I wanted to share some numbers, because I think there was the impression that our exports and our imports.... We had a net export last year of $4 billion. That was a record net. During the pandemic, we increased production. Every year, we fully met the needs of Canadians and we set new export records.
We helped Japan. We helped all of the countries we're exporting to meet their food security needs as well. We don't necessarily adopt “food sovereignty”. We have a bigger moral obligation than that, in our view.
As we get into the trade with United States, we had a $3.4 billion trade surplus with the United States last year. Whenever you get into negotiations, it is going to get into sensitivity and the sensitive products that are down there.
I was involved in the original work to actually get agriculture under the GATT, as it was in those days. It became the WTO. The whole purpose there was to actually get.... The exact words were “fair and market-oriented trade”, so that we didn't have everybody hiding their own particular special interests and we could actually bring the entirety of agriculture under a comprehensive agreement that would allow for negotiation and fair trade.
We worry that if everybody starts to build legislation around everything they think is sensitive, we're going to set back that whole process in the exercise.