  The Canadian Honey Council is represented by every provincial beekeeping association. That's our membership. In my presentation, I hope I reiterated the fact that both Quebec and Ontario have indicated they want to ban neonicotinoids. That same resolution has not come from any ot

Agriculture committee  I certainly agree on the sound science side, but I also sympathize with beekeepers who have lost bees as a result of pesticide poisonings. I'm not a scientist, but there seems to be a difference between corn and canola. It could be a variation in regions or soils; I don't know.

Agriculture committee  To begin with, it's only fair to say that a lot of the recommendations that Health Canada brought forward on the BMPs this spring were as a result of recommendations that our committee brought forward to them. They have to be congratulated, I think, for listening to the industry

Agriculture committee  It may have been the right decision for Europe. I'll give you an example. It's not quite the same, but based on science, Europe banned Canadian honey export because of GMOs. Well, we lost our third-biggest export nation, Germany, because of a European decision based on science. I

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, committee members, for the invitation to address you today. As you are well aware, a couple of days ago you heard from the Canadian Honey Council's bee incident committee chair, Kevin Nixon, who outlined all the recommendations that the Canadi

Agriculture committee  There certainly have been instances of acute bee losses. That's a little bit different from the systemic bee losses that I was talking about in my preamble. Our winer mortality rates running at 30% for the last five or six years—that's a little bit different from the acute events

Agriculture committee  This is unique to the Canadian bee industry over the course of the last five, six, seven years. It's a result of a number of different factors, of course. I don't think we can pinpoint any one. A lot of the research indicates it's a combination of a number of things.