ABSTRACT
Canada is a top exporter of agricultural goods and its economy de pends largely on global market accessibility. This country’s active participation in international and multilateral fora, relating to trade of agricultural biotechnology products, is mirrored in the relative im portance of this sector within government. Canada is the third largest producer of genetically engineered (GE) crops and with the United States and Argentina generates 99 percent of global GE crop acreage. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of AgriBiotech Applications (ISAAA), the global value of GE crops was es timated to be $5.25 billion. Numbers are expected to reach over $5.5 billion for 2006.1 With such optimistic figures, the Canadian federal government is poised to capitalize on decades of public investments in this industrial sector. Key to Canada’s global market expansion for GE crops is its regulatory system, namely its risk-based assessment for determining the environmental safety of transgenic crops.
