Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me make just a couple of additional points. One that I thought I might make is to say something about implementation of the TPP in the United States, because that's been a source of a lot of speculation. Until about two or three weeks ago, I thought it was quite unlikely that the TPP would be approved in the United States this year. Then I went to a conference in Cleveland about 10 days ago, and I talked with some Washington insiders, mostly lawyers, who used to be senior people in the administration. They believe that the chance of the TPP being passed in the lame-duck session of Congress later this year is greater than 50%. I found that quite surprising. I can go into some of this in more detail about what this might mean, but I won't in my initial comments.
I think this is something that Canadian policy-makers should take into account when we're thinking about our approach to the TPP. This may mean that various things will happen later this year, including the United States starting to go around to see how their partners are going to implement it, really looking at how they will try to deal with the problems identified by various congressmen with the existing agreement. I think we need to have our response ready in terms of how we'll react to those sorts of approaches.
This is a classic situation of what happens in competitive trade liberalization. Competitive trade liberalization is a phrase that's been coined to describe what goes on now in the world of trade negotiations. It used to be that we did all of this in the GATT, and then the WTO. Everybody was negotiating at the same time; everybody got the same result at the end. The playing field was relatively even between different players, insofar as market access was concerned. However, now we have a situation, which has been going on for over a decade, in which major trading countries are all rushing to try to negotiate agreements with their major partners that will give a preferential advantage to their suppliers. This becomes a game in which you're either ahead or you're behind.
You've heard some description here about the problem that this poses for the beef and cattle industry. Barriers are still very high in the tariff world in a lot of agricultural products. In Japan, for instance, if its 38.5% tariff on beef comes down very substantially, as it would under the TPP, we would improve our chances for better access to that market. It's a real opportunity. If, however, we don't go along with TPP and our other partners do, then they'll all be getting these advantages and we won't. Our industry will be at a significant competitive disadvantage in the Japanese and other Asian markets.