I certainly will make a transcript of Mr. Brison's comments available to the public and they can weigh in on this issue.
Getting back to the issue that was raised on April 2--raised, actually, by a number of intervenors before this committee, including you, Mr. Rice--was the whole issue of that alternative approach, of multilaterals but also much stronger support for marketing of Canadian products abroad.
Mr. Ted Haney came before committee at that time and expressed the fact that in Canada we spend pennies on beef exports compared to the dollars spent in Australia.
We had Canada Pork International referencing the fact that their business plan over five years is $5.5 million. Even though they export in tonnage three times what beef does, the budget is one-third the size.
Mr. Rice, you said at committee at that time, on April 2, “In terms of promotions, yes, we certainly would be far behind our major competitors in terms of overall government resources made available through the technical aspects, through embassy promotions, and through that kind of cooperation.”
You can comment on the human rights aspect if you like, but my question to you is on promotional budgets. Has that situation improved? What is the entire promotional budget provided by the federal government for pork, not just in Colombia but around the world? It would be interesting to see what we allocate to Colombia.
Then for grain growers, what is the overall budget? We are in no way competitive with other countries in terms of the investments we make for product promotion.
As you mentioned, Mr. Phillips, a better way forward includes multilateral negotiations and strong product promotion.