International Trade committee  Oh yes, because guess what? The Europeans just came up today with a proposal to have a country-of-origin labelling requirement for products that are used in further processing. So it will have to be identified as of Canadian origin if they go through with this. It's likely to be prosciutto processed in Italy from Canadian pork, or something along those lines.

International Trade committee  That's right.

International Trade committee  Yes, the idea is that at the end of the day you want to achieve the same result, which is that the product would be safe. It doesn't matter if you need a fence that is blue or white, or whatever, and that has been in all the discussions between Canada and the EU over the years. We have different means of achieving the same results.

International Trade committee  They do. We have already submitted our position. Keep in mind that Mr. Verheul has been very present in all the negotiations in the past so he's very well informed and very well briefed on our industry.

International Trade committee  They already do.

International Trade committee  It's a direct subsidy. They call it restitution, so it's a subsidy. What they do is this. If you're a European exporter to a certain country, you export and then you get some money back, or you have the private storage aid, which also applies. But in our case, the Europeans have never applied it to products going to Canada, and we just want to make sure that they'll never do it.

International Trade committee  We hope so, although it's not very current that you will have technical regulations in a free trade agreement. So what we're asking for, besides the free trade agreement, is that there are discussions or there is a commitment by both sides to engage in those discussions as a result of a free trade agreement.

International Trade committee  That is quite a contract.

International Trade committee  Generally speaking, free trade agreements have been positive for the hog industry. It gave us access to Mexico, where we had no presence in the past, and to Chile, where we started from zero. We have more than doubled our exports to the United States. However, in the case of Costa Rica and other countries, it is less obvious.

International Trade committee  In fact, during the Uruguay Round, almost everyone agreed on a minimum access of 5% for products. Given that the Europeans were importing massive quantities of horse meat, beef and lamb, they combined all the meats to come up with a minimum 5% access. The difference lies in the 75,000 tonnes for pork.

International Trade committee  —greatly—

International Trade committee  We want them to get rid of the very complex red tape surrounding tariff quotas. We want to have a tariff quota specific to Canada and we want a significant volume. That is what we are looking for. We are also negotiating the technical standards that do not allow our slaughterhouses to be present on the European market.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Okay. That should do it. Mr. Chairman and honourable members of Parliament, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to be here today. First, I would like to introduce our organization, Canada Pork International, the export market development agency of the Canadian pork industry.

International Trade committee  Yes.