Thank you, Mr. Allison; it's good to see you again long-distance.
One great challenge—and maybe we shouldn't fault the United States for it, as it may be just a function of government—is that there's very little coherence among the silos of different policies. The United States still seems quite amenable to issues such as pre-clearance and still seems quite amenable to continuing with the agenda of the beyond the border agreement, which sought to improve movement for people and goods and travellers across the border. We're seeing that moving forward, but at the same time we're seeing a border adjustment tax.
In my opinion, the border adjustment tax is antithetical not only to the NAFTA but to participation in the World Trade Organization. The fundamental principle of both of those agreements is national treatment, which means that you treat domestic products the same way you treat imported products. When you discriminate, treating one differently from the other, you're violating the rules of those agreements, and I don't know how you can stay in or maintain those agreements.
The United States likes many of the provisions of the WTO. It likes protection for intellectual property. It likes to be able to use anti-dumping and countervailing duty mechanisms. I don't see the United States walking away from the WTO or the NAFTA. It just seems to be a real paradox—just two things existing at the same place that are mutually incompatible.
I can't go into the details on agricultural subsidies, but I'm going to underscore what you said. It is my understanding that whatever subsidies—agricultural supports, etc.—Canada might have, it has them in spades. One thing, though, is that Canada often will support its agricultural sector through mechanisms that affect prices for the consumer, whereas the United States focuses more on subsidies at the front end, and because of these different ways of providing agricultural supports, the American ones seem to slip under the WTO radar much more often.
As you also know, however, Canada has had an exclusion from the trade rules of WTO rules on most aspects of supply-managed dairy. It has agreed not to export its dairy products in exchange for the ability to maintain high domestic protections. It looks to me as though the Harper government might have been willing to relax some of those supports in the TPP but was not actually asked to do so. There may be a plan up on a dusty shelf somewhere that might set out what Canada could be willing to do in reducing incrementally its supports for supply management.