Well, it was swamp; it wasn't bad. It could have been worse.
Thank you very much for the invitation. I just got it at four o'clock on Friday afternoon because you had a cancellation, but I'm really glad to be here. I know you people have probably heard from the Dairy Farmers of Canada before, and maybe from other provinces as well, so you're not going to hear a lot that's new from me, maybe more of a provincial perspective, and maybe a personal one.
The TPP deal, when you put it into numbers and compare it to New Brunswick, probably wipes out about half the milk production in the maritime provinces—that market access—milk that Canada will never be able to make. The Dairy Farmers of Canada's number is that it's $246 million out of the Canadian economy. How do we get that money back? It's a trade deal, right? With a trade deal, you're supposed to break even or win, hopefully win.
We are also going to be allowed access to those markets. That's great. They have a huge population. I think sometimes in trade deals people look at Canada and see the huge land mass we have and figure there's a big market they can capture, because we're just as big or bigger than the United States land-wise. But they forget that we have 35 million people. It's not a huge market.
So how do we gain access to those other countries and make money? With WTO agreements we're limited on exports. With the price of milk today in the world, it's not lucrative for producers to make milk for that, because we'll all go out of business. So we have to get export expertise in the markets that make us money. Look at the fine-cheese market in Europe. If we had one-tenth of that, with 450 million people, that would be huge. We would have a hard time in Canada making that amount of milk.
It's an exciting time for me to see if we can get into those types of markets. I have no doubt in my mind—and I hope most of you have had a chance to sample some of the fine cheeses we make in this country—that we can compete with any place in the world with the quality of dairy products that we make here. Three of our largest processors process 80% to 90% of our milk. They're all global players. They know the export market well, where there are opportunities. I don't doubt that they would be able to find good export opportunities in the other countries in the trade deals that we've signed in the last couple of years.
Some of our concerns are about the compensation package that was promised. I know the government is doing its due diligence, but it hasn't announced yet whether it is going to follow through with that or not. It would certainly help mitigate the loss of income to producers. It would also help us find more ways to be competitive and efficient with research and technology on farms today.
It's difficult for me to assess how this trade deal will wash out. As I said, when we look at this trade deal.... Yes, we lost, but I'd like to take a bigger picture of things. Ten years from now, if we show economic growth and this country does well from this trade deal, the dairy industry should benefit, because all of those people who had that economic growth are going to buy more dairy products.
We did a survey in the last few years with Canadian consumers, and 91% of them wanted Canadian milk. There's a reason for that. We use all the things that we have at our disposal to make sure that our milk is the highest quality, safest, and most sustainable milk that's made in the world, and we have the paperwork to prove it.
Thank you very much.