Parliamentary debate on a contentious private member’s bill that would add a market acceptability test to GMO variety approval ended late yesterday with battle lines drawn for tonight’s final vote.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said the bill to require a market harm economic test in the approval process for genetically modified varieties would be a step back.
It would create red tape and hurt farmers, he said during an evening debate that lasted more than four hours.
“Today we are really discussing the ability for these decisions to be made on sound science or, in the case of this particular private member’s bill, an ideological stance that is basically non-GM, non-trade,” Ritz said. “Let us all go backward 50 or 60 years and take agriculture out of the loop.”
New Democrats who filled most of the debating time characterized the opponents of private member’s bill C-474 sponsored by British Columbia New Democrat Alex Atamanenko as taking the side of large seed companies over farmers.
Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, the party’s Canadian Wheat Board critic, said Ritz was being an ideologue.
“Instead of listening to the wild-eyed rhetoric from some ideological zealot like our minister of agriculture, we can have an honest and fair debate on a subject of pressing interest, not only to the well-being of 1.4 billion farmers who rely on farm-safe seed but on the matter of exports of our Canadian agricultural products around the world and our ability to be a world leader in agriculture,” he said.
The Liberals put up two speakers and while Yukon MP Larry Bagnell said his farmers support the bill, deputy agriculture critic and Cape Breton farmer Mark Eyking said the party will vote against it.
Liberals supported having the debate, he said, but not the bill. Market acceptance is important but science must be the basis of seed variety registration.
“The bill would really add uncertainty to the current regulatory science-based process for the approval of GMOs,” he said. “The bill has also failed to provide the details of how this process would be established, what criteria would be applied and who specifically would provide the assessment.”
GMO opponents, including the National Farmers Union, appealed for MPs to support the bill, even though Conservative and Liberal votes would be enough to defeat it if enough MPs show up to vote.
Many members of the House of Commons agriculture committee will miss the vote.
They are on a cross-country tour studying the potential and challenges for biotechnology. When the votes are being counted, they will be travelling from Guelph, Ont., to Quebec City.
