The House of Commons agriculture committee has landed the job of studying the contentious issue of whether food containing genetically modified organisms should carry a GMO label.
The decision ended weeks of complex political manoeuvring on Parliament Hill over which committee should do the study.
The government wanted a joint health-agriculture committee study and House leaders from the five parties had been trying to negotiate creation of such a committee. Opposition MPs on the committee, led by the Bloc QuŽbecois, wanted agriculture to do its own study.
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Last week, talks between the parties broke down when the Bloc refused to agree to a joint committee. In effect, the BQ got its way by sending the issue back to agriculture.
Agriculture committee chair John Harvard, clearly frustrated, announced March 30 that hearings at the committee will start when Parliament reconvenes after the Easter break.
He said in a later interview he still believes the joint committee was the best idea because work by the agriculture committee alone will not look at all angles and its report will be suspect to biotechnology skeptics who see agriculture-related MPs as too biased toward the technology.
Harvard said there also is a health angle that must be reconciled with producer concerns.
“I think it would be better to do that right from the start, rather than reaching our separate conclusions and then having to reconcile them.”
Opposition MPs had argued that a committee with a health focus could overwhelm producer issues.
In the immediate future, only the agricultural side will be studied.
Commons health committee chair Lynn Myers, a southern Ontario Liberal MP, said in a March 30 interview his committee will not tackle the issue until next fall and then it will take a broader look at the GMO question.
He noted that a panel of biotechnology experts appointed by health minister Allan Rock will report to the health committee by September.
“Then, once we hear from the experts, we’ll begin a broad set of hearings,” said Myers.
“The agriculture committee will be narrow in its focus, just looking at labeling. We will consider their conclusions on that topic but then look at the range of issues around GM foods.”
Despite her insistence that the agriculture committee should be the one to study genetically modified food, BQ MP HŽlene Alarie last week also insisted that the health department should spend money investigating the safety of such food.
She criticized reports that the government is spending money to sponsor promotional campaigns in Canadian magazines this summer.
