Thank you,
Chair, I'd like to thank our guests for attending this session with regard to CEPA, our free trade deal with India.
I find it a very compelling argument, the reasons for the need to do this deal, and the chair cited earlier the size of the population of India. That just got me reflecting on its size and, according to your comments, Mr. Stephenson, how big the population of India will grow, which is to become the number one population in the world in the frankly not too distant future. I therefore think that if there's an opportunity, it's now.
One of the things that occurs to me, when I look at it.... We've talked before about the BRIC countries having some significance. This committee has gone to Brazil for that purpose. It is a focus. China, and obviously Russia...these are things that I know we will cover over time.
I heard one of my colleagues opposite expressing concern about losing ground with our current markets. I was thinking about that and about how we had the representatives from the pork industry here, who some years ago had 75% of the industry in the States. Now their market share is down to 32% while in fact their volume has actually doubled. So I think the reason we're doing this, and why there's such an aggressive trade agenda with the government, is that we don't want to have reliance on any one country. To have this kind of support in working with India makes a whole bunch of sense to me. The reason that we're so aggressively engaged in bilaterals is that the notion of multilaterals is off the table, as I see it, frankly.
This is related, so I'd like to ask this question: in your opinion, is Doha done?