Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Hello, Mr. Pellerin and Mr. Godfrey. You are right, it is not in Peru that we will make our fortune. I understand that you did your study. You did, for all intents and purposes, an impact study concerning the entire agricultural industry. You are thus in a position to tell us that, even if we lag behind the United States, over a longer period, we will do business with Peru, even if the gap is not particularly large.
When free trade agreements are developed here, we rarely see complete impact studies that deal with all industries. You see things from an agricultural standpoint, while we see them from the viewpoint of all industries.
I can understand your position. The Bloc Québécois is currently tending toward disagreement concerning the free trade agreement for other... Moreover, in agriculture, supply management is protected, and that suits us just fine, obviously. So the impact studies are conclusive for you, but they are less so from a comprehensive standpoint.
We also criticize the government for never submitting any overall impact studies. Of course, it is easy, up to a certain point, to tell us in what direction they are heading.
Earlier, you referred to the most favoured nation clause. Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of this clause is that even if we sign a free trade agreement, these agreements are not necessarily affected by the most-favoured-nation clause, but this affects us with regard to other countries that are members of the WTO. Even with the most-favoured-nation clause, our conditions would not be adjusted to those of the United States, because we did not negotiate them.
You also referred to certain problems with the negotiations.
That is why I am wondering about these things. Even if you agree with regard to agriculture issues and you hope that the agreement is signed as quickly as possible, the fact remains that an overall impact study would have been useful for this agreement. We do not have one and therefore we are always left guessing.
Those were my, shall we say, editorial comments. Given that I have an agriculture expert with me, I will turn the floor over to him now.