Agriculture committee  Are you asking me for a comment?

Agriculture committee  I think that in the long-term we're still going to have the ability in our countries to determine what our domestic marketing structures will be. Yes, our overall long-term goal is global free trade, but I don't believe it has an impact on what our domestic marketing structures a

Agriculture committee  You had a long list of points and questions there. I'll try to address at least some of them. First of all, with respect to the motion in the House last fall, while it was unanimously supported, as I stated earlier, I think it was misguided, unfortunately, because of how it impa

Agriculture committee  What I'm saying is that because the statement within the motion that spoke to supply management spoke about zero change to anything with respect to TRQs and tariff levels, it doesn't allow the Canadian negotiators to have any room whatsoever, and that is not consistent with Canad

Agriculture committee  With respect to your second point about a poll, I'm not familiar with the specifics of the poll. I'm not aware of exactly what the questions were, how they were asked, or what the exact results were. But you've indicated that the Canadian public supports supply management and bel

Agriculture committee  That's why it's so important that the WTO is about three pillars: it's about eliminating export subsidy and trade-distorting domestic support, and it's about market access, because bilaterals have really only addressed the market access issue, and the distortion side of subsidies

Agriculture committee  That's why it's so important that we get a comprehensive deal at the WTO to ensure we have a good set of rules. International trade negotiations have gone on for decades and they have addressed many issues, but with respect to agriculture, we have never really had a good solid se

Agriculture committee  With respect to the question you had on reducing Canada's dependence on exports, I guess I would like to say that I could predict very accurately what might happen in the next 10 to 20 years, but I think I can just broadly say that Canada will always be a great exporting nation i

Agriculture committee  You indicated that Canada is a fair player and that we should be satisfied with that and shouldn't be looking at more access. I guess I have a couple of points on that. The reality is that all of the countries, unfortunately, could be considered fair players, because they are a

Agriculture committee  What we would want to make clear, first of all, is that supply management is not being negotiated at the WTO. What is being negotiated is market access. I don't think it is a matter of one sector winning and one sector losing. It isn't about the exporters winning and our domestic

Agriculture committee  With respect to the question, you indicated that Minister Wartman had said that we're physically not at the table, and you asked whether that has an impact on the deal that Canada may get. To further emphasize Tyler's point, the problem is that once you are unwilling to move on o

Agriculture committee  I would comment on that with respect to our isolation. As Mr. Bellavance indicated earlier, even the director general of the WTO has indicated that Canada is isolated in our position with respect to sensitive products. As further proof with respect to our isolation, two times we'

Agriculture committee  With respect to Hong Kong, I was there too, and we certainly were informed by many that in fact Canada did stand alone with respect to sensitive products and did stand in the way of seeing progress on sensitive products. So I'm not sure who each of us is speaking to, but I can te

Agriculture committee  Mr. Easter, may I speak to the enemies question?

Agriculture committee  All right, I'll address that later.