International Trade committee  Good afternoon, and thank you. This time you have no vote to cancel the meeting.

International Trade committee  In any case, it's a pleasure to be here and to talk about India. But talking about Asia, I'm quite sure that you'll see more of us in the next while, when you will be talking about Japan and China—in the very near future, I think—and maybe the European Union. I expect we will be back here to talk about those agreements.

International Trade committee  One thing we've noticed is the more you lower tariffs, the more you're likely to get non-tariff and technical barriers in place. We've seen it with several countries, including the largest ones, and even with our friendly neighbours. The point is that with this type of mechanism in the Panama treaty, in this case at least, they agreed to talk.

International Trade committee  Oh, it's no longer an issue. It was a couple of years ago; we couldn't get enough reefers. At the same time, we have to be careful. A lot of our big plants are located in the Prairies. It might be easier at times to truck the containers all the way to Vancouver than to get a slot on the trains.

International Trade committee  Oh, I don't think so. It's literally between the veterinary services on each side or the agricultural services on each side. No, I don't think there would be anything binding there. It's very difficult. In that case, you have to deal with sovereignty and different regulations, so it would be very difficult to have anything binding here.

International Trade committee  Basically, it will allow us to catch up with the elimination stages because the tariffs will be eliminated over a long period of time. Some are starting immediately and others are starting at a later date. The point is that we will catch up with them, with their calendar, but we will lose three, four, or five months for the difference when we don't have a treaty.

International Trade committee  It would be if it isn't, but Panamanians are not familiar with our political situation here, so how could they trust that the Canadian government could implement in one month or three months or three years or five years? They don't know, so they act on what they see.

International Trade committee  They see a U.S. free trade agreement being implemented next month.

International Trade committee  As I said, it could be difficult to assess, but I can tell you that the market was around $7 million or $8 million in the last two or three years. What we've seen is that for this year we've already lost something like 15% compared to last year.

International Trade committee  It would be only on the sanitary and phytosanitary issues. What the agreement would do is establish coordinators for each party. Those two coordinators would be charged with trying to resolve, through meetings or whatever other means they have, the outstanding sanitary and phytosanitary issues that we could have.

International Trade committee  Based on our experience in other markets, it will start.... It has started, because some of them say that Canada is not serious about having a steady market, so they have already started to look at the Americans. It has already started. However, to be significant, it usually takes about four to six months after the implementation of the agreement by the other party.

International Trade committee  As I mentioned, Canada was the number one supplier to Panama over the last 20 years, and now, because the Americans have concluded an agreement, we are losing ground and we're definitely losing market share. Where it becomes important is that, as I also said, our negotiators were able to obtain a clause by which we would follow the Americans, but we cannot allow them to take too much of a step ahead of us; otherwise we are likely to be out of it.

International Trade committee  I will make my presentation in French. Thank you for inviting me to discuss the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Panama. I will discuss only the part that applies to free trade. I want to begin by saying that the negotiations on our product, pork, have been fairly complex.

International Trade committee  Yes, but that's not a problem. In fact, to reassure the Japanese, we have created a quality assurance program. I did not say that our product was not safe before, but now we can prove it. We can demonstrate this to the Japanese because we conduct audits and verifications. We have people who keep books, so we can prove that our product is safe.

International Trade committee  I don't wish to add to what Jean-Guy said, but you asked if it would mean entry to other Asian markets. It would not really, because as far as we're concerned, they're all different. In our case with Japan, we're not talking about tariffs. We're talking about the system, which is very different.