Delegates to the Liberal party national convention have sent a strong message that Ottawa should require mandatory labelling on all food products containing genetically modified material.
Environment minister StŽphane Dion quickly said he agreed.
“I agree that labels should indicate if the product contains GMO or not,” the Montreal minister said in an interview shortly after the March 5 vote at a convention workshop on environment policy. “It is the consumer right to know. I agree with that.”
Later at a cabinet accountability session when ministers were questioned by delegates, Dion used a question about terminator seeds to make the same point publicly. And he told agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, also on the platform, he hoped the minister was listening.
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Mitchell shares the government’s insistence, strongly supported by industry, that voluntary labelling is sufficient.
And it came in the face of pleas from three farmer delegates to the convention who said mandatory labelling would cost farmers money and markets.
The vote, after a heated debate, was 313-88.
It was something of a vindication for former environment minister Charles Caccia, who retired in 2004 after 36 years as an MP when it became clear the electoral machine of leader Paul Martin would take the Toronto riding nomination away from him.
In 2001, Caccia proposed a private member’s bill on GMO labelling that was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons, largely because the government of the day promised a study into the issue, The promise convinced some Liberals who planned to support the bill to change their minds, assuming the government would act eventually.
The study went nowhere.
Last weekend, Caccia said in an interview he expects a similar vote would pass now if introduced into this Parliament. The NDP, Bloc QuŽbecois and many Liberals support the idea, probably joined by a sprinkling of Conservatives.
The GMO labelling resolution was proposed by Jean-Philippe CotŽ from QuŽbec, supported by the QuŽbec wing of the party. He said it is a consumer right to know.
The resolution also called for more government research into the long-term effects of GMO consumption and said companies producing GMO products should be liable for any harm they cause “including the contamination of non-GM crops.”
Dion actually voted against the resolution because he opposed the liability clause but then let it be known he supported the labelling and research proposals.
Farmer delegates tried to tap into the farmer-sympathy mood of the convention to derail the resolution.
Ottawa area farmer and GM crop producer Geri Kemenz said companies have estimated the cost of mandatory labels at $1.5 billion.
“That cost will be downloaded to farmers,” he said. “It is a cost we cannot afford.”
Manitoba delegate and former Keystone Agricultural Producers president Don Dewar said it would hurt Canada’s ability to compete in world markets and cost farmers money they cannot afford.
Caccia countered that it would actually reopen some markets to Canada that now are closed.
In the end, the resolution did not make it to the plenary of the convention, so it did not become national party policy.
However, it was passed in the workshop and Dion used the occasion to let it be known the government is divided on the issue.
