Thank you, all of you.
Before I start, I'd just like to say, Mr. Latimer, that you mentioned that your degree is in recreation administration, and you were kind of wondering what you were doing here. I also have a degree in recreation administration, and sometimes I'm wondering what I'm doing here also.
Yesterday we visited some fruit producers in the Okanagan. We heard some pretty gut-wrenching stories of people saying, “That's it. We have apples being dumped, for example, in our country. We've signed onto NAFTA, and apples are being dumped below the cost of production. We can't compete.” A number of them have mentioned that with supply management at least they have predictability, they have a certainty of a market, and they're even thinking of trying to get some kind of an orderly market going to save our tree fruit industry in Canada.
I've just completed, basically, a two-year tour across this country. I visited 28 communities on what we call the “Food For Thought” tour, just listening to what people have to say about food sovereignty, food security. One of the themes that I heard over and over again is that a lot of these trade agreements have had a negative effect on our farmers, in spite of some of the positive effects, obviously.
Mr. Davis, you mentioned that you would like to see a successful conclusion of the Doha Round. It's my understanding that if that were to happen, as the agreement currently exists, there would be some concessions. The average dairy farmer probably would lose $70,000, the current 7.5% quota would go up to 10%, the over-quota tariff would come down, and certainly very soon our Wheat Board would be gone because of the pressure from the world community.
You also talked about the Canada-EU free trade agreement and you would encourage us to get on board. The provinces of all political stripes seem to be supporting this, in addition to the federal government, but it's my understanding that this agreement will open up contracts to European companies that will now have access to municipal, federal, provincial, and crown corporation contracts. This, in my opinion, would be a step in devastating rural Canada, because now we'd have a company here in this community competing with local contractors from Switzerland on a bid, and the local municipality would have to accept their bid if it was lower.
It's also my understanding that supply management and the Wheat Board are on the table. The Europeans would love to get their hands on our dairy and egg and poultry markets.
So I'm just wondering about your thoughts on this. How can we possibly encourage an agreement that would have these constraints put on our ability as a country to survive?