Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here with us today.
Certainly we heard from the officials on Tuesday, particularly from Mr. Webb from Global Institute for Food Security, that there are many unknowns when it comes to dealing with this particular policy.
Mr. Harvey, I certainly understand your position with CAFTA and the importance of agricultural trade. I share many of the concerns that you raised that this would simply be.... First, this is hypothetical. No one is talking about doing this for the agriculture industry, as far as we can tell. The EU is going to implement something in 2026, but agriculture won't be covered.
Just looking at our previous relationship—and I am specifically talking about Canadian beef, durum wheat and some of those things—I look at this as a protectionist measure, or a potentially protectionist measure, whereby we think we will have a standard that we're supposed to meet with countries in the EU.
However, when push comes to shove, they will come up with something so that there's no way we're going to meet the standard, or each individual member of the EU, for example, will have its own little niche rules.
If this were something that was going to happen, how critical would it be to have an internationally recognized standard, a standard for measuring the elements of that, whether it's carbon sequestration or soil health? Who would ultimately oversee that, or administer that, to ensure that it is being levelled fairly across the board?
Is there any work that CAFTA has done on that?