International Trade committee  Yes, we were intimately involved with the consultations and as you hear it from this side we're not opposed to a trade agreement. We're looking at a trade agreement and making sure a trade agreement works for Canada, but it works for us as well. We've had an ongoing relationship

International Trade committee  I think it is important that we understand where the chicken comes from. We're doing a branding program in terms of that. We've built a trust level with consumers. Chicken consumption continues to go up because people trust what we're putting out there, and it's a high-value pro

International Trade committee  They are absolutely key. As we said, this is a package and we worked hard. It was clear that we needed.... The whole part about a supply management system is not that we don't import chicken. We import a significant amount of chicken. The point is to know how much of it is comin

International Trade committee  No. The TPP will not address that barrier at all. From a non-tariff barrier perspective, there still are barriers from a meat perspective. For example New Zealand doesn't import any chicken, and it isn't because of tariffs. It's because they just don't allow it in.

International Trade committee  I won't say we represent the processors; we have processors on our board. We work closely with the processors in a value-chain approach, and I think they would share the perspective on these issues that we have.

International Trade committee  This is part of what we call tariff rate quota administration. Really, the importers are grouped as processors, distributors, food service—there are different pools in it. There is a lot of value added that comes in. There is a benefit. To be clear, we're not trying to stop the

International Trade committee  There are some that go direct to store shelves, absolutely.

International Trade committee  Are you talking about production quota value?

International Trade committee  It's a tough one to get a handle on, mainly because the price of quota varies from province to province from sale to sale. There's not an open exchange where it can happen in the chicken sector. Our point is that our job in supply management is neither to increase or decrease th

International Trade committee  We got a letter from Minister MacAulay stating that the government supports, knows that compensation is important, and all that. They're going through a process of determining whether they're going to sign. They're looking at it, they've told us, together. There's no compensation

International Trade committee  The response that we got from Minister Freeland was that if we were to make a decision right now on compensation, it would be as though we'd already made a decision on signing the deal. So you understand where they're at.

International Trade committee  If the compensation and the indemnification package that was there were not supported, it's a hard hit on our industry. It is a package for us. We worked through this deal and we were positive on this. We were trying to find ways to make this deal work because we knew that issues

International Trade committee  We sit next to the largest poultry producer in the world, which does not have our winter and does not have to have fully insulated barns to carry them through, so our production costs are higher from that perspective. The other thing to understand as well is that the chicken mar

International Trade committee  I'll give you an example of how we do it in that quota. Every eight weeks we set the production in Canada for chicken. We allocate out to a province and we give them their share, and then they allocate to their farmers, every single eight weeks. They will have a unit of that pro

International Trade committee  It's a similar sense. Our largest farms are actually in Atlantic Canada because they need to be larger. They have cost issues, feed is a big issue, and therefore they have higher feed costs so they need more volume. You see larger farms there as opposed to in the rest of the coun