Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here today.
I'd like to maybe put this out to everyone, but Mr. Jacobson, you told me to be easy on you so I'm going to be. But it's something with me, as I come from a very agricultural area—the COOL process. The U.S. always talks about freer trade and seems to put non-tariff blocks into processes. COOL not only hurt a lot of Canadian producers but also it closed a lot of American processing plants that used Canadian beef and Canadian pork.
Four times this has gone to the WTO, and the WTO has ruled in favour of Canada and said that the COOL labelling system is wrong or goes against our treaty. It seems the only thing we can do is to impose tariffs. It's the only way you can come around something like that. We're talking about getting rid of tariffs. Some of these things happen.
I think back to when BSE hit. I was only elected for 10 days when BSE hit, so I've been with it for roughly 12 years. Back then when finally our beef was cleared scientifically as being safe, R-CALF, in the western states, put up a protest and that lasted for anywhere between four or six years, I think, before we got the market open to some cuts of beef.
How do we correct some of these things when they're negotiated and then they're adjudicated and found wrong, but the United States never wants to go back on it?