Agriculture committee  Only a quick point, in Saskatchewan there were breeding programs for the alfalfa leafcutter bee, which led to some changes in the nature of the bees that were commercially available and improved the industry. There's a certain amount of selection and geographic separation, particularly between the northern stocks of leafcutter bees and the southern stocks.

Agriculture committee  —was French “mad bee disease”, and it had to do with exactly that question.

Agriculture committee  I'll give you one example without naming the industry. I proposed years and years ago to do some work on learning and cognition in honeybees that would be given minute doses of neonicotinoid pesticides. I've done work with the institute of neurobiology at the Free University of Berlin on learning and cognition in bees.

Agriculture committee  I can take a crack at that. Making interprovincial and inter-regional comparisons will be very useful for giving insights into how best to tweak our management practices. I do say “tweak”, because Canadian beekeepers by and large are very successful. It's a very successful industry.

Agriculture committee  That I can answer. Worldwide, where experiments have been done with canola, it has been shown that adding managed pollinators to the mix will raise production between 10% and 15%. There have been trials done in Quebec out of the Université de Montréal in the past, but most of that scientific literature is not taken up by the agronomists, who ignore it.

Agriculture committee  Let me address that by giving you some examples that I understand. I'm sure there are other examples that I don't know about. The Hungarian beekeepers get from their government enough money to buy the pollen substitute that they need to bring their colonies healthfully into production each spring.

Agriculture committee  I think we have the infrastructure there. We just need to give the green light to the provincial apiarists and the bee inspectors working across this great country, along with the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, and we need to give them the mandate to go ahead and actually do that, and give them some facilities to be able to do that.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have some insights. I think I can say proudly that one of the most successful tech transfer teams was initiated in Ontario and came about as a result of the activities of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association. That started at least 15 years ago and is still ongoing.

Agriculture committee  My French is not up to replying to you in French. I'm sorry.

Agriculture committee  Your questions are extremely interesting. Certainly they have been of grave concern to me, as a Canadian, for a long time. I think we need to somehow take the parties with agendas, particularly the profit-motive agendas, away from being in charge of research that is of societal importance, and certainly the insecticide question is of great societal importance.

Agriculture committee  It's a pleasure to answer your question, Lloyd. I think there are a number of opportunities there, and I have noticed over the years, particularly with respect to pollination issues in agriculture and pollination issues in general, that Canada has not really been present except through the Canadian pollination initiative.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and for your hospitality the last time I visited. It was a great pleasure to be able to talk to you, and it is an honour to be able to address this committee formally. I will just give you a little bit about my background. Very often people think of pointy-headed professors as not being very practical.