Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will begin my presentation in French. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce my colleague, Dr. Réjean Bouchard, Assistant Director of the Dairy Farmers of Canada. He is the person in charge of most issues having to do with food safety. You have received a copy of my presentation and a PowerPoint presentation on the Canadian Quality Milk (CQM) Program.

Agriculture committee  Just make sure we have a distinction. We need to have a very high content, but not too high; 100% is a bit scary. I'll use chocolate milk. We're promoting 100% Canadian milk, but the fact that you use cocoa beans or flavouring to make it chocolate, or bananas in yogourt, doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't be qualified as a product of Canada.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll be quick. I just have two points that I want to make. First of all, this is all about branding Canada. There's a value in marketing. I was interested in Mr. Atamanenko's remarks about the relationship with food sovereignty, because there is one.

Agriculture committee  I'll have the first go at this, and Jacques may want to complete it. This is the dilemma of this issue because it has four different departments under four different ministers involved. It has agencies involved and so on. Canada is an exporting country, I don't deny that. And there's a lot of value to exports and so on.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to make a quick comment on this, because I think it's a very key issue of misunderstanding in terms of the message you're getting in regard to producers and processors. The processors say it's an issue of pricing, but the finished product they're competing with is in a closed market.

Agriculture committee  It represents 25% of the protein market. I'd have to go back, because I don't have the exact numbers in my head. Sorry.

Agriculture committee  It's an interesting debate, because the purer a dairy product is, the less it would be a dairy product under that kind of approach, which is why we're saying it doesn't make a lot of sense to make that distinction. This is an issue of pure protein. The milk protein concentrate that you're talking about at 87.5% is 100% dairy.

Agriculture committee  No, it would be subject to the 4,345 tonnes of import quota. I know you'll have other witnesses, and maybe one other good question you need to ask is this. How were the 4,345 tonnes of historical imports determined back in 1995, when you had to look at the imports of a whole different range of dairy ingredients?

Agriculture committee  We should never have had a decision that forced us to switch chapters. We should have left it where we negotiated it.

Agriculture committee  The way this analysis was done, it was using, I believe, 11.5% of the protein substitution for standardization of all milk and cheese and complete substitution of non-fat solids in yoghurt and ice cream. These numbers were verified by Canada, just as mentioned, because they wanted to have our analysis behind it.

Agriculture committee  In the case you are referring to, the question is whether the context surrounding section 28 applies to that product in particular or not, in other words, does it apply to tariff line 0404.90. Based on the legal opinions we have received, we are convinced that it does. We do not want to launch a debate on whether section 28 applies entirely to the acquisition of new rights within the context of the WTO.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Bellavance. We have included in your kit a legal analysis that deals with this issue. It was prepared by our lawyers. As far as article 28 is concerned, the distinction to be made in this case is that Canada, until our tribunal ruled otherwise, already provided protection and surveillance under WTO tariff 04,04.

Agriculture committee  I'll start on the first part of the question, Mr. Chairman. In terms of harmonization, right now the United States has milk protein concentrates under 0404--well, 9010, but to keep it simple I'll refer to 0404--and has defined milk protein concentrate to cover any concentration of protein between 40% and 90%.

Agriculture committee  We're pleased to share those with the committee, Mr. Chair.

Agriculture committee  I'd be glad to do so.