Agriculture committee  The decline that you see with respect to the agency relates to time-limited funding. There are two particular areas in terms of time-limited funding. There is the time-limited sunsetting program funding. As the committee will be aware, budget 2017 made significant investment in t

Agriculture committee  Certainly any regulatory requirement in the sanitary or phytosanitary space impacting an import is a non-tariff measure; however, it doesn't constitute a barrier unless the exporting country can't meet it. It's an unjustified barrier if we can't defend its legitimacy in protectin

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I could start with the regulatory dimensions of that. Because there is shared jurisdiction in Canada in the agricultural context, it is the case that in some situations there isn't a perfect alignment between provincial requirements between provinces or between provinci

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  Indeed, yes, absolutely. In fact, staff from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are embedded directly in the market access secretariat to ensure highly effective coordination of files, in terms of both export and import interests. Often in our conversations with another jurisd

Agriculture committee  Quite simply, it is the commitment to science-based, risk-based regulation. We focus on the risks that Canadian agriculture faces and apply a science-based approach—measures we can defend in the science—in order to provide assurance that we are not overregulating or regulating sp

Agriculture committee  Briefly, yes, there continue to be issues that we work through. I'll use one example. Small ruminants in Canada being exported to Mexico or to Central or South America currently face the challenge that they can't be transported through the United States because we're awaiting a

Agriculture committee  Certainly. As my colleague noted earlier, we have a number of measures that serve to protect Canadian interests as related to the import of products to Canada that could bring with them pests or diseases. The regulatory framework under the Health of Animals Act prescribes a numbe

Agriculture committee  In terms of products that move internationally, they fall under the federal regulatory framework. Provincial requirements would apply in terms of products entering, but in terms of exports, the products would fall under the federal framework.

Agriculture committee  My colleagues may want to join in on a bit of an EU operations 101. Our trading relationship is both with the individual member states and with the European Union as an entity. We pursue, to the extent that we can, recognition of equivalent outcomes in terms of the regulatory s

Agriculture committee  They could raise their concerns with, for example, the emergence of a disease in Canada, and they would raise that with the European Union as well as with us.

Agriculture committee  We've had tremendous success in resolving market access issues in Asia, but let's be realistic: that has been the result of some tremendous work and effort. The same principles apply in our approach, but the value proposition in addition to that bilateral interaction of FTAs is

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. It certainly is a complex area when in addition to managing the technical aspects, issues of consumer perception and public trust are brought into the mix. We know that they are quite divergent views from time to time. My colleague pointed to biotec

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I can start, and my colleague may want to add. We've been working very closely with stakeholders to look at the issue of our domestic position with respect to low-level presence and to advocate in an international context for a predictable approach to the management of

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. In the case of what we call the “three sisters”—Codex Alimentarius for food safety, the International Plant Protection Convention for phytosanitary risks, and the World Organisation for Animal Health—in all three cases, Canada is very active