Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to be here. It's a pleasure to speak with you today on a very important topic for Canada's growing pulse industry. My name is Mac Ross, and I'm the director of market access and trade policy at Pulse Canada.
Pulse Canada is the national association representing growers, traders and processors of Canadian pulses, which include dry peas, lentils, beans, chickpeas and fava beans. On behalf of our members, we're proudly leading the future of healthy, sustainable food through the growth of Canada's pulse industry.
The success of our sector, like many agri-food sectors in Canada, relies heavily on free and open trade with the global market. Our competitiveness in each of these markets is dependent on predictable rules-based trade.
Canada is the world's largest exporter of pulses. Roughly 85% of pulses grown in Canada are exported to some 120 markets around the world. At Pulse Canada, we believe that pulses can pave the way to a healthier and more sustainable future, providing solutions for every link in the value chain. Achieving this directly relies on our ability to advance trade opportunities and eliminate barriers. When given a chance to compete, our industry is a Canadian success story. We see tremendous opportunity to grow and diversify Canadian pulse exports in markets like the EU, North America and the fast-growing Indo-Pacific region.
However, the increasing prevalence of market access issues, mainly in the form of non-tariff barriers or NTBs, continues to be the biggest roadblock to our industry's ability to compete and achieve market growth. Our success relies on strong trade agreements that ensure predictable access, but in Canada, it relies on a level playing field with our competitors. It also requires a responsive, flexible government with on-the-ground technical expertise to ensure that these free trade agreements are not hampered by the rise of NTBs.
Canada has done a good job signing free trade agreements. We've seen significant tariff reduction for exports in many of our key markets, but this has been met with an increasing level of NTBs in markets of key importance.
While many of these non-tariff barriers can be regulations and technical measures designed to address legitimate health and safety objectives, others, we know, are deliberately imposed to thwart competition and protect domestic producers. To complicate matters even further, this is all happening in the context of a weakened WTO and a clear shift away from multilateralism and the rules-based trading system. The nexus of trade and climate, while important, may also present new challenges by way of NTBs.
From a pulse industry perspective, we continue to face long-standing barriers with large pulse-importing markets like India. These include unpredictable and technically unjustified SPS requirements and India's unjustified imposition of a quantitative import restriction on peas, which has effectively closed off what was once our largest pea market. Over the past five years, we've also seen other markets increasingly introduce NTBs that impede trade. These range from fumigation requirements in Pakistan and unjustified wheat seed requirements in Vietnam to abrupt import bans in markets like Sri Lanka and Nepal.
The common feature among all these issues is that Canada has had no advance warning. These barriers only became apparent once shipments were denied entry at port or en route at the time of the measure's implementation, leaving both industry and government reacting.
These issues have occurred in markets where Canada has existing free trade agreements, like the CPTPP, and in several cases in markets where Canada is currently negotiating an agreement, like India. It really underscores the importance of focusing on addressing NTBs for those negotiating and implementing Canada's trade agreements. We feel that this can be done by ensuring that we have strong trade rules and effective dispute settlement mechanisms within these agreements, but also by increasing our capacity in these markets to proactively address NTBs before they arise.
We rely on our government partners to address and resolve these barriers. Quite frankly, we've really struggled in successfully addressing these issues before the point at which they're having real commercial impact. Pulse Canada continues to support strengthening Canada's advocacy capacity within the trade and diplomatic network to address NTBs. That's why we were very pleased to see the inclusion of a Canadian Indo-Pacific agriculture and agri-food office in the government's Indo-Pacific strategy. This is a great first step and something Canada needs to do more of. In-country resources to tackle NTBs in a strategic, coordinated manner with industry will help maintain and build market access for Canadian agri-food exports.
This will be a very important study for our sector. We really look forward to playing an active role as it takes shape. We thank all the members in advance for taking this important work seriously.
Thank you. I look forward to any questions.