Canada must defend our approach, not weaken our legislation and regulation by introducing nonscientific factors into our regulatory regime. Adding unnecessary legislation would weaken our position in international markets, both in the short term as well as the long term.

Protectionist measures can take many forms, including domestic support schemes, export subsidies, import tariffs, tariff rate quotas, and other restrictions designed to curb or alter the flow of free trade. Other protectionist measures are much more difficult to detect and are often categorized as non-tariff barriers to trade or technical barriers to trade. For example, trade barriers can emerge under the guise of human, plant or animal safety.

International trade agreements and international standards have evolved to cope with the problem of non tariff barriers to trade, and to assist in creating an environment for fairer trade. Canada has signed on to key international agreements such as NAFTA and the WTO. To deter countries from implementing non-tariff trade barriers, both of these agreements contain specific sections on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures. Both agreements call for member countries to base their sanitary and phytosanitary measures on scientific principles. It is based on science because anything other than sound science leaves the door open for subjectivity, interpretation, misinterpretation, and therefore cannot be defended or justified. These are loopholes that invite disguised trade barriers to emerge.

Not only would introducing additional, nonscientific, regulations negatively impact farmers who are growing GM plants today, the GGC is concerned that additional regulations or legislation would set a precedent that could prevent the further introduction of GM products in Canada.

The same applies for the international standards for food safety. Moving to a system of globally accepted and agreed upon standards helps eliminate distortions in world trade by reducing the ability of individual countries to hide behind unjustifiable domestic standards. The Codex Alimentarius Commission represents the world code of food standards. It is the world's authoritative reference on food standards, and is utilized by national food inspection systems, health authorities, the WTO, the food industry, scientists and consumer advocates. For some of the reasons mentioned above, the standards are science-based.