Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Minister, for being here.
I suppose one of the first comments I want to make is that an inquiry was made by David Anderson to the ministry on April 9 about the canola crisis. The response we got back on May 27 said:
The Government of Canada's approach has been to defend and support our world class canola industry and our farmers. Our goal is to find a science-based solution to a science-based problem within the rules based trading system.
In that response as well there was a parenthetical comment at the end: “(can be said better)”. This was both in the English and the French version that we received.
We heard for a number of weeks that all of this has to be a science-based plan. Fortunately, we've moved off of that; it's not the talking point anymore. It's more about the actual politics associated with this.
When we look at that, we've seen Italy, India, Saudi Arabia, Peru and Vietnam—all of these countries—impose unwarranted market restrictions on Canadian farmers. There does not seem to be a response from the government on each of these things. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association estimates that the above list of countries represents over $4.2 billion in direct export sales annually. With the multiplier effect, it's a potential loss to our economy of about $6.3 billion.
Do you see any connection between this and what has happened in China? If we are not standing up strongly to these other countries that have come up with these non-tariff trade barriers, is that not part of the reason China looks at us and thinks they can keep doing this and not get a response? Do you personally believe that the arguments by China are true in any way, shape or form?