International Trade committee  Sure. I'll do it perhaps a bit generically but give you some specific examples. Whether we have a trade deal with a country or not, we often face market access issues, and country-of-origin labelling in the U.S. would be a good example of that. We often have market access issues with China.

International Trade committee  Part of it is to try to use the negotiations themselves as leverage for dealing with issues. We've done that with the EU. We've used the fact that we're negotiating to encourage the European Union to focus on some GMO issues that we have with them, the point being that we won't sign a deal until they solve those problems, even if they're not in the text of the deal.

International Trade committee  Yes. My full-time job is to provide input on trade agreements as they relate to agriculture, and I'd say I'm always frustrated. Last week I was at a conference on Canada-EU, and somebody said the consultations weren't very transparent. I stood up and quite vehemently defended the negotiators, because I think that consultations on trade agreements, particularly for our sector, are incredibly inclusive.

International Trade committee  I don't represent the poultry industry. I represent Canada's agriculture exporters, so by definition, the supply management industries aren't in my membership. I'm not sure what the previous witness was referring to. I will say that in the past there has been a tendency in trade agreements to exclude our supply-managed commodities from negotiations.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure if it would actually form part of the text of the agreement, but when we're looking at trade relations with countries, whether we have an FTA with them or not, there are very serious protocols that are established by CFIA and Canada Border Services Agency on import permits and phytosanitary permits.

International Trade committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Kathleen Sullivan and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance. I am joined today by my president, Richard Phillips, who is also the executive director of the Grain Growers of Canada. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the Canada-Jordan Economic Growth and Prosperity Act.

Agriculture committee  To the extent you can, you should. For animal health issues, it would be the OIE. Codex can also weigh in. There certainly are a number of different bodies that can take a look at these. I think some issues are without a home right now, such as low-level presence. Certainly Minister Ritz has shown a lot of leadership in bringing together countries to talk about that and to try to find a home for that one.

Agriculture committee  Well, Canada-EU needs to be concluded as soon as we can. Equally important to Canada-EU is Korea. I think a lot of you have been meeting with the CAFTA crew over the last week and the last few months. Korea is a $1 billion market for us, and we stopped negotiating in 2008. In that space of time, the U.S. and the EU have signed free trade deals with Korea.

Agriculture committee  We've spent three years trying to achieve the goals you've just set out. We have very little pork or beef access into Europe. We have a lot of problems on our biotech products. Really, no matter how good CETA is, at the end of the day if it doesn't deal with those three issues, then from our standpoint it will be a failure.

Agriculture committee  If you believe the TPP members and what they're saying, then yes, absolutely. They are looking at a very comprehensive deal that will cover all of the categories we're seeing in the CETA. They're looking at very aggressive tariff cuts. They're looking at dealing with non-tariff barriers.

Agriculture committee  I don't know that I can speak to the philosophical question of how far you go in trade before you give yourself up. From an agriculture perspective, we grow twice as much as we can eat, so we need markets to trade to. We have 210,000 farms across this country that depend on exports.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean in the context of the WTO?

Agriculture committee  I think that right now the number they're looking at is 4%, with the possibility of buying 2% more. I'll be frank with you. At this point in time, if we could get the WTO deal—the text from 2008—through, we'd be thrilled. We'd be thrilled to get something done on the WTO and then regroup and start to figure out what's next.

Agriculture committee  On the 4% and the ability to buy 2% more, yes, we were quite happy with that. We were quite happy with all aspects of the deal. It is a balance.

Agriculture committee  I don't think you should believe everything you read in the media. Two weeks ago, we spent a couple of days meeting with all of the TPP embassies here in Ottawa. If you talk to New Zealand, they will absolutely tell you that Canada's supply management policies will stop them from accepting us in the TPP.