The Canadian Federation of Agriculture has not done any work to assess the impact on the rural situation in Peru. Moreover, in another life, I had an opportunity to meet and work with Peru's Minister of Agriculture, on several occasions. In Quebec, producers have some expertise in the area of farm credit, particularly with respect to crop insurance. The Peruvian Minister of Agriculture wanted to set up a crop insurance program and he came to see what we were doing in Quebec. We had some work contracts and exchanges with Peru in order to develop a crop insurance program to better protect Peruvian producers.
I know at least one thing when it comes to supporting Peruvian peasants and developing agriculture, and that is, you have to ensure, when they grow crops, that you share the risk with all of the citizens. That is something that we need to work on.
With respect to traceability, I had an opportunity to participate, with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, in a mission to Mexico. Every group was asked to explain how its traceability system worked. We realized that Mexico had the same French system that Quebec has. So even though Mexico may be far away, we are close to it in terms of the problems experienced.
There is a very big difference between the traceability system in Canada and that in Quebec. Essentially, the Canadian system is more or less an identification system. It is not really able to trace a product from birth to consumption, whereas Quebec's system, once it has been up and running for a while, will be a traceability system that will begin with birth and follow all of the stages right up until consumption.
Implementing such tools is a tremendous challenge. You need a great deal of cooperation and investment from the producers. You also need public investment because these things are extremely expensive.