International Trade committee  I absolutely share your concern about the bilateral negotiations. They are extremely important, because lots of things that are adopted in bilaterals are all of a sudden promoted at WTO as the direction in which WTO should go. On trade calls that the National Farmers Union has b

International Trade committee  I think that maybe what you and I have is just a difference in strategies. I'm trying to make the case that it would have been one of the very best times to register our complaints about the text that we have now, in restarting the process on the base of the text. We could have j

International Trade committee  Well, on the first piece, I would argue with you about the farm voice being split. It certainly appears to be split, but that's a bit different. There's always this discussion about farmers needing to speak with a single voice; you can sum it up with that line. But as long as the

International Trade committee  It's an ongoing negotiating document.

International Trade committee  But the November text--before this last text--had brackets around the attack on the Canadian Wheat Board and was not agreed to. That was not agreed to by any of the countries, obviously. That bracketed text disappeared. And to my knowledge, on the international scene, Canada is n

International Trade committee  The question that prompts my statement is why, then, did Canada not object to restarting negotiations on the basis of this last text? In the words of our negotiator this morning--to me--now that those brackets are gone from that text, that is no longer an item that other countr

International Trade committee  It's not hypothetical that those brackets came off the text.

International Trade committee  To my knowledge, there was no reaction from the government. All the news headlines said, “Doha talks collapse. No further negotiations scheduled.” That's where it ended. We just went through the crucial piece here last month, when there were more meetings about trying to restar

International Trade committee  To the best of our knowledge, Canada supported starting up with the text that excludes the Canadian Wheat Board and takes away the marketing advantage of the Canadian Wheat Board. That is one of the places where it would have been very easy for the Canadian government to say, thi

International Trade committee  The government could write a letter to Canada's negotiators and table it publicly with the House of Commons, saying we will not agree to changes in the WTO text that weaken supply management or take away the marketing advantages of the Canadian Wheat Board. The negotiators could

International Trade committee  Well, I can't know the mind of the government. We can all speculate about it. But I would think, if the government truly believes in its own rhetoric, it should take that step.

International Trade committee  No. As I said before, I participate--

International Trade committee  From the direct questions that I have asked of Mr. Gauthier, both on the phone in the last couple of weeks, for the agriculture trade committee, and in the meeting that I had with him this morning.

International Trade committee  I share your concerns, absolutely, and I think it should be taken off the table. The discussion is about what “no” means. Does “no” mean something different in Canada than outside of Canada, and how is that being interpreted? In this room we've heard that no means no, but interna

International Trade committee  The short answer is no. The trade negotiators, for their part, are very skilled individuals, but they have to do what they're told. They have to take their direction from the political leadership in Canada. In a sense, it's not fair to ask them to determine the political will in