Agriculture committee  Do you mean for GM crop production?

Agriculture committee  You can probably speak better to that than I can, Jim.

Agriculture committee  The one other country that has sort of been active on this is the Philippines, but I think Canada has a real ability, because we're the fourth-largest producer of GM crops in the world. Our crops—canola, corn, soybeans—are exported. It's only a matter of time before we export oth

Agriculture committee  Most of the big companies that develop varieties now have an agreement amongst themselves that they won't commercialize a variety until they have the approval of seven markets: Canada, the States, Europe, Australia, and some of the key trading partners in Asia: China, India, and

Agriculture committee  Certainly you can start with as pure as you can possibly get, but seeds will lay dormant in the soil for, in some cases, up to four or five years until the right germination conditions exist. For example, you could have a GM variety of canola, two years later you could be growi

Agriculture committee  I think that's probably on the trade side of things. Where can you get agreement between partners to allow commodities to be exchanged at something the market feels they're able to do? So if a market can serve a 0.1% economically, that might be what's negotiated. Or they may say

Agriculture committee  When you're detecting a GM event, it's been through our regulatory system. For example, the flax that I spoke of had been approved for food and feed use in Canada and the States, yet Europe said no. So essentially they dismissed our regulatory system in North America by saying it

Agriculture committee  I was co-chair of the coexistence conference that we had in Vancouver in 2011 and we had a guy from Minnesota who runs a family-owned business in exporting organics who spoke at the conference. He said yes, it takes some time, it takes some effort, it takes a little extra cost, b

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I think a lot of these are based on the individual contract. So if I have a commodity for sale and you want to buy it, you will specify the conditions of that contract. As an exporter, I will strive to meet the demands of my customer to the best of my ability. So that might be 1%

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  That's a question for a commercial lawyer. I'm afraid I don't have enough law training to be—

Agriculture committee  That's a good question.

Agriculture committee  Largely, in the Canadian food system there is such a high level of trust in the food that's on our store shelves that direct consumer involvement in the regulatory process is something you don't see a lot of. We have a very high level of trust in the CFIA, in Health Canada, and w

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I hope you all have received copies of the brief I submitted two weeks ago. I'm not going to read from that. Instead, I'll give you a bit of a sense of how commodity agriculture basically works. Most farmers, at some point, use certified seed, which is what they woul