Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak tonight in this debate on the agricultural negotiations before the World Trade Organization.
The WTO is primarily an instrument to ensure domestic prosperity. It offers our exporters access to the markets of the world, a stable and predictable business climate, and equal chances for all our producers. It also makes it possible for our importers to purchase supplies from the most efficient producers in the world and thus pay prices low enough to stimulate productivity and provide more choice to consumers.
The WTO sets the rules for international trade. These multilateral rules are an essential instrument in Canada's exchanges with its long-standing partners like the U.S., the EU and Japan, and with emerging markets such as China, Brazil, India and the developing world.
The WTO helps us to manage our disputes with the United States and our other trading partners by relying on the rules and not the power of the parties. In short, the WTO opens the door to the world's markets for Canada.
As a middle size nation that depends on trade, Canada knows that it is important to have clear and enforceable rules and efficient dispute settlement mechanisms so that political power does not adversely affect worldwide trade in agricultural and food products.
Canada has always worked with a broad range of countries to establish a system of trade in which all nations, regardless of political or economic weight, could compete under the same conditions established according to the terms of multilateral agreements.
That is why the negotiations on agriculture at the WTO are so essential to all of Canada and the agri-food sector in particular. These negotiations give us an excellent opportunity to work with other countries to establish equal opportunity for everyone by addressing the foreign subsidies and tariff barriers that create unfair competition on foreign markets
Before the negotiations on agriculture began in 2000, the government held extensive consultations with the provincial governments and the entire agri-food sector in order to define Canada's initial negotiation position. As a result of these consultations, the main objective became to establish equal opportunity for everyone.
More specifically, we want export subsidies to be eliminated as soon as possible, internal support that distorts trade to be eliminated or at least reduced, and access to markets to be improved in a true and appreciable way for all agriculture and agri-food products. Our negotiating position has helped Canada propose solid and credible ideas and approaches throughout the negotiations.
I am proud to say that Canada is one of the most active and influential countries in these negotiations. Our negotiators are working with a broad range of developed and developing countries to find a solution.