Agriculture committee  You're out of my area of responsibility.

Agriculture committee  Not directly, but invasive species is an area that we're very concerned about. Obviously, we have lots of people in USDA working on this, working with their counterparts in CFIA on different ones that touch both sides. I think our general approach is that we understand and would agree with you that allowing things that can....

Agriculture committee  I very much appreciate the opportunity, Mr. Chairman. We are always willing to address your issues of concern and so forth. I find it very useful for me to hear from you. I hope it's useful to you, likewise.

Agriculture committee  Right. It has basically stuck to what we call the five program crops. I suppose I should name them now that I've mentioned them. It's wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice. Those get over 90% of the support. We brought in I think peas and lentils in the last one. That was something the producers in some of the states that border Canada certainly were supportive of.

Agriculture committee  I'm certainly not an expert on water in the Great Lakes and so forth. But just to give you some water cooler talk, from what I can gather, our states have the same concerns as you about the Great Lakes: maintaining that water as a resource, not abusing that resource, and so forth.

Agriculture committee  The answer to that is a definite yes. Our proposal I think works out to about a 53% reduction in our allowable level of domestic subsidy. There is just no way we can cover that by just shifting around boxes and the area we have available and so forth. If you really do the math, it just doesn't come out.

Agriculture committee  Our position on monopoly powers of state trade organizations is well known. We oppose that. We certainly are pursuing that in the WTO. We pursued it in various WTO cases, obviously, as you know. Regarding the Conservative government, we're not part of that debate. That's an internal domestic Canadian matter, so I would just leave it.

Agriculture committee  No, no.

Agriculture committee  Bilaterals just cannot deal with these multilateral questions. We just don't see a way to get at some of the topics you're talking about, in terms of subsidies, on a bilateral basis. That's what we did in the Canadian-U.S. free trade agreement. We just set aside a lot of the areas and said, we can't deal with this.

Agriculture committee  In terms of the user fee, yes, as it is scheduled now, the interim rule is still on the books and is scheduled to go into effect on November 24. Last month, Agriculture Minister Strahl went down and talked with Secretary Johanns, and they agreed to collaboratively look at this issue and see what other options there might be, and that process is under way now.

Agriculture committee  Are you talking about our restrictions regarding Canadian...? No. Are you talking about Taiwan?

Agriculture committee  Canada still cannot export to--

Agriculture committee  Our position with all countries, I think, just like Canada, is that we urge them to adopt the now adopted OIE standards. So we would urge them to allow the same standards and product coming from Canada as from the United States. We aren't over there saying to take our beef but still be concerned about Canada's.

Agriculture committee  Yes, very much so. There are many lessons. We're a lot smarter about BSE now than we were three years ago. Three years ago, if another country had one case, they couldn't ship anything to either one of us. Canada had to act just like the United States. So when Canada got the first one, that was our reaction because that's what we thought the science was telling us.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I think that would be our perspective as well on Canada going article XXVIII. I mean, you're opening something up here that other countries are going to look at, that producers in other countries are going to look at, so you really need to carefully consider this in terms of whether or not it's really in your interests overall to do this.