I'm not going to pretend to be a trade expert in these areas, but I will say what I heard as negotiations were going forth. Under the Conservative government, the CETA was started, to my understanding. It was concluded by the Liberal government, the government of the day, and I'm no partisan either way. This is not the point.
However, what i can tell you is that if Europeans are not living up to their commitment of importing our beef or perhaps even pork, I think we need to ask ourselves what the product is that they want. This is supposed to be a customer-driven system, a customer-based system, right? If you don't have something they want today, then at least the market is there and you need to create something they want. It's supply and demand, a very simple thing. It's basic economics. It's no use trying to sell the Europeans something they don't want.
With regard to cheese, I can speak a little bit about this. I can tell you that at the onset, when the manufacturers in Europe found out that the manufacturers in Canada—the biggest oligopolies in the world, as far as they were concerned—were going to get licence, they had a cow. Pardon the pun. They were very upset. I know this because I deal with a lot of manufacturers.
This was not the spirit at the table. This was a last-second “gotcha” sort of thing: “By the way, the manufacturers are getting 50%.” Why would you say that? How would you like to sell to your competitor in a different market? You don't want to be doing that; you want the broad breadth and depth of the marketplace so you can go find a whole vast array of different customers and not be dependent on the big oligopolies that control 80% of the milk in this country.
They have something that we want, which are fine cheeses, for the most part, out of Europe. If we have to give them back something, it's up to us to decide what is good as far as beef or pork is concerned. We have to.... They're the customer, right?
If this is where we're going with this type of thing, I can tell you that we didn't exactly play fair ball either. They were shocked. They capitulated, but they were shocked. I know this for a fact.
I hope I've answered your question.