Scott-Dupree, c

<p style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.65625px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><b style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">Canadian wild card?

But Canadian officials seem resistant to the emerging research trends. After the European Commission voted to ban neonics, anti-GMO, green and farm groups turned their focus on Canada, <a href="http://www.manitoulin.ca/canadian-study-shows-bee-deaths-linked-neonicotinoid-pesticides/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">pressuring</a> Ottawa to follow suit. The responsible agency, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), aware that the evidence fingering neonics was spotty, vacillated, issuing an ambiguous <a href="http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/fact-fiche/bee_mortality-mortalite_abeille-eng.php" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">assessment </a>of reported bee deaths in Ontario and Quebec and a vague “<a href="http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pest/part/consultations/noi2013-01/noi2013-01-eng.php" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">notice of intent</a>” order to regulate neonics, without providing details.

It’s not as if PMRA does not have comprehensive research on neonics to rely upon. If bee health problems were critical in Canada, they would certainly have surfaced in the country’s 19 million acres of canola farms, which are mostly in the west. Beekeepers who forage their bees in the canola fields, where neonics are used far more heavily than on Ontario and Quebec farms, say their hives are generally thriving. [no cite]Apart from a single, ambiguous case, there have been no reports of bee kills attributable to neonics in all of western Canada in recent years.

PMRA could also have drawn upon previous studies, including <a href="http://sesss08.setac.eu/embed/sesss08/Cynthia_Scott-Dupree_Field_study_Reliability-A_Honey_bee__Neonicotinoid_PERSPECTIVE.pdf" style=" font-weight: normal; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">three major field investigations</a> on neonicotinoid pesticides in 2002, 2005 and 2012 by environmental biologist Cynthia Scott-Dupree of the University of Guelph and entomologist Chris Cutler of Dalhousie University. The researchers noted residues of neonics in ailing bee hives, but at levels hundreds of times lower than scientists believe would have any impact on bees. Their conclusion echoed recent findings by DEFRA, USDA and EPA: many factors contribute to bee deaths, but neonics in particular had “no effects” on their poor performance.

Scott-Dupree and Cutler’s field research is widely recognized as among the most robust in the world in evaluating real world impacts of these pesticides. But under pressure from the Sierra Club allied with organic-focused beekeepers, the Ontario provincial government ensured that the two experts with the most detailed research on the issue would not be invited to participate. Although excluded from the Ontario study group, Cutler, Scott-Dupree, and David Drexler, an agrology consultant, published an <a href="http://www.producer.com/daily/ontario-field-study-finds-no-link-between-seed-treatments-bee-deaths/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">analysis</a>of all bee-kill incidents reported in Canada from 2007-2012. Their key finding: “[V]ery few of the serious bee kills involve neonicotinoid pesticides. Five times as many ‘major’ and ‘moderate’ pesticide-related bee kills were sourced to other non-neonic chemicals.“

Let’s be clear: the Ontario group was mostly for show. The main ‘output’ for this initiative—apart from the politicians’ imperative of appearing to ‘do something’—has always been to ‘light a fire’ under PMRA to capitulate to the complaints of the Sierra Club and Ontario beekeepers.

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<h5 style=" color: rgb(68, 68, 68); margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/240307523_Too_much_work_not_enough_tarsi_group_size_influences_Bombus_impatiens_%28Hymenoptera_Apidae%29_worker_reproduction_with_implications_for_sublethal_pesticide_toxicity_assessments" style=" color: rgb(68, 68, 68); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Too much work, not enough tarsi: group size influences Bombus impatiens (Hymenoptera: Apidae) worker reproduction with implications for sublethal pesticide toxicity assessments.</a></h5>

<div class="authors" style=" color: rgb(153, 153, 153); font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/15949580_A_E_Gradish" class="authors" style=" color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">A E Gradish</a>, <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/12403254_C_D_Scott-Dupree" class="authors" style=" color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">C D Scott-Dupree</a>, <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2013202385_A_D_Mcfarlane" class="authors" style=" color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">A D Mcfarlane</a>, <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/58544213_A_J_Frewin" class="authors" style=" color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">A J Frewin</a></div>

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