Thank you, Chair.
My thanks to you gentlemen for being here today. I'm glad we're having this discussion. I think it's critical to the agricultural sector. We've been doing a number of studies here on the agriculture committee. We did one on competitiveness within agriculture. We did one on young farmers. We're going to be looking at biotech. And we're also reviewing government programming.
When farmers come in front of the committee, and when I meet with farmers, I keep hearing that farmers don't want to farm their mailbox. They want to compete. They want to compete and sell their products in Canada and internationally. It's easy to criticize a free trade deal and to play up the possible downside, but I'd like to switch the focus. I actually think there's tremendous possibility being offered to Canadian farmers through a trade agreement like this one.
You mentioned some numbers in your speech, but I'd like you to highlight some of the ways this trade agreement would benefit our farmers and our agricultural sector.