Mr. Speaker, media coverage in the last several days clearly demonstrates how vigorously we are defending, as promised, our made in Canada supply management system before the NAFTA panel.
This defence is a truly Team Canada effort because it involves all relevant farm organizations and all provincial governments. We are all working very closely together.
Canada is fully convinced that on any plain reading of the words of the FTA and the NAFTA we in Canada have the full legal right to
do what we have done with our tariff equivalents under the WTO. The United States in our view is entirely misconstruing the negotiating history of the NAFTA and the WTO. It is now trying to obtain by the dispute settlement mechanism what it could not obtain at the bargaining table, and Canada will stand up for itself.