Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to talk to the committee. I've distributed a couple of pages of notes.
As you've already mentioned, there are 800 million people involved in the TPP, and I think $29 trillion of GDP and $31 billion of Canadian agricultural exports, so those are very important numbers.
I believe the objectives of the TPP in promoting and enabling free trade are commendable. If the intention is to reduce tariffs, as an exporting nation, an exporting province, and an exporting company, we need to do that. Reducing tariffs and reducing non-tariff barriers are important. It should promote economic growth in Canada, and I think economists will say many things, but it seems the general consensus is that it does improve economic growth. It supports the creation and retention of jobs, and it certainly enhances innovation. It forces innovation and forces us to become better. It forces productivity and competitiveness, which are things we need to keep on doing. It should improve our living standards overall. It reduces poverty in the signatory countries. These are all important things to achieve.
It promotes good business governance; it enhances labour and work conditions, as well as safety standards in the signatory countries; and it improves environmental protection. These are all good things if they can be achieved, and they are some of the objectives of the TPP.
I believe the TPP will increase the size of the pie and not just re-divide it, so that's good for everybody and should accelerate growth in the developing countries.
Clearly in Canada we need sustained economic growth to support some of the social programs that we aspire to.
That's the kind of policy macro outlook that I would see for TPP.
For the wild blueberry industry itself, we're very limited geographically where wild blueberries are grown, and I would just refer you to the map that shows that. Wild blueberries are grown in a very, very small part of the Maritimes, Quebec, and Maine.
I'm sure everyone—certainly Mr. Dhaliwal, in British Columbia—is familiar with the cultivated blueberries. All the way through the Lower Mainland there are cultivated blueberries. Those are grown everywhere in the world. Wild blueberries only grow where they grow. It's a natural plant that grows and it doesn't transplant, so we have a unique resource here.
It's also very important from the rural community perspective. This supports some of the less economically well-off areas of Canada, in all the provinces where it is in the rural areas.
It's a very modern industry, a very 21st century industry. It sounds like a cottage industry, but in fact it's not. It's high tech. It's capital intensive. It has all the attributes of being a 21st century industry, with continuous improvements and top quality. It's safe food, and well known as being a healthy product. It is differentiated from other fruits.
It has great health benefits. It has been touted as being probably the second most healthy food you could eat, after wild Atlantic salmon, which is very hard to come by, so it puts it really at the top of the heap.
Canada grows two-thirds to three-quarters of the commercially viable wild blueberries in the world. The domestic market is very small, so 90% of the wild blueberries are exported. I think that emphasizes the importance of export markets to this industry, so access to markets is critical. Access to new markets is critical, because we have to keep growing access to new customers.
All efforts to reduce tariffs and non-tariff barriers for this industry are positive. What we see with the TPP is an additional effort to do that in some new and emerging markets that will be positive in the long run.
The specific opportunities we see—