Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.
Mr. Chair, before I came to Canada, I didn't have a chance to deal with holy cow meat, but I have had some experience being a dairy farmer myself. I was a certified dairy farmer, I did some courses on dairy farming, and started with very few animals.
What I found out in my experience was that the goal was always to figure out how to grow production and how to find more consumers. I believe it is demand that runs the price of any product.
We talked about, Mr. Davies, a 4% increase in the Canadian market by EU cheese, and Canadian cheese producers would have tariff-free, unlimited access to the European market.
What I'm trying to understand is that with more than 500 million consumers and more than $130 billion worth of agriculture imports a year, how can Canada's dairy industry say that becoming a part of this incredibly lucrative market could have a negative impact? That's number one. Then, another question is how can the dairy industry even take this position, considering the limits of the Canadian market, whose population is just 7% of the European market? Please make me understand.