Good morning, folks, and welcome to the House of Commons Standing Committee for International Trade.
As you know, our main focus is on the TPP and Asia. Our committee has been fairly busy over the last year. We're dealing with softwood lumber and still tidying up the European trade agreement. We always have ongoing issues, especially with the U.S., our biggest trading partner. We have softwood lumber and agriculture issues, and we're still in a process of—I don't know whether to call it negotiating or fighting over it.
The TPP is a big deal. It's 40% of the world's GDP and 800 million consumers. It's a deal that will affect every Canadian one way or another, whether you're buying a product or selling it. We have quite a busy and active study that we're doing here.
We went to every province; this is the last province. We've also had video conferences with the territories and, of course, we are reaching out to all stakeholders. There have been a couple of hundred witnesses, and we also have had individuals. In my 15 years, I've never seen so much interest from average Canadians. We already have over 20,000 emails.
We're going to continue this process until the end of October, and then we're going to work for a few months to put our study together and then present it to the House of Commons.
As you know, we're keeping a close eye on the United States. The election is in full swing. You don't usually see the presidential candidates talking as much about trade in the debates as they are in this one, so we have to keep an eye on that as well.
My name is Mark Eyking, and we have MPs on our committee from right across Canada. Some of them aren't here—they had to stay in Ottawa—but we have Ms. Ramsey and Mr. Van Kesteren from southern Ontario, Mr. Ritz from Saskatchewan, Ms. Ludwig from New Brunswick, Madame Lapointe from Quebec, and Mr. Dhaliwal from B.C.
We had a great night last night enjoying Nova Scotia hospitality and food, and I'm sure you guys represent a lot of it. We ate seafood and we ate agriculture products, and we're going to go out to the Stanfield airport.
Stanfield's is my brand of underwear. What can I tell you? Too much information, too much information, I know. Sorry about that, Ms. Ramsey.
Without further ado, we're going to start out with my favourite organization, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, which I've been a member of for many years.
Mr. van den Heuvel, you have five minutes.