Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. That question is more appropriate for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. However, we are working closely with DFO in their development of regulations. They're working through that. I believe DFO has plans to regulate the possession and export of elvers, in terms of permitting and controlling any illegal fisheries.

Fisheries committee  We are not aware of any forged certificates being used.

Fisheries committee  As I mentioned in the opening remarks, Hong Kong does not require export certification for export to Hong Kong from Canada, unless the product will be re-exported to China. We have not issued any export certification to Hong Kong, or to China, since—

Fisheries committee  When we are aware of forged certificates, we take action. We have a mechanism in place for enforcement and investigation activities. We were not notified in Hong Kong or by Hong Kong authorities of any forged certificates that have been used. Unfortunately, we don't have jurisdiction in Hong Kong.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee members today on this important topic. My name is Dr. Parthi Muthukumarasamy, and I work as executive director for international programs at the CFIA. I am accompanied by Kevin Urbanic, director general for Ontario operations.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not qualified to talk about seeds, but in general CFIA has excellent regulatory co-operation with many other jurisdictions that do assessments similar to CFIA's. We also have international standard-setting bodies. For food, it is Codex Alimentarius. For animal health, it's the World Organisation for Animal Health, and for plants, it's IPPC.

Agriculture committee  As I mentioned in the opening remarks, we are reviewing the call for information and scientific data we have solicited. We have received over 55 scientific documents, publications, opinions and comments. We are reviewing those. In the next eight weeks, we will make a determination on whether we will go ahead and proceed with a new risk assessment or not.

Agriculture committee  For example, the Americans have Africanized bees in California, and they are moving north every year. We don't have Africanized bees in Canada. Africanized bees, as you know, have undesirable traits, such as more aggressive swarms and bees—

Agriculture committee  It is a pest we are concerned about. In terms of the small hive beetle, for example, that's another parasite that is present. While it is in the U.S., it's only sporadic in localized areas in Canada. However, we also have excellent control programs in the provinces that manage bee health and ensure these, for example, small hive beetles do not spread to other parts of the country or within the province.

Agriculture committee  That depends. Each state has a different disease prevalence and disease status. There are opportunities to look at a zone, but they need significant scientific information and assessment in terms of, again, the prevalence of the disease: when they last had outbreaks, what kind of surveillance they have in place and what natural barriers are present that don't allow the disease to come into a state.

Agriculture committee  Certainly, amitraz-resistant varroa mites are one of our hazards, one of our concerns, that we include when we do the risk assessment. When there is varroa resistance in another country that wants to export to Canada, certainly the CFIA will be looking at that from a risk assessment perspective because it introduces varroa resistance to Canada.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. We demonstrated that there is a different level of risk and disease prevalence between Canada and the U.S. That is the basis of the risk assessment and the decision to restrict the import of packaged bees into Canada.

Agriculture committee  The risk assessment is not based on individual packages. It's based on the entire system the country has in place, including its veterinary infrastructure, its surveillance, its research, its control measures for bee movements, the prevalence of any disease we are concerned about and also its reporting.

Agriculture committee  Although our risk assessment was done in 2013, we review any new publications, new surveillance reports, any new science that's coming out, to continually evaluate whether there are any significant changes that would warrant a risk assessment. Also, I mentioned in my opening remarks that CFIA has formally solicited calls for new information and scientific information from a number of stakeholders, which we have received and we are currently reviewing.

Agriculture committee  Our decision to allow imports of packaged bees from Ukraine was made after the extensive risk assessment that was conducted on Ukraine and its control programs, its surveillance programs, the disease prevalence, and a number of other scientific parameters.