Thank you.
I guess I think of this as not so much what's happened up to this point, but what could happen. What could happen in the next couple of weeks, and where are the opportunities? And what does Canada have to do to maximize the opportunities to get access for Canadian agriculture exporters and to reduce domestic subsidies?
I'm very glad to see that Minister Strahl, in the public column he writes each week, did mention this week that he is going to go. I believe he said Minister Emerson is going to go to Geneva at the end of this month. So that's very positive, and we certainly appreciate and thank them for doing that. Compare that to a couple of weeks ago. There was a meeting at the OECD of some of the ministers from some of the countries, and Canada wasn't there.
You've mentioned some of these other groups, the G-6. I wonder that Canada could have been in the G-6. If we'd had a different position, if we'd had a more ambitious position from the start, we could have been in the G-6. I would agree that the G-6 is probably the group that's driving this and it might be part of the group where the consensus comes out. So I ask, why isn't Canada there? We could have been there, but we're not there.
Some of those things may be the semantics, as to whether we're isolated on this or somebody is isolated on that. The real question that it comes down to is, what does Canada need to get for its agricultural exporters and its agriculture industry, and then to do those things to get there.
So if we can have our ministers going there.... Basically, the issue of sensitive products is going to be very key in there. As I've listened to this, I've tried to think, well, where is the common ground here? I've heard a bit about the fact that supply-managed industries do provide access into Canada, and it's based on a percentage of domestic support. That's really what we're seeking in Europe. We're seeking a certain percentage of the European domestic market.
Now, we can debate and negotiate over what that percentage should be. We'd like to see in the neighbourhood of 10% of the European domestic beef market be open to imports. That's really what this boils down to for cattle producers and cattle exports on the question of sensitive products for beef. I've become very uncomfortable when the question is asked, “Who are Canada's allies?” and the answer comes back, “Well, it's Europe and it's Japan and it's Norway”, those countries that all want to prevent beef from going into those marketplaces. That makes cattle producers very nervous in this country.
So I guess rather than getting caught up sometimes on some of these peripheral issues, let's get down to the core issue. I don't think anybody would disagree at this table that having better access for beef exports or meat exports or grain exports into Europe would be a bad thing. So how do we make that happen?