Agronomist (Bill Crabtree), there are serious flaws in your debate:
You say "There are two advantages to GM canola in Canada. The first is through being able to use post-emergent rather than pre-emergent herbicides for weed control. This allows earlier planting of the crop and hence higher yields."
Well pardon me for stating the bleeding obvious again but most of our canola grown in Australia is chemical resistant and therefore we use both pre and post emergent. Unlike Canada where they have limited weed competition at emergence because they are planting directly after the snow thaws, Australian farmers will still be required to use pre emergent chemicals. The biggest yield penalty is associated with poor weed control at emergence so ignoring pre-emergent spraying will radically slash yields.
Your "second advantage" is regarding a hyrid and we have non-GM hybrids available in Australia now. The Invigor hybrid has 20% less vigour than a non-GM hybrid. We will soon have non-GM traizine resistant hybrid canola available and they are claiming a 38% yield advantage.
Australian non-GM canola yields are improving every year and if we want to clear up the misconceptions about yield, we need independent performance trials. Why then are the companies refusing to participate? What are they frightened of?
Cont…

You again misquoted me regarding "no weeds" , If pre emergent chemicals are not used, Canada has comparatively very clean paddocks when compared to what an Australian farmer would have. Farmers here have already been spraying for weeks because we had a summer rain and if we left those weeds they would be huge and would have depleted any nutrients in the soil. There would be no way you could sow a canola crop in Australia without pre-emergent chemicals unless you had no rain until you were ready to sow. That is extemely rare but was experienced in some eastern states last year and it would be very misleading to claim that pre-emergent chemicals are not needed in a normal season.
Your comment "GM canola manages wild radish just fine" is not true. If you are referring to the Invigor variety you are promoting, and you are not using a preemergent as you suggest, your post emergent control would be glufosinate ammonium and your normal post emergent selective chemicals. Glufosinate ammonium does not control radish (triazine used on non-GM triazine tolerant canola does). I am not aware of any post emergent chemical that gives good control of radish.
If farmers are not applying any pre-emergent or any post emergent that controls radish, how exactly will radish be controlled?

IsItSafe
I can see you are finding natural transgenesis hard to swallow. Before I respond to your latest comments, consider what happens when DNA from dead foreign cells gets on sperm, and tell me if you think genes do not have plausible routes to move in nature against your rules.

Sperm-mediated gene transfer: applications and implications
Smith and Spadafora
BioEssays27:551–562_2005.

In 1989, two independent reports made the claim that sperm cells could associate with non sperm DNA molecules (transgenes) and transfer these molecules during fertilization, resulting in genetically modified (transgenic) offspring This represented an important rediscovery of what in retrospect can now be viewed as a groundbreaking discovery: the spontaneous ability of spermcells to bind DNA. Most of these reports provide evidence of postfertilization transfer and maintenance of transgenes, and several of the studies also report the subsequent generation of viable F0 animals, the cells of which contain exogenous DNA sequences.

Recent developments in studies of sperm-mediated gene transfer (SMGT) now provide solid ground for the notion that sperm cells can act as vectors for exogenous genetic sequences.Asubstantive body of evidence indicates that SMGT is potentially useable in animal transgenesis...
...The appearance of SMGT-derived modified offspring on the one hand and, on the other hand, the rarity of actual modification of the genome, suggest inheritance as extrachromosomal structures.
The possibility that sperm cells under these conditions carry genetic sequences affecting the integrity or identity of the host genome should be critically considered. These considerations further suggest the possibility that SMGT events may occasionally take place in nature, with profound implications for evolutionary processes.
... Accordingly, in spite of the controversy that accompanied its first appearance, SMGT has gradually been perceived as a potentially promising method. SMGT may be able to provide efficient, rapid and low-cost protocols for animal transgenesis and, more futuristically, human germline gene therapy. Moreover, if spermcells can act as vectors for foreign genetic sequences, it follows that the genome of sexually reproducing animals—including humans —may be exposed to alteration by exogenous genetic sequences carried by sperm cells, with important implications for evolutionary processes and for human health.

Good grief! I am not interested in talking in depth about sperm. I am a consumer that wants rigorous health testing on any GM food as it is a very different invasive technique. Why are you opposing independent health testing as at the moment in my eyes, you are the last person that I trust to say my food is safe? You can play with your sperm report because I’m not interested.

Traavik’s work on the 35S promoter (Myhre et al. European Food Research and Technology 222, 185-193 2006) involved the genetic modification of a human cell line Caco-2 with constructs consisting of reporter genes (luciferase and green fluorescent protein) driven by the 35S promoter of CaMV. These experiments showed that when you genetically modified human cells using a process called transient transfection where the introduced DNA does not have to be incorporated into the cell chromosomes. The results were that a small amount of expression of the reporter gene was detected in the transfected Caco-2 cells. For CaMV 35S, the amount of activity was 0.8% of that of cells transfected with a construct driven by a mammalian virus promoter. Luciferase activity could be detected even when cells were transfected with a construct without a promoter. Activity was about 10% of that when CaMV 35S promoter was used.

So it is possible to get transient expression driven by plant viral promoters in some animal tissues. Does this matter? As a general rule, obviously not. We as humans have been eating plant viruses for millennia. It is possible at low frequencies for small amounts of DNA were to survive intact in the gut. Likewise, there is a remote probability that such DNA could be picked up by cells of the gut lining. Lastly, if it were picked up, there is a small probability the proteins would be expressed transiently in the cells. In the exceptionally rare event this were to happen, what would be the consequence? Would it matter if a few of your gut cells expressed a protein that makes them resistant to glyphosate or caterpillars? Would it matter if a few of your gut cells expressed a coal protein for a plant virus?

So NonGMFarmer, I misquoted you about “no weeds”. I would have thought “no weeds” meant, … well, … no weeds? Apparently not. Apparently “no weeds” can mean plenty of weeds if that is what you want it to mean. Shades of the White Rabbit here.

Let me see your argument then. Because you get rain in the summer, you need to use pre-emergent herbicides to grow canola. Have you not heard of glyphosate, which can be used to control weed growth just before planting the crop?

Are we talking about the same pre-emergent herbicides? In conventional canola crops in Canada, pre-emergent herbicides are required to stop weeds emerging after the crop has been sown. In HT canola crops in Canada, growers can now use herbicides to control those weeds after the crop has been sown. If they want to, they can also apply glyphosate to control any plant growth before the crop is sown.

Most of your canola is Atrazine-resistant. This was given away in Canada in the 1990s because it was also yield resistant and there were, and are, concerns about atrazine in groundwater.

If canola yields in Australia are increasing every year, how come they are not at the level they were in 1996?