Agriculture Committee on Feb. 6th, 2012

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

As we bring in different trade agreements, for example, we have lots of regulation work that we're doing with the U.S. An example is that datasets developed in the U.S. can be utilized here in Canada, and vice versa. Shouldn't that be bringing that investment in for research into Canada too?

[Dr. Derek Brewin]

I think so. It depends on how well the harmonization works. It might lead to a bunch of people locating in the U.S. and trying to access our market. It really depends on—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

It depends on how aggressive we are in attracting them to our universities and our research parks, etc.

[Dr. Derek Brewin]

Yes, I think so. Yes.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Dr. Yada, I'm going back to trade and some things we look at in the marketplace that we say we're not willing to touch. Supply management comes up all the time. If we stay with 5% on sensitive products, it would never be touched in any of the trade agreements, yet nobody seems to talk about that.

Do we need less than 5% in sensitive products to get our product to other parts of the world?

[Dr. Rickey Yada]

I'm going to refer that to my colleague—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Rude talked about it.

[Dr. Rickey Yada]

This is a comment that Sylvain Charlebois asked me to bring forward on these kinds of issues.

[Dr. James Rude]

You're talking about the WTO market access conditions right now. The idea is that there would be special arrangements for products defined to be sensitive, and there would be some upper limit.

It depends who you're talking to. The various tariff lines would define the percentage in terms of covering off every supply-managed product. I think it's a bit over 5% that they would cover off, so they wouldn't be entirely immune. However, they are very ingenious at redefining things and putting things into other categories. Cheese compositional standards come to mind.

Even if there was a pressure there, there are a lot of smart people around who are going to be very ingenious in redefining exactly what fits where in a tariff line.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

In relation to that 5% mark, there's the ability to do a trade deal, still maintain supply management, and yet still get market access for the other products that we export. Would you--

[Dr. James Rude]

You're going to have to give up something. With the sensitive products, they would be giving up reductions in over-quota tariffs, but they would be accepting increases in the size of the in-quota tariff, so they would be increasing the size of the quota. That would actually provide some access to the market.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

It would maintain the price stability for this—

[Dr. James Rude]

It would maintain the price stability. Probably you'd would end up with a bit lower prices. With additional access, that access is open; the domestic industry, if it wants to increase the size of the production quotas, could capture it at a lower price.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

If we could go back, we talked about soybeans going into Asia and the Asian market. Is that because of preferential treatment to soybeans over, say, a product like canola?

[Dr. James Rude]

Yes.

Japan, especially, is the market, and so is China. There have been a lot of studies in the past that.... Some peculiarities in the way the tariff lines have been set up in both countries give a certain amount of access to soybeans and to the American producers.

Japan has historically bought a very consistent amount of canola. They have large crushing facilities, and it's been a very profitable venture for both them and us.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

We have the Prime Minister going over to China as we speak. That market is very important to us. I believe the president of Grain Growers of Canada is with him.

I know he has focused on canola going over to China a couple of times, and now he's focused on the grains market. I think that's a positive thing, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you to our witnesses. Thanks to all of you for being here today.

Go ahead, Mr. Valeriote.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I don't have a copy of either Dr. Raizada's report or Dr. Yada's report. Will they be submitting them to the clerk in writing?

They read from prepared remarks, and I don't have a copy of them. Could we have a copy, Mr. Chair?

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Could we have a copy, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes. They're coming to the committee, so I don't see any reason why not, except...they're only in English. That's why they weren't presented. I'd suggest that unless they're going to have the reports translated, maybe you could approach the witnesses and get them directly from them.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

All right. That's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you again, gentlemen, for being here.

We have a couple of minutes left, although I know votes are coming. I've called a steering committee meeting for 11:30 on Thursday, in room 228. That's just next door. Basically, we just need to talk about where we're going to go after the Growing Forward 2 study.

I have another comment. We have witnesses for two more meetings on this leg, and then we have the first meeting on meeting consumer demands. Right now we're having trouble getting enough witnesses to go forward from there, so we need a little bit of direction so that the clerk can either book witnesses for another meeting....

I had a chance to talk to Pierre in the House today; Pierre, you wondered about having maybe a total of two or three meetings for that component.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, I think so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Are there any other comments? Would that satisfy...? Okay.

Now, doing that would take us one or two meetings beyond the break week. With the amount of testimony we've had, at least that week, Frédéric, it would allow the analysts to at least work on something to get ready. We may have to go into our next study while they finish writing the report, and then we can always come back to it and deal with the report when it's finished. We can talk in a little more depth about that.

[A voice]

Is it two meetings in total?