Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Getting back to Mr. Atamanenko's question about investor protection and ability for other countries to sue us if there's a perceived infraction, you folks will agree that when you're signing a trade deal with another country you always sign a reciprocal type of trade deal wherein we have as much protection as they do and the onus is on both parties to work within the terms that were set out in the trade agreement.
Certainly I don't think Canada would want to enter into any international trade agreements with other countries without that protection and be prepared to give it to their trading partners as well. It's part of good business.
I guess I'm guilty. I didn't know that hogs didn't have growth hormones and I've been eating pork for decades. I wonder how many people there are like me in Canada who don't know that, but it tastes pretty good anyway.
Getting to the pending trade deal, as I'm sure you'll agree, Canada is looked upon by other countries as a pretty good country. We have a Canadian brand on our beef and pork products that we should be thinking about marketing. I know to promote that marketing plan is more probably in the ballpark of the processors, if there's going to be a Canadian brand marketed, but I think that would be a tremendous tool to use in the selling of our beef and pork and other products into the EU market. I'm assuming that the marketing people are already working on that and the economists have told them that if we want to be successful they had better be thinking about a lot of things, including that.
I wanted to ask about the producers themselves. I know the livestock goes to the processors and then it's in their hands and both pork and beef eventually gets over to Europe under this agreement. The processors will be negotiating the price they are going to be selling it at. What's going to be the increased benefit to the producers themselves? There's a thought that the processors are making all the money and the farmers and ranchers are doing all the work to get these cows into the processing plants. What do you see as a real benefit to increasing the income of the producers themselves, as opposed to the processors in the beef and pork industry?