WESTERN PRODUCER — It’s obvious to Scott Day that Canada has a reputation problem.
At a digital ag conference in Winnipeg last month, Day went to the microphone to ask a question, although it was really a statement.
“(Ag tech) companies are getting the impression that Canada is a very difficult place for the regulatory registration process,” said Day, who works for Fall Line Capital, a California company that invests in farmland and ag technology.
“We’re getting a really bad reputation.”
Day is from Deloraine, Man., and worked for Manitoba Agriculture before moving to California about 12 years ago.
He said Fall Line has investments in ag tech and crop protection companies in the United States and elsewhere. People from those firms have asked him for help getting their products into Canada.
“We’ve had one company … that has a registered product (that is) commercially sold on five million acres in the U.S. They can’t get it tested in Canada,” Day said.
“They’re at wit’s end. So, I organized a Zoom with some politicians in Ottawa. They’re aware of this reputation as well.”
John Barlow, the MP for Foothills and Conservative ag critic, has heard similar complaints.
Fellow MPs, agricultural groups and Canadian ag tech companies have raised their concerns with Barlow because crop protection products and new technologies are not getting to market.
“This is not just something we are hearing in Canada,” Barlow said from his office on Parliament Hill.
“We speak to companies from around the world and representatives from other countries. It’s really impacting, globally, our reputation as a place to do business, a place to invest, because we can’t get stuff done.”
Health Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency make decisions on the safety of crop protection products and new technologies such as gene edited crops.
As noted on its website, the PMRA follows “internationally recognized risk assessment … (and) decisions are made on the basis of a comprehensive body of published and registrant-supplied scientific evidence and scientific methods.”
However, representatives of the crop science industry and others say things have changed.
Nowadays, PMRA and Health Canada decisions aren’t just about science.
One example is Health Canada’s handling of gene editing, a technology where scientists can delete or change the DNA of a plant to achieve a desired trait in a crop.
The United States recognized the safety of gene editing in 2018, but it took Health Canada until May of 2022 to modernize its plant breeding regulations.
It concluded that crops developed through gene editing are safe and, in most cases, will not require a pre-market safety assessment.
The decision is beneficial for crop science innovators, but it was delayed because of politics, said Pierre Petelle, president and chief executive officer of CropLife Canada.
“That took so long to get across the finish line and (was) very clearly impacted by political interference,” he said.
“We had consultation documents … these aren’t even regulations or final decisions … that were held up in ministers’ offices for six, seven or eight months because of a reaction from Quebec stakeholders, in particular the organic sector.”
Another example is maximum residue limits, which are the highest amount of pesticide residue that may remain on or in food.
In August 2021, the federal government announced that it would be making changes to the pesticide approval process to meet public expectations around “transparency and sustainability.”
At the time, the feds put a pause on proposed increases to maximum residue limits for pesticides, including glyphosate.
“As a result, there will be no increases to MRLs until at least spring 2022,” the government said.
The government announced its stricter approach to pesticides about six weeks before the federal election.
Health Canada continued the pause until June 2023, saying it would resume evaluations of residue levels but not for glyphosate.
The lifting of the pause is a bit murky because federal ministers said evaluations of complex MRLs would take longer.
“They didn’t provide any clarity as to what was actually unfrozen or not,” Petelle said in June.
“What we read into that is if it’s politically controversial they’re just not going to publish them, even though the science is crystal clear.”
Regulatory consultants, who help ag tech companies get their products to market in Canada, have also noticed a change in the last five to 10 years.
The regulatory climate is much worse and political pressure on regulators is noticeable.
“What’s interesting is this government has been at pains to say that politicians shouldn’t interfere with the scientific conclusions of regulators on environmental policy and climate change, but that is exactly what they appear to be doing on pesticide regulation,” a consultant said.
It seems like Canada is moving closer to Europe, where politics and appeasing special interests is part of the process.
Petelle gave the example of glyphosate.
Scientists with the European Food Safety Authority may conclude that the herbicide is safe and its registration should be renewed, but there’s another step in the process — the European Parliament reviews the EFSA recommendation.
A politician from Italy might say that people in his country are concerned about glyphosate and it should be banned across Europe or at least in Italy.
“(In Europe) they’re openly saying that politics is going to fit into the final decisions … regardless of what the science says,” Petelle said.
That’s not how Canada did things, until now.
“It didn’t matter if the Conservatives were in power or the Liberals. Neither party had a particular influence on the outcomes,” he said.
“What we’ve seen in the last couple of years is this (new) step of public concerns. The public is concerned about this or that…. That’s where we’re seeing us move towards the European approach.”
Day, who now lives south of San Francisco, said Canada doesn’t come up in conversation very often in California or elsewhere when he talks to ag tech investors and innovators.
But when Canada is mentioned, it’s troubling that people are wary about the country’s regulations.
“From an investment standpoint, if this is the reputation… it makes it difficult for us to consider investment in Canadian companies,” Day said. “That’s a big part of any investment — is this going to be a difficult regulatory path? If it is, that’s another level of risk.”
The obvious impact on farmers is that Canada will become a backwater for innovation. Producers in other countries will have access to the latest and greatest technology years before a farmer in Saskatchewan, for example.
“Farmers are missing out on new crop protection products, new seed varieties,” said Barlow, who is also worried about the impact on ag tech entrepreneurs.
“The other issue with this, in many ways we are losing our best and our brightest. These great innovators are going out of country … because they don’t see an opportunity to be successful in Canada.”
The solution to Canada’s regulatory problems could lie in consultations.
The government needs to stop listening to activist groups and everyone who has an opinion, Barlow said.
Consultation is necessary, but it shouldn’t dominate the regulatory process.
“It’s death by consultation,” he said.
“Put a timeline in place, have these consultations and then make a decision.”
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