Part of the time, it's important to remember where you came from, and on this particular venture I have to quote my dearly departed father, who said, “Boy, you can do all the custom work you want as soon as you take care of things at home.”
The reality that I'm trying portray is that Canada has to have the TPP for us to be able to continue to build our marketplace and move ahead. At the same time, we need to deeply improve interprovincial movement. We need to clear up some of the regulatory stuff that does not allow certain segments of our producers to be able to actively participate in some of these trade agreements, because they won't have a processing plant that's going to back them to be part of that value chain.
There are sugar beets, for example, that go out of Lambton and King counties. The very first time those things try to cross the border, the U.S. will make things very interesting for a few nights until things resolve.
The reality is that you can have the greatest opportunities on paper—and last time I checked, paper doesn't refuse ink—but there are people involved here. If there's an angle to stop or slow something down, you have to have absolutely clear dispute mechanisms in place that allow you to move with the best science. Right now, we're not illustrating our best within this country or within certain provinces. I'm very concerned about that, even for Canadian consumers.
In Toronto, every second person you meet is not necessarily from a Canadian background. They are already at the point of wishing to have halal meats or other commodities. The bottom line is that Ontario produces 200 of them. We are going to produce more in the future. We have opportunities to learn what we can do in our own backyard and then export to the world. Therefore, we're back to the TPP. It's very important, but do not underfund our credibility, our certification, and our science, in order to be able to exploit that TPP or CETA.
