Fisheries committee  Absolutely.

Fisheries committee  No, there aren't any additional costs that would creep in. What it comes down to is really what kind of price the exporter negotiates with the importer in the EU. As it stands now for some of our exporters who are paying 20% tariffs into the EU, that's a considerable cost of doing business.

Fisheries committee  Yes, the rules of origin was another long fight when it came to the fishery sector. We got a lot of resistance from the EU because when we had scenarios like the one you described, our bringing lobster in from the U.S and then processing it in Canada and exporting it to the EU, which we do, the EU would respond that this was a free trade negotiation with Canada and not with the U.S., so why should we give benefits to the U.S.?

Fisheries committee  No, I didn't. For Quebec, we did have extensive conversations with them as well, because aside from Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec is the only other province that applies minimum processing requirements at this time, as you probably know. For Quebec, at the moment they don't export a lot of their production to the EU.

Fisheries committee  We haven't gotten into that kind of specifics. It's more about making sure we have very effective monitoring and control mechanisms, so if we can jointly start to see if there is a problem developing, or if fish stocks are going down and need to be protected in some way or other, or if we're pursuing issues like you mentioned on the eco-labelling, that we try to do that together to the extent we can, because—

Fisheries committee  It's part of the cooperation element we've incorporated into areas like fisheries. We have specific provisions in the environment chapter in relation to fisheries for that purpose, which is something we've never done before, so that we can try to start jointly managing the fishery sector.

Fisheries committee  No, and we haven't gone that far either. But that's something that, through the cooperation mechanisms we developed, could certainly be a possibility in the future.

Fisheries committee  There will be a binding commitment in CETA that those tariffs will have to be reduced in equal annual steps over seven years. So you're going to have a certain reduction every year until the tariff is eliminated. Now, for some species that we had particular concerns about—and cooked and peeled shrimp was one of them because the EU has put that at seven years—we said that if you're going to have a seven-year phase-out on a tariff for a product that's as important as that one is to us, then we want a Canada-specific quota while that tariff is being phased out.

Fisheries committee  I don't think Ontario has a freshwater fishery to the same extent as Manitoba does. But we did talk to Ontario about these elements and recognized that this was an important element to it as well. For all of the freshwater fish that comes from Ontario as well, with the exception of trout if there is extensive trout fishing, everything else will be duty free immediately on the first day.

Fisheries committee  On the subsidies issue, we generally don't have a subsidies chapter in most of our free trade agreements. The EU wanted one in this agreement and, at first, I have to say we weren't that interested.

Fisheries committee  Yes, happily.

Fisheries committee  Yes. Well, the reason we weren't that interested to start with was because—and the EU actually shares this view—we think the best place to deal with subsidies is at the WTO. Very few countries are going to be prepared to take obligations on subsidies in a bilateral agreement and, in effect, disarm themselves against the rest of the world.

Fisheries committee  —then there is an obligation to have a consultation about it to see if there is a way to try to avoid that kind of impact on the other's interest. But there is no obligation to remove any subsidy program; there is no obligation to reduce the level of subsidies. I think that, really, if you compare the subsidies provided in the European Union on fisheries compared to what we provide, we're in a much better position because the EU common fisheries program provides a lot of support to the fisheries sector.

Fisheries committee  No, we're not going into that kind of specific area. Much of that resides either under our domestic policies or under policies of regional organizations like NAFO. We've agreed to cooperate in regional organizations and we've also talked about effective monitoring control mechanisms that we would both take to ensure that the stocks do remain healthy or become healthy, and that there is not extensive over-fishing.

Fisheries committee  It is difficult to predict, I think. I tend to think that the studies that were done before the negotiation were underestimates somewhat, but there was an estimate done that in the fish and seafood sector we'd be looking at a 20% growth as well. I think we have to keep in mind first of all that the 20% relates to the volume of exports, and I think our exports have a very good chance of being of much higher value than our current exports, given that we'll have access to the retail market.