Thank you. That's a complex question, but in effect you're right, Mr. Atamanenko. Our trade obligations prevent the federal government from biasing procurement toward a given commodity or Canadian products only.
I think there's a lot of risk in that. You saw the problems we faced with the United States and their Buy American strategies in the post-recession period, when our government had to work very, very hard to try to exclude Canadian firms from that because of the loss of business. It's a difficult trade path to go down if you start to bias toward local procurement.
I think there are strategies for marrying up consumers to local farmers, and those kinds of initiatives are actually taking place right across the country. We do work in the department to try to help our producers get involved in the value chain so that they can connect with consumers. We have a number of value chain round tables that bring together the producers in the sector with the processors and others to make sure we're responding to consumer demands.
You mentioned dumping and other issues. We actually do have access and have successfully used access to anti-dumping in the tree fruit industry in British Columbia, for example, so trade rules do work for Canada. I'm sure you know that in the WTO one of our major objectives is to limit and reduce as much as possible trade-distorting domestic support of the very kind you're pointing to in the United States.
In terms of the amount of support the U.S. delivers to its sector, it varies on a commodity-by-commodity basis, but overall, the producer measure of support is actually higher in Canada than it is on average in the U.S. I would be pleased to provide that information in detail to the committee. It does seem counterintuitive when you see the numbers that are thrown around. I haven't read Mr. Clark's study, but I know Peter very well, so I will be talking to him about it to see what kind of methodology is behind that. But in OECD estimates, Canada is actually a bit higher than the United States.