Thank you Mr. Chair.
It is a pleasure to here today for the first time in my capacity as Chief Agriculture Negotiator.
From the perspective of the agriculture sector, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, commonly called CETA, negotiations offer unique opportunities in terms of enhanced market access for our producers.
As you are aware, Canada is a major player in agriculture world trade. Canada is the fourth largest agri-food exporter and sixth largest importer. Our sustained growth and prosperity depends on our ability to compete effectively in global trade and to penetrate new markets.
More specifically, a large segment of the Canadian agricultural sector relies on access to foreign markets. This is especially true for the livestock, grains, pulses, and oilseeds sectors. So trade negotiations, such as the CETA negotiations, are important for creating new market opportunities for our farmers and exporters.
The EU represents a large and valuable market for Canada's agriculture and agri-food products. It is the largest agri-food product import market in the world, absorbing 13% of the world agriculture imports.
In 2009, agri-food trade between Canada and the EU was worth over $5.6 billion. Over the last three years, EU purchases of Canadian agri-food products have represented 19% of our pulse exports, more than 18% of our durum wheat exports, roughly 7% of our common wheat exports, and 7% of our oilseeds exports.
There is no doubt that an agreement with the EU holds great potential to deepen this already significant trade relationship. Canada's objective in these negotiations is to achieve an ambitious outcome that will advance the interests of Canadian farmers and that will provide clear benefits for our agriculture sector.
This means achieving important market access improvements for our agricultural products, in particular for beef, pork, grains and processed foods. And, of course, Canada will continue to defend the interests of the supply-managed sectors in these negotiations, as it has done in all other trade negotiations.
Here are some examples of trade barriers we aim to address in the Canada-EU negotiations.
While the recent agreement will enable Canada to obtain access to a new EU duty-free quota for hormone-free beef, our beef exports will still be subject to a quantitative limitation, above which tariffs equivalent up to 142% are applicable.
Despite being a world leader for pork and pork products, we have currently minuscule exports of pork entering the European market, because we face significant in-quota and out-of-quota tariffs that range from 32% up to 70%, and currently, only two Canadian pork processors are certified to ship into the EU market.
Our durum wheat enjoys a solid reputation among European consumers, especially given its high quality for bread and pasta production. While our exports generally enjoy duty-free treatment, they are still subject to quantitative restrictions.
Many other Canadian agrifood products could benefit also from a more liberal access to the EU market. I refer to such products as berries, potatoes, and maple syrup, to name only a few.
In addition, these negotiations also present an opportunity to tackle non-tariff barriers, notably in the area of sanitary and phytosanitary issues, as well as other technical barriers to trade that limit our access for agricultural products.
Canada is also seeking to address key concerns in relation to biotechnology, including greater timelines in the EU regulatory approval process for genetically modified organisms--GMOs--as well as greater predictability for our trade in cases of low-level presence of GMO organisms in agricultural exports from Canada. This is particularly important for all our grain sectors.
Finally, Canada is seeking strong commitments in relation to export subsidies, and this issue has been a long-standing problem for Canadian agricultural exporters. The European Union has the capacity, by far, to be the world's largest provider of export subsidies.
We are moving forward, working closely with provincial governments and in consultation with the full range of Canada's agricultural and agrifood industry stakeholders in order to advance Canada's interests in these negotiations.
Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to address any questions you or members of the committee may have on the agriculture file in these negotiations.