International Trade committee  I'm going to ask my colleague from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to answer that question.

International Trade committee  Sure. The way government procurement access works is that for entities that both sides agree to cover, they set a threshold above which procurements are covered and therefore subject to open competition with the trade partner. In the government procurement agreement at the WTO, K

International Trade committee  The implementing bill in Canada needs to be passed by Parliament, and then we'll take the final steps to be able to ratify the bill. On the Korean side, they have to go through the same process in their National Assembly. We're anticipating that the implementing bill, or the ra

International Trade committee  Sure. Those are among the areas where we expect to see some very significant benefits. I mentioned that the beef tariff is at 40% and we've achieved a tariff phase-out outcome that is equal to what the Americans got, over 15 years. In the case of pork, most of our exports are o

International Trade committee  Thank you. I don't believe we conducted a study on that sector specifically, but we are aware that we have already lost a third of our market in South Korea, which is one of the reasons why we feel so strongly about the agreement being ratified. The industry was very much behind

International Trade committee  Are you referring to exports?

International Trade committee  To date China doesn't have a record of a great many free trade agreements, and those they do have tend to be quite a bit lower in ambition than the ones that we've historically negotiated. I know that the Koreans are having some challenges in negotiating with China. I think it re

International Trade committee  To the extent that current TPP members such as Japan compete in our market against Korea, they will be more motivated to conclude a negotiation with us inside the TPP. Japan is a very direct competitor of Korea's in the automotive market but in other sectors of the Canadian econo

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. Indeed, Korea is a significant market already for Canadian wine, particularly icewine, but the potential is much, much greater. At the moment, the icewine tariff is 15%. That will be eliminated on implementation. You spoke primarily about wines, but rye is

International Trade committee  Sure. The investor-state aspect is a core element of our mandate and our objective in any investment negotiation, whether it's as part of a stand-alone FIPA, a foreign investment protection and promotion agreement, or as part of the investment chapter in an FTA. This is what give

International Trade committee  Absolutely. There are many other considerations that will go into where to locate a plant, but I think we as a government certainly want to do everything we can to make sure that discriminatory access to global markets is not one of them.

International Trade committee  You know, we were put on notice a couple of weeks ago that this would be an early priority of the committee, but to be honest, a specific date was not provided until last night. We were basically told to be ready to be here tomorrow.

International Trade committee  We began with an exploratory process in January 2005, so that was nine and a half years ago. Formal negotiations began in July 2005, so there has been just under nine years of negotiation.

International Trade committee  If we look at the figures on what's happened between Korea and the U.S., it's true that U.S. exports declined by about 5% in the first two years, but that's against a backdrop where overall Korean imports from the world dropped. Basically, the Americans held their own at a time w

International Trade committee  Korean imports into the United States went up somewhat because the U.S. economy was recovering, but what's interesting to note is that the two areas where they grew the most were autos and ICT goods. The auto tariff hasn't come down yet under KORUS, and ICT was duty-free to begin