Agriculture committee  From my standpoint as a farmer, it's hard for me to really understand the review process, to a certain degree, at PMRA. From my standpoint and from our organization's standpoint, we are looking at the registrants to understand what that process is and we want to make sure there's

Agriculture committee  I think there absolutely has to be a value proposition for the chemicals that we use. As I said, no matter what, I could walk out of the hotel I was at and get hit by a bus, but I still decided to come here today. There's a balance of risks that we have to assume. For my farm, th

Agriculture committee  I think there is even a broader perspective within the seed treatments. What happened was that the regulation that was put in place required us to prove a need for the use of neonic-treated seed through soil-testing protocols. We had to find so many bugs in a site in order to pro

Agriculture committee  Personally, when I look at the situation—and I'm not a scientist; I'm a farmer who loves to be out in the fields—I look to PMRA as being our science-based regulatory body that does work to ensure that the products that come to the marketplace have acceptable risk. I think if PMR

Agriculture committee  Sure. My opinion on that situation is that if you were to remove this product from the marketplace tomorrow, yes, there would be work being done in the pipeline of life science companies to find products to replace it, but my concern would be the gap period between when I lost th

Agriculture committee  There are some alternatives, as I highlighted in my presentation to the committee, around some new seed treatments that are registered for corn. They're more expensive and provide less control, or a narrower spectrum of control, so that they're not quite as effective in the marke

Agriculture committee  Sure. The way it usually works for corn, depending on the company a farmer would purchase seed from, is that we have the ability to buy seed that's treated with an insecticide or without an insecticide. On the neonic-treated side, it's usually around $4 to $5 a bag for the seed t

Agriculture committee  The seeds are available through life science companies through their genetic base. They're life science companies, so they provide seed chemical and those kinds of inputs.

Agriculture committee  Yes. There's some production of soybean seed within Ontario and within Canada. There is a very limited amount of seed corn produced in Canada. A lot of it does come through the U.S., just because of their ability to produce it and manage it better. A little bit is produced within

Agriculture committee  From my standpoint, I'd prefer maybe not to look toward a phase-out but toward an agreed approach on developing what the acceptable risk is for the product and then taking steps to mitigate that risk. Maybe in the three-year period we can re-evaluate how the measurements of the

Agriculture committee  I really appreciate your question. We were part of the process and are involved in the process. Really, when I step back and look at the situation as a whole, I think that when we bump into these issues around concern about the products that farmers use within the environment,

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity to provide our comments on the PMRA's proposed decision on imidacloprid. My name is Mark Brock. I'm chairman of Grain Farmers of Ontario. I operate a farm, in partnership with my wife Sandy, in Hensall, O

Agriculture committee  For sure. I think there's a certain level of responsibility, too, from producers not looking to government to fund everything, and here's a prime example. Money from my farm has gone into a partnership with a private company. I think some government support could offset that a li

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. In looking at a pilot project, what we're really thinking about is looking at designing something. For example, an insurance product created in western Canada—the western livestock price insurance program, I believe—is used by western producers for ca

Agriculture committee  For sure. When looking at the situation from an Ontario perspective, we're so close to our consumer base that transportation isn't as much an issue for us. Then we obviously look at further processing or adding value to the products we produce, trying to get more profit or value