Mr. Speaker, one thing a free trade agreement does is bring in forced rules for both parties to follow, so that they understand what they can or cannot do. Of course, patent protections and licence agreements fall into those types of rules.
Again, I will come back to the Canadian farmers and producers that I talked about here today. They look at this agreement for the benefits. They understand what can happen when a market gets shut down, such as what happened to our beef producers when the U.S. closed the border due to BSE, or the country of origin labelling and the frustration they have been experiencing with that. They get it. They understand that the more market access they have around the world, the more chance they can sell all the products they produce.
When farmers are looking at marketing a cow, they may look at marketing steaks to Canada, parts of the beef to the U.S., and different parts to Asia and the Middle East. They need a variety of markets to take the different types of cuts that come from a cow.
Of course, these are the types of advantages they get from a free trade agreement. They can efficiently use the entire animal and sell what they can, most of the product and by-products, to the variety of markets that have these different needs and desires.
It is the North Korea, or rather the South Korea free trade agreement—I was thinking the NDP was supporting the North Korea free trade agreement, which we have not done, which is why I was kind of confused when NDP members supported this agreement. I thought they must have heard the word “North” instead of “South”, but it is actually the South Korea free trade agreement.
This is a really good agreement for Canadian farmers and producers. I think everybody should get behind it.