International Trade committee  The government has been reviewing Canada's negotiating position to make sure it's still appropriate to the context of the negotiations. As I say, as it gets more detailed, we obviously have to adjust in the direction of having more detailed instruction, but the overriding principle of getting a more level playing field remains the same.

International Trade committee  That's right: taking a hard line on the issue of the importance of supply management hasn't changed.

International Trade committee  Thanks. The issue you're referring to is called the selection of sensitive products, so how many tariff lines can countries designate as belonging to sensitive products. You're right, this is one of the key issues that negotiators are talking about in Geneva. Obviously, Canada's position is that for us our sensitive products are the supply-managed products, and we're pushing hard to ensure that we can include our supply-managed products into the sensitive products category.

International Trade committee  You're raising the other key issue in the agriculture negotiations, which is the reduction of subsidies, particularly those that distort trade the most. This has been a key issue and objective for Canada, getting those trade-distorting subsidies down, particularly those in the United States, because they're our neighbour and because of our large trade dependence on them.

International Trade committee  My name's Graham Barr. I'm the director of the multilateral trade policy division at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and I'm responsible for the division that provides the analytical and operational support to Canada's chief agriculture negotiator.

Agriculture committee  The government has been very clear in its support of supply management, both currently and for the future. We're just here today to provide the facts, including on the process for undertaking some of the options we've been discussing, and also to discuss the possible implications.

Agriculture committee  As we said, yes, it is possible. Our role here is to explain the process and the implications.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  The communication lines between all five organizations represented at this table are very open.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Throughout the course of this appearance today, we have outlined several possibilities, most of which have been brought forward by the Dairy Farmers of Canada as well. There's been discussion on article 28. There's been discussion on changing our domestic legislation to make a clarification that chapter 4 has a 90% concentration.

Agriculture committee  As with many important issues before the government, this is one that's managed horizontally among departments. In our opening remarks, each of us explained our more specific role in this file, for example, from a policy angle, as with my colleague, Mr. Richard Tudor Price; the Department of Finance; and me, from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Agriculture committee  The discussions are taking place between the producers and processors. We expect that the government will be informed of their progress at the appropriate time, but at this point it's a process between the producers and the processors.

Agriculture committee  The 6,000-tonne figure is for the imports under the tariff line in chapter 4. It's important to note that there are other products beyond milk protein concentrates within that tariff line. Another point there, of course, is that the tariff line is limited by a tariff rate quota.

Agriculture committee  Earlier, when I was talking about no practical impact, I was referring to within the United States, because the tariff applied to imports with milk protein concentrates is either identical or not substantially different between chapter 4 and chapter 35. I wasn't commenting on the potential significance of making the necessary domestic legislative change to clarify that chapter 4 has a 90% cut-off.

Agriculture committee  My colleague from the Department of Finance will comment specifically on the procedure. I'd also like to make the point that in general, a principle of the WTO is that most, if not all, tariff lines are “bound”, which means that they're bound in schedules, and it's very difficult to raise them.