International Trade committee  Yes, I can. Thank you.

International Trade committee  Yes, I can. Thank you.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Chairman, honourable committee members, fellow panel members, ladies and gentlemen. I will keep my comments and perspective more to the economic advantages and opportunities that Europe can provide to Canadian companies and to the Canadian economy as a whol

International Trade committee  It's a very complex issue that would take a lot of discussion, but the current backlog I think is as a result of multiple factors. We've obviously had a very difficult weather situation, over the last four months in particular, with very extreme cold temperatures across the entir

International Trade committee  The bottom line that we all have to recognize is the reputational issue—

International Trade committee  Okay.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  As I mentioned, moving further up the value chain, in terms of more processed products, I have a vision of western Canada being a processing centre for agricultural products. The agreement is certainly going to ease access for, let's say, flours, processed food products. We had a

International Trade committee  Our company is an example where we went from a start-up 10 years ago to $1 billion of export in value-added pulses and grain. We definitely see the opportunity that value-added products are going to move more by truck, container, and intermodal. So it is utilizing a transportatio

International Trade committee  We've moving the other way from a commodity company to a food company.

International Trade committee  For instance, if I take pasta as an example, today spaghetti manufactured in Canada is subject to very punitive duties going into Europe. The duties can range up to about 300 euros per tonne, and that would make us unable to access that market from a duty standpoint. When we look

International Trade committee  We are origin-based processors. We will process finished products in Canada. We will put them into packaged form, and we will use containers and intermodals to ship them to Europe. We think Canada is a very competitive jurisdiction for processing food-safe, identity-preserved pr

International Trade committee  [Technical Difficulty—Editor] trade internationally. I talked about the trade imperative. Certainly, from my perspective, with regard to trade liberalization and Canada's ability to access markets, we've seen this pro-trade agenda certainly yielding benefits, both on the various

International Trade committee  Yes, certainly tariff access, when you're competing with Italian pasta manufacturers or French bakery companies [Technical Difficulty—Editor] we're providing high-quality Canadian-grown and processed ingredients, all I ask for is a level playing field, because we can compete. We

International Trade committee  It's a very complex issue. I'll be very honest; I haven't studied them in a lot of detail, so I'm probably not the best person to give you a comment on that at this point.