Thank you very much for the question.
Say, for example, we take the position regarding shrimp in Quebec, a province with four plants producing cooked and peeled shrimp, a processed product. Say, for example, this product is exported to Denmark, and Denmark brines it and puts it into jars for the marketplace. I don't think anybody is saying we should bring back that brining and jarring to Quebec. I don't see that at all.
So cooked and peeled shrimp generally can go directly to retail, or to further processing. What happens in the U.K. is that it's sent to Marks and Spencer. They put it into a sandwich and then that shrimp sandwich is a big item for them. It would be unrealistic to do that type of sandwich manufacturing in Canada, shipping or exporting those sandwiches to the U.K. market.
So it's a product that is harvested at sea, brought into the plants, cooked and peeled, and there is quite a bit of labour content in it. But in getting that type of product to the marketplace, whether it's in Sweden, Denmark, or the U.K., yes, there's probably a rationale for having that end-product transformation being done there.
So the issue would be, for example, in shrimp.... Actually, right now, as you said, the increase in shrimp quota in the world has been totally in Newfoundland and Labrador—a massive increase. That has caused, as you say, too much product going onto the market, and prices have gone down.
We have an opportunity now, given that the Canadian quota has pretty well stabilized and the Icelandic and Norwegian quotas are coming down. So our theory is that where we see a market expanding, free trade agreements such as this may give us the opportunity, now that we've stabilized supply, to perhaps expand and grow demand and bring back better prices, which will benefit not only the companies, but also the workers.
I'll go back to Mr. Dhaliwal's comment about delaying the free trade agreement. What's the issue here? I'll tell you what the issue would be, say, in Quebec, with respect to cook-and-peel plants. Cooked and peeled product is harvested by inshore fishermen. We also have a fleet in Canada that fishes offshore, the shell-on product, which then goes into the Chinese market for retail, for example, because they like to peel the shrimp themselves, or it goes to other countries for further processing. EFTA, Norway, and Iceland already have a free trade agreement with Korea. They do not have the resources, so they will be entering into arrangements with Canadian fishing vessels offshore to supply, if you will, industrial shrimp to Norway and Iceland; but they will further process it into a cooked and peeled product and send it to Korea, while we're dithering--well, not dithering, but we're trying to contemplate.
So there are always wins and losses, and as Mr. Haynal mentioned, the world is changing. Unfortunately, because of the problem of the WTO not coming forward with a comprehensive approach, we have countries such as the United States and EFTA trying to make these types of bilateral arrangements—and some of them are going to be beneficial and some negative for Canada.