Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll be quick. I just have two points that I want to make.
First of all, this is all about branding Canada. There's a value in marketing. I was interested in Mr. Atamanenko's remarks about the relationship with food sovereignty, because there is one.
I want to read out a sentence about a survey we did on the importance of the term “Canada” or “Canadian” for Canadian consumers when choosing or buying dairy products. This is in the context of the logo we have for identifying Canadian dairy products. It's a blue cow. Many of you are familiar with it.
The single biggest attribute or driver for consumers is the following:
The primary driver remains an insular belief in the Canadian government food standards relative to other countries rather than specific product-related attributes.
That's the strength of “Canada” or “Canadian”. That's why consumers buy it.
With regard to the issue of voluntary versus mandatory, we're all against COOL. Let's not make the same mistake; it has many complications. The difficulty we're having now is that you have a voluntary system but it's not regulated. It's subject to guidelines. What you need to do, if somebody uses “Product of Canada”, is regulate those conditions and make them much more stringent than they currently are.