Yes, it's a really important issue for us.
As I was explaining earlier, if there's a new seed trait that one of our seed developers produces for canola that provides new agronomic benefits to the producer, we can't commercialize those in Canada until we have approval in the countries that we ship to, including the European Union. The European Union has a system that takes a very long time to approve these products. It's partly a science-based system, but it's partly a non-science-based system, a kind of political decision-making process.
What we've asked in these discussions is that we ensure that this process moves efficiently so we are not holding back technology that makes our Canadian farmers more competitive on the basis of a regulatory procedure that's not science-based in the European Union. What the agreement does is it sets up a dialogue, a consultation body, that is subservient to the trade rules committee of the free trade agreement, so it reports to the people who oversee the overall implementation of the free trade agreement.
It's really important to point out that we're not asking for a change to the standards of safety or efficacy that are in place in Europe. We are not watering down their regulations in any way. We are simply asking that the applications that we make for the approval of these products move through the system effectively, and they have a yes or no answer in a faster fashion than we have now so that our farmers are not held back from getting this technology. These companies are spending millions of dollars producing these new technologies that are helpful to our farmers, and we want them implemented as quickly as possible. The deal will help us do that.