Mr. Speaker, I look to my own riding in the northern part of Nova Scotia that hugely bases its economy on agriculture. We have pork producers have suffered greatly. One of the largest pork producers in Atlantic Canada is still in my riding. This would open up the Panama market to him. It would remove those barriers. It would actually level the playing field with the Americans who have just recently put their deal with Panama into force.
I look at the maple syrup producers in my riding, and there are literally hundreds. We are one of the largest producers of maple syrup. This would level the playing field so that they could export goods.
We look at our beef producers who have had such a difficult time since the BSE crisis in 2003. These trade deals opened up international markets that, until recently, were closed to them, and it levels the playing field with many other countries so they can now export their beef and continue to build this business which has been in such a great crisis.
Without a doubt, this deal is important for us to settle and settle right away. With the U.S. putting its deal into force last week, it has an advantage of getting into the supply chain now, knocking out our companies and taking away those particular agreements from companies that could exploit them. So we need to level the playing field with the United States and that necessitates that we pass this deal immediately.