Thanks for the question.
Yes, on the LLP side it has been touched on, but essentially it spells out in article 2.27 on the trade of products in modern biotechnology, that there's a transparent process to deal with LLP issues, and that provides predictability.
We sometimes have members who make shipments of seed, and they can be reluctant to ship to markets for fear that it's going to arrive at the port of entry, where they will test it and say that they've found something. Then we go back to that country that we don't have an agreement with and we find that their testing method isn't true to ISTA, International Seed Testing Association, standards. That's a big issue.
This provides a clear process, and it also provides essentially a biotechnology working group, which is under the committee on agricultural trade. Those are two big pluses: predictability and transparency.
Concerning some of the less traditional non-tariff trade barriers, such as treatments, some countries will say that a shipment of seed entering the country has to be fumigated with a certain type of gas, whereas in Canada we don't allow that to happen; it's not a good practice. By having a bilateral trade agreement or multilateral trade agreement, our regulators have a point of contact to resolve that.
It is also big on seed treatments, whereby a lot of seed is shipped treated with a coating of either insecticide or fungicide for disease or pests. Some countries will say they want it treated with such and such a chemical, but that chemistry is not approved in Canada. That's a non-tariff trade barrier.
The last one is seed as a pathway. Most countries use seed as a low phytosanitary risk for disease and for pests because it is conditioned, and when it's harvested it goes through rigorous procedures to make sure that it has viability and vigour before planting. However, some countries view it as a high pathway, and this therefore becomes a non-tariff trade barrier. Mexico is the best example to show that.