Thank you very much.
When Canada signs onto a number of trade agreements—CETA, the TPP and others—there are a lot of things that we give up. I'm sure that our witness from the dairy sector is all too aware of the things we give up. Particularly when there are investor-state dispute settlement clauses, we also give up Canadian sovereignty in the sense of being able to make decisions in the public interest without being pursued by multinationals and international trade tribunals.
We do this—the rationale is that we are going to get better market access and that it's going to help Canadian producers—even just within the context of this panel, and there is other evidence to reinforce this. We've heard about growing trade deficits. We've heard about other barriers to market access when it comes to cattle, for instance.
At what point do we say that maybe Canada's trade approach isn't working? We're going out, and we're signing a lot of deals. We're hearing from a lot of folks that.... We've heard from some that there are success stories, but we've also heard that, in exchange for what we're giving up, we're not actually realizing the potential that we are told these deals hold.
I do want to go to the president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association first—Mr. Sawyer—just to hear.... At what point or at what threshold can we say that, actually, this way of approaching our trade agenda isn't working? Is there anything that would count to say that this approach doesn't work, or are we just committing to this fundamentally and the evidence doesn't really matter?