Agriculture committee  I was certainly at the table for those negotiations, and the atmosphere was completely different. The U.S. was adamant that they were going to be looking, if not for complete elimination of supply management—which, as I mentioned, is the official position they held until close to the end—then for a very large result.

Agriculture committee  The U.S. certainly did make significant efforts in trying to get us to commit to front-of-package labelling requirements. At the end of the day, those are not disciplines that were agreed to in the end, so we do not have those kinds of restrictions.

Agriculture committee  I just had a closing thought.

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. First of all, I'd like to talk about the status of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement. I'll provide some opening comments that should take under 10 minutes, and then we'd be open to any questions that you may have and we can pursue issues in greater depth.

International Trade committee  I don't think I have a lot to say at this point. I would emphasize with respect to the Canadian economy that we rely heavily on our access to the U.S. market in particular. Some 70% plus of our exports go to the U.S. If we are going to be in a position where we do not have a functioning trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, I think that would be a significant hit to our economy.

International Trade committee  I think it's important to point out that none of these agreements is ever cast in stone. As I mentioned, there's a common element to almost all free trade agreements that you have the right to withdraw from the agreement with simply a six-month notice. This is not something that we can be assured will last indefinitely.

International Trade committee  There is a review at a six-year mark to determine whether or not the three parties feel that the agreement remains something they want to continue with, and at that point they can extend it for a further 16 years. This is more of a review than an opportunity to simply remove a party from the agreement, although that always remains a possibility.

International Trade committee  It doesn't actually, because, first of all, the new NAFTA is not yet in effect. The agreement, the phase one agreement that the U.S. has reached with China is not something we could pursue even if we wanted to because the agreement is not yet in effect.

International Trade committee  Neither, if we started to negotiate an agreement with China right now, would the U.S. have any avenue to pursue us, because the agreement is not in effect. I think the most important element of all of this is that it comes down to the recourse. The recourse is simply reflecting an element, a provision in the agreement, that already exists.

International Trade committee  If on the Canadian side we were to propose new changes to the agreement, then that would mean that we would have to reopen the negotiations with the U.S. and with Mexico to see if we could re-establish a balance of concessions on the basis of a new proposal put forward by us. When the U.S. proposed modifying the agreement following its discussions with the Democrats in the House—the agreement that was reached between the USTR and those Democrats—it did have to come to both Canada and Mexico to see whether we would be agreeable to those kinds of changes.

International Trade committee  We didn't really have a need to given that the Democrats were taking many of the proposals we made in the negotiations and picking them up as their own proposals.

International Trade committee  That specific issue was not something that anybody on the U.S. side had any interest in, so to my knowledge that was not pursued. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Aaron.

International Trade committee  It depends on how you count them.

International Trade committee  —51 or 53...somewhere in that range. Yes.

International Trade committee  I'm guessing a bit here, but I think it's in the range of 30 to 35. I don't know if anybody can.... We have 14 free trade agreements with 51 countries.