International Trade committee  I can illustrate that. Before the Uruguay Round of the WTO, before 1994, if you looked at our top 15 markets now for pork, we were not in 12 of those 15 markets. We didn't have access to Korea, China, Mexico, you name it. It was a long list. So those multilateral or bilateral agreements are key to gaining access.

International Trade committee  The same goes for us.

International Trade committee  It is 28%.

International Trade committee  The quality assurance program was developed about ten years ago, and it was basically developed to address Japanese demands. They raised a lot of issues. The producers at the Canada Pork Council looked at all the demands and said they needed to provide some kind of quality assurance program to reassure their Japanese customers, and you should see the book the producers now have to comply with.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Yes. There's no difference. The only difference you have is on the commercial specifications. The Japanese buyer might request that the loin or tenderloin be cut in a different manner, or they could request a special breed. When it comes to food quality, food safety, there's no difference between what we ship to Japan and what you eat here in Canada.

International Trade committee  In our case, it's the United States and the European Union—mostly Denmark.

International Trade committee  Because of the nature, which is very different, my wish would be to find a way to modify the gate-price system to benefit Canada at the expense of our competitors and to be exempted from the safeguards.

International Trade committee  In our case, we're doing very well in Japan already. We can say that we don't really have technical barriers, except maybe in the processing, but even in the processing we'll have to be careful to strike a balance. But basically no, it's really the gate price and the pork import regime structure by itself.

International Trade committee  In our case, even a small change in the current duty could land us with an extra $100 million pretty quickly, but we are targeting much more than that. We could double in value our exports to Japan if we were to have a very comprehensive agreement.

International Trade committee  Their standards per se are not that much different from ours. As a matter of fact, they're very much the same, but the expectations of the consumer in Japan are much higher, because in the past they've had incidents related to food safety. The public there, let me tell you, is much more concerned about food safety issues than anywhere else we know of.

International Trade committee  We don't expect any change in the standards. They are already very demanding, and they are already the best in the world, so we don't expect any changes.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  We have to be very careful here, because the primary buyers of frozen Canadian pork are the Japanese ham and sausage manufacturers. We have to strike a delicate balance, because if the ham and sausage manufacturers of Japan cannot get enough supply at the right price, they will de-localize and move their operations to China.

International Trade committee  Which one do you mean?