Agriculture committee  New Zealand is a member of the WTO and promotes its interests at WTO discussions, like Canada does. As I mentioned at the start, Canada's position on defending supply management is very firm. At this point, there is nothing to indicate that New Zealand's position will have any in

Agriculture committee  That's part of any trade agreement. You always have a mechanism in order to address a potential dispute. And if the other party does not comply, you would have a right to compensation and retaliation.

Agriculture committee  Well, yes, if you're talking directly about export subsidies; obviously, in a bilateral agreement between Canada and the EU, we do not want to allow for the use of export subsidies in bilateral trade. That would not be fair competition, a level playing field. So we're looking for

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Perhaps this requires some clarification. Our position is very clear: we will remain firm and defend supply management. As far as I know, the Europeans are not looking for supply management to be abolished, just as we are not asking them to abolish their common agricul

Agriculture committee  I think that the government has made it very clear that we must sign trade agreements, because the vitality of our economy, especially our agricultural sector, depends on greater access to markets and clearer and more predictable international trade rules. That is why we continue

Agriculture committee  Obviously, it is a very good sector for Canada, a growing sector. We need to continue to encourage innovation in our agriculture sector. The future lies with innovation. I would answer that more in the trade context, I think what's important for us is to demonstrate, also, the

Agriculture committee  Well, de facto, when you recognize a geographical indication, it means that is the only product that can be labelled with that appellation. It has to come from the region that the geographical indication relates to. There is a direct linkage to the origin of the product from that

Agriculture committee  All of the issues of phytosanitary and sanitary standards are very important. It's important in these negotiations that we work very closely to establish the proper mechanism to address these issues, to ensure that our veterinarian team at CFIA works closely with their counterpar

Agriculture committee  Thank you. On low-level presence, this is an issue we want to raise in the context of these negotiations to provide a better framework with a bit more predictability to the trade. We're also pursuing a parallel approach. As you know, the European Union has already announced t

Agriculture committee  We've had very extensive consultation with all the various agriculture groups. I meet with them on a regular basis. Many of them have also embarked on their own market studies, which is quite helpful to our negotiations, because they can examine in detail the shape of the Europea

Agriculture committee  As I said, our major interests lie in the areas of meat and grain, but we've also had some valuable input from many of the other sectors, fruits and vegetables, processed products. I also have had the privilege of participating in provincial events all across the country, so we a

Agriculture committee  I think it has been a long-standing concern of Canada that the European Union has the capacity and has the tools to subsidize far more than we do. So that's why in the WTO context we've been aggressive in trying to introduce more discipline in the use of subsidies by the major pl

Agriculture committee  Let me take an example that I referred to in my opening remarks. Europe is now a net importer of beef. The domestic consumption in Europe is approaching 8 million tonnes a year. We have had a minuscule export to Europe up to now. Under the recently negotiated settlement for hormo

Agriculture committee  Just as a last word on beef, I was negotiating in CETA a preferential access to the European market that would certainly put our producers in a much more competitive context vis-à-vis other exporters of Latin America or elsewhere, and I think they'll be able to seize a greater sh

Agriculture committee  On your agriculture question regarding UPOV 1991, it's important to note that this international treaty was signed by Canada, and it's up to Canada now to decide to ratify it and to decide how and when to implement it. It's not necessarily related to the CETA negotiations. In UPO