Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our expert witnesses. It's a most interesting and timely subject. It's unfortunate we don't have more time to discuss it.
I want to clarify one comment Mr. Julian made about the farmers who were lined up on Wellington Street a few weeks back. My understanding from talking to most of those farmers was that they were not concerned about our government's defence of supply management as much as they were trying to raise awareness of their commodity price returns to their farms. Specifically, it was the grains and oilseeds industry that were raising the awareness of the crisis they were in.
I just wanted to clarify that. Unless I didn't meet any of the right farmers, that was the discussion I had with them, and I think it's important to remember that.
Going back to Mr. Christie's comment, about 90% of our agri-food gross returns come from those agricultural and agri-food industries that are dependent on exports. I'm confident that our negotiators—and excellent negotiators they are—are working hard to make sure we can somehow bring down those 600% tariffs that are keeping our products out of some of these countries.
We need to also remember that this is the Doha development round. We have had a lot of depressing comments here, but we did gain in Hong Kong the agreement that 97% of products coming out of the least developed countries would move quota free and tariff free. That's a plus. We should have gone 100%, but we're working on it.
Maybe this should go to Mr. McGovern. We're hearing a lot about the extension of the U.S. Farm Bill. Should I be as concerned as I am about that? I see that Congressman Collin Peterson has signed on today to that. I'm not only concerned that we have an issue at the WTO; what gains are we going to get in lowering U.S. domestic support if they simply extend the U.S. Farm Bill?