Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Bellavance.
First of all, I think you're right to stay vigilant in all of these matters, because they change from day to day and minute to minute, and sometimes in the middle of the night.
When the minister spoke earlier, I think the language he used was “finding a way to negotiate around these issues when they're still included”. That's a pretty iffy proposition. You have to be very solid and have political will, frankly, because it changes so quickly and can change overnight or in the middle of the night. That type of political will is hard to maintain through a lengthy, all-night, week-long negotiation. It would be better if people were to come out and say, point-blank, yes, we will walk away from the table if detrimental changes are made in the text to supply management and orderly marketing in the Canadian Wheat Board.
I would argue that you're right to stay vigilant. I worry about the statements that I heard from the minister earlier on, when he said that the rest of the world knows our position, that the negotiators know the position of Canada. I heard that this morning from our chief agriculture negotiator, Mr. Gauthier.
I've participated on behalf of the National Farmers Union in the agriculture trade committee negotiating calls that we have from time to time with the trade negotiator, and we hear this line repeated: other countries know our position. Well, either they don't know our position or they don't respect it, because they keep on making detrimental changes to the text that will hurt Canadian farmers and that are not the position of the Government of Canada as stated to us inside the country.
Just at the end of last year, we had the then chair, Mr. Falconer, removing brackets on text that would kill the advantages of the Canadian Wheat Board, yet the response from the Canadian government internationally seemed to be, well, okay, we'll restart negotiations on the basis of that text.
Of course, the National Farmers Union is advocating that Canada right now should be sending letters to the WTO from the people politically responsible, the ministers and the Prime Minister, and saying no, we don't agree to the November text, the last text that came out from Mr. Falconer, and we want that changed, because the circle doesn't square: this line that other countries know our position does not square with the actions that other countries are taking in relation to these texts.