Health committee  What I was saying is that you may hear from other witnesses who raise this and we constantly hear this in our circles. It was more of an ask to recognize that the system is already very precautionary, that the actual principle is embedded in the current act, and that we don't go

Health committee  I would argue that if you look at all the jurisdictions that are focused on the neonics or the pollinator issue, there is consistency. PMRA is joined with the U.S. EPA and California DPR, arguably the biggest regulators in the world, and they're going through the re-evaluation pr

Health committee  I can understand why constituents, especially in urban centres, would be forgiven for their belief that there is a dire crisis for bees. The statistics don't support that. Nevertheless, when we looked at the issue of potential exposure of our products to bees, we took that very s

Health committee  With regard to your first question on when two products are used together, I think you're talking about whether it's mixed at the same time and who would be responsible if something were to go wrong. Generally, the label covers what is allowed or not allowed. If a label specifica

Health committee  First of all, just in food production, if you're just talking about the agriculture and industry that we rely on as crop production companies, many of the crops, especially in the fruit and vegetable sector, rely on pollination as step one. Without that pollination step, there's

Health committee  Yes, and we understand that population or colony numbers aren't the only measure of bee health, but those numbers are independent, traced by Statistics Canada. They're not our numbers, so they're easily available to anyone in the public. When we look at the numbers that are publi

Health committee  There was correction in the 1980s. I don't know how much time we have, but in the 1980s the border was closed to the U.S. What used to happen is that beekeepers in Canada would generally let their bees die over the winter and then in the spring bring in fresh colonies from the U.

Health committee  We talked about the maximum residue levels that are established, so those apply to imported as well as domestically produced foods. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tests thousands of products every year, both imported and domestically produced. In general, when you look at th

Health committee  I think that's becoming less and less of an issue with global harmonization and with many of these countries now involved at the OECD level. You're getting a higher standard globally in terms of what's acceptable, how to do risk assessments, and how to regulate these products. Wi

Health committee  Our experience with harmonization is that it has not been a race to the bottom, as you put it. It certainly brings more scientists to discuss each topic and more expertise from different parts of the world. You actually end up with the best science as opposed to the least strin

Health committee  No. The other thing to remember is that many of the CropLife Canada members—which, by the way, are both generic and innovator, just to touch on a point earlier—are global companies. Their products are being used in these companies just as well as they are in Canada and the U.S. T

Health committee  In terms of that specific example, no. We do know, through our CropLife international affiliates, that there are parts of the world where obviously they don't have the type of equipment Corey was describing for applying pesticides. We know it's much more rudimentary. Our industry

Health committee  I can start. Absolutely. When you look at the safety of the food that's produced in Canada, when you read about issues related to food, it's usually about microbial contamination, some sort of bacteria or virus. When have we heard about a pesticide contamination issue in food?

Health committee  Yes, thanks. Our members are always obviously concerned about resistance development because that means the products are no longer effective, and therefore, are no longer of any use to the farmer. We always try to make sure that through crop rotation and chemistry rotation you'r

Health committee  Absolutely. As you stated correctly, the issues that we saw in isolated pockets seemed to be related primarily to corn—which is generally a dustier crop than is, for example, canola—and to some of that seed coating actually coming off of the corn. With certain planting equipment