Thank you, Madam Chair.
As you heard at the beginning, my name is Keith Currie. I'm the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. We represent nearly 190,000 farmers and farm families across this country from coast to coast.
We are, as I mentioned, the largest organization. Because of what we do, we represent nearly $135 billion in GDP annually to the economy of this country.
The agriculture sector is resilient. It is very vital not only to our own national food security system, but also to food security worldwide. In other words, the world needs our products.
Our supply management system has been around since the sixties and promotes resilience and stability in the domestic food chain by matching production with demand, with the support of import controls. It also cuts down on overproduction and waste within the food supply chain and ensures that farmers receive a fair and predictable return for their work. This in turn encourages investments in on-farm efficiencies, helps mitigate the impact of diseases such as avian influenza and promotes environmental sustainability.
Something that gets lost in all this is that it also strengthens rural communities by creating stable jobs across the country, yet this has not precluded Canada from becoming a global leader in the world export of quality agricultural food products to markets around the world. As I am sure this committee is aware, Canada exported nearly $93 billion dollars' worth of agri-food products in 2022, making us the fifth-largest exporter of such products. As such, we continue to support the Canadian government in its efforts to secure additional market access and trade diversification opportunities for Canadian agri-food and seafood products.
CFA has long advocated that no additional access to supply-managed sectors should be given in future trade agreements, and all political parties sitting in the House of Commons have committed to no additional access and no reductions in over-quota tariffs. Despite these commitments, significant concessions have been made in recent trade agreements, including CETA, CPTPP and CUSMA.
While we welcome the market access opportunities these trade agreements provide for Canadian agriculture, these repeated concessions threaten to undermine the resilience and stable food supply that supply management affords. Bill C-282 will require federal officials to respect this commitment during both ongoing and future trade negotiations, thereby protecting supply-managed farmers and the Canadians who rely on their products.
I would highlight that Canada currently maintains 15 free trade agreements with 51 countries around the world, providing market access to nearly 1.5 billion consumers. Outside the three recent examples I cited previously, these agreements were possible without requiring significant additional access to the supply-managed sectors. Rather than taking a divisive approach and focusing on agriculture trade negotiation tactics that pit one agriculture sector against another, we should be focusing on what unites us as a sector—i.e., non-tariff barriers to trade, which are limiting real market access to Canadian products even in areas where Canada has made concessions on access to supply-managed goods.
CETA, for example, is often held up as a model of comprehensive free trade by reducing or eliminating a broad range of tariffs. However, while trade generally has increased since CETA came into force, that's not the case for Canadian agriculture sectors. CAFTA reported in 2019 that “Since the entry into force of the agreement, EU exports to Canada have increased by over 10 per cent, while Canadian agri-food exports have decreased by the same amount”. As a result, Canada provided additional access to supply-managed sectors as a leverage to gain greater foreign market access and provided Canadian tax dollars to compensate supply-managed dairy producers for this increased market access—yet we still have not realized the benefits of increased exports.
The real threat to increased global trade is not Canada's supply management system, but non-tariff barriers to trade that are limiting market access. International trade is critically important to the Canadian economy and Canadian agriculture, and we understand and support the need to pursue new market opportunities for export-oriented producers across Canada. However, Canada's three most recent trade agreements have had a considerable impact on supply-managed farm families and the system that supports them. It's our hope this new legislation will encourage Canada's negotiators to look to other negotiating strategies that do not place one agriculture sector against another, and instead focus our energy on issues that unite us, such as reducing non-tariff trade barriers.
It's our belief that this country needs a strong and united agriculture sector that is composed of both robust supply-managed and export-oriented production, particularly as we strive to meet the global challenges of the day around food security, emissions reduction and environmental protection.
I thank you for this opportunity to speak today, Madam Chair, and I look forward to any questions that members may have.