From a regulatory standpoint, you mentioned the CFIA. In our industry, we have the CFIA, the Canadian Grain Commission and Health Canada that are all regulating at different times and oftentimes, possibly too often, overlapping in their regulation and involvement in the industry. There is great merit in reviewing the mandates of each of those regulators to determine whether we don't have overlap and inefficiencies built into our regulatory system with respect to grain exports.
As well, from a regulatory standpoint, one of the things that is very difficult and hurting Canadian exports of products is what I'll call the lack of collaboration with respect to the registration of new technologies in different jurisdictions. We have a Canadian registration process, and then in order to be able to export to other jurisdictions, we need to go through very long regulatory processes, and oftentimes in countries where we have very similar backgrounds and stakes at play.
The United States is an example of that. To have to go through again a very long regulatory registration process seems inefficient. We ought to be striving for synchronous approval of new technologies in various countries so we can actually deploy them much more quickly than we currently do.
You spoke about the embassies and the role they can play in importing countries. What we need to do, as I pointed out earlier, is to challenge non-tariff trade barriers being raised under the cloak of regulation and sanitary and phytosanitary and technological issues. We have to recognize when in fact it's not a safety issue but a non-tariff trade barrier that's being raised, and be very aggressive in our position that we defend the interests of Canadian exporters. However, as I said, to do so, we have to be on sound, firm ground in our own internal domestic policy, and at times that is questionable.