Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses. It's an interesting discussion.
I think we all recognize the opportunity that's here before us to finish these and have successful final negotiations on our comprehensive economic and trade agreement with the European Union.
Mr. McIver, you had listed off four issues. I'll come back to supply management. We may be in a slight disagreement on that. I think there are four significant areas that are important to this agreement.
On procurement, the provinces and the municipalities have come to the table, so we do have some national procurement here.
On copyright and IP, we just put a new copyright bill through. It's going through the House. And we were behind; we recognize that. This is something we tried to get through the House before and were unable to. I think there's a general recognition from our side that we needed to improve IP and that there are direct results and benefit from that.
On your comments on IP with China and India, I agree, but I think they'll drive their own intellectual property marketplace, if you will. As the Indian and Chinese marketplaces have become more advanced, the whole question of IP becomes more important, because they need to own their own technology. I think that will drive it more than any other single thing. They'll want patent protection, because they aren't just using somebody else's technology now, they're using their own technology. That will work on its own.
The labour certification, we recognize that. The European Union recognizes that. I think the biggest change in that particular issue is that the labour unions have finally come to recognize it. They're much less protectionist, because they're losing their membership and they absolutely have to have certified people within the unions. We have to get more and better tradesmen across Canada. I think that's the only thing I'd add to those.
But I have to say, on supply management, the concept--which I haven't heard either one of you say--that farmers are paid a fair and reasonable price for their product.... The supply-managed sector in Canada is the only sector of agriculture that's not subsidized in any way, shape, or form. You can say that because they have a quota system, the marketplace is subsidized. I beg to differ. It costs so many pennies to produce a litre of milk. They get a small profit on top of those pennies, and that's how the system works. It worked well in those specific areas for those specific farmers.