Agriculture committee  It is curious that the negative impact of COOL—of $640 million per year to the beef sector and about $500 million to the pork sector—is roughly around the same numbers that we're talking about in the benefit from the CETA. There is potentially that. There's a bit of a time lag be

Agriculture committee  I think you've hit on an important point here about how things evolve over time and the 500 million customers. As good an agreement this is for today, it will be an even better agreement for the future. If you look at Europe 20 years ago, they were a net beef exporter, right? W

Agriculture committee  I would say for Quebec, on the beef side of things, the main detail we still need to know is when. When will the agreement be implemented? That is important because it will take about two years to get cattle ready. So producers want to know what year they start. In Quebec, dairy

Agriculture committee  Yes, certainly. We believe it is. You know, we leave it to individual cattle producers to make that decision as to whether they think, for their operations, it would make sense. Different producers have different cost structures, or are different sizes, that sort of thing. We

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  We expect it will be fairly minimal. Their production is very expensive, and as long as it is not subsidized trade, which would remain illegal and there are tools to deal with that--whether it is subsidized beef or subsidized cheese or subsidized aircraft or subsidized anything,

Agriculture committee  In coming up with what it was going to take to fill that quota, we figured about half a million head of cattle would have to be produced according to the EU protocol. How we came up with that is that we asked some of the companies that are already shipping to Europe—well, the on

Agriculture committee  That would be high quality as well.

Agriculture committee  The third one is available only for Canada and the U.S. and currently has a 20% duty. The fourth one, which is 48,200 tonnes, is basically the same quality specification, but it's open to any country that can meet that quality specification, and it's duty-free already.

Agriculture committee  I think you've hit on the reason. We felt it was necessary to go and see them because they have been, let's say, feisty. They have made noise about the potential Europe–Mercosur agreement. They're very concerned about Brazil, a low-cost producer, shipping a lot of product into

Agriculture committee  I was going to mention Korea as well. In other scenarios where we have gotten in first—I can think of the time after BSE, with Hong Kong and China—we have gotten in ahead of the Americans and have done well in those markets. Getting in first is a big advantage. To your other poi

Agriculture committee  I guess the main thing that we still need to find out is when: we're all still trying to anticipate when this agreement will be implemented. Will it be in 2016? Maybe 2015 is a little too soon. We know that the European Parliament is going to have its elections in 2014; that is a

Agriculture committee  This is related a bit more to Jim's sector, but from the cattle producers' perspective, you want to have a packing plant as close to your operation as possible so that your shipping distances are reasonable. With the lower cattle numbers we've had in Canada these last few years,

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I've been taking a lot of calls from cattle producers with questions over these last few weeks. They want to know if we will produce these cattle. As I talk about the opportunities and what's there and we talk about the cost and how it has to be produced without growt

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear here before you again. We've waited a long time to be able to talk with you about a successful Canada-Europe trade agreement. I can't tell you how pleased we are to be here today talking about having a successful agreement. W