International Trade committee  Thank you. Good morning. DFC is pleased to participate in the pre-consultation of the Standing Committee on International Trade on the TPP. My name is Caroline Emond. I'm the executive director of the Dairy Farmers of Canada. I'm joined today by my colleague Yves Leduc, who is

International Trade committee  Yes, we were an active stakeholder throughout the negotiations, and we worked closely with the negotiator to give them the information they needed to do their jobs properly. The collaboration has been at a level where we could share, and we made sure they had the right facts and

International Trade committee  Thank you, that's a good question. Mike mentioned, and it's the same thing for us, that the TPP trade agreement goes with a mitigation and a compensation package. That was the way it was built and negotiated. As we said, we never opposed the trade agreement, but why should our i

International Trade committee  What I can agree with is that as dairy farmers we have invested a lot of energy and money to develop a program that we call proAction. This is a program that we've developed ourselves, for ourselves, and going above the Canadian standards right now. We want our consumers and our

International Trade committee  First, can I answer the first question—

International Trade committee  —on circumvention? Obviously that also applies to dairy. This duty deferral program has been detrimental for all supply management commodities. In dairy it's been causing major problems because if chicken after four years is not nice, I can tell you it's the same thing for dairy

International Trade committee  First, I must tell you you're not alone in wanting Canadian products. We had a campaign during TPP: Canadian milk matters. There were more than 215,000 letters that were sent across the country to most of you in support of Canadian dairy farmers. They like the Canadian products b

International Trade committee  We have heard in the House of Commons in an answer to a question by the minister saying he supports compensation. That's all I can say.

International Trade committee  It's important to make clear that we're not a proponent of that deal. We're not demanding it. We don't gain from it. We actually want to ensure that we don't prevent it from happening, but it is very important that our industry doesn't pay the price of that deal.

International Trade committee  We have the fine cheeses where you can have a niche market and that's why I was mentioning in the presentation that if we were to go and export, we would have to go into a niche market, not into commodities. We can't compete with New Zealand. Ninety-six per cent of their producti

International Trade committee  How long do you have?

International Trade committee  We'll have to take that offline. The quota is actually the right to produce. In our case, I can't speak for the others, but I know it's provincially managed as well. Each province has their own way to do it. In some it's rated openly and they have different rules in every provin

International Trade committee  You have to produce your quota. It's a responsibility as well. As I said, we manage the whole system through the quota.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  You would actually buy a quota.