Mr. Speaker, I commend the member and a lot of members sitting around me today for all the hard work they have done on agriculture. Our trade minister in the last Parliament did an awful lot to negotiate deals with countries like Russia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Egypt and so on.
In the Speech from the Throne, the government made its intention very clear to expand and improve markets to the Americas, to the European Union and to Asia. Our most important trade partner is still the United States, with over 80% of our exports going to the United States. It does not like to hear rumblings of further market disruptions, which it has suffered from.
Fortunately, NAFTA works very well but, unfortunately, certain sectors do not work that well and they seem to be mostly agricultural. The softwood lumber problem, which we solved in the last Parliament, was another, but most of these are agricultural. Our farmers have been hurt dramatically and we are looking at and carefully monitoring what the new president-elect of the United States will do.