Agriculture committee  I think it's quite true, and it was said publicly on many occasions, that everything was on the table when we began these negotiations. We have a lot of sensitive issues on both sides, so I think neither side is under the illusion that entirely everything will be on the table at

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's correct. There are 22 negotiating tables that we've been running since the beginning of the negotiations. The provinces are involved in those tables that affect areas under their jurisdiction, so they're not in all 22. They are in about, I think, seven or eight. Cert

Agriculture committee  The agriculture issues are discussed at the goods table, and since that primarily deals with issues at the border that's an exclusively federal responsibility, so the provinces are not involved in those tables. But because that's part of the overall picture of the negotiations, w

Agriculture committee  On financial services, the table has been exclusively federal so far, because they've been talking about issues that relate to financial services measures at the federal level--banking and those kinds of issues--and have not got into any kind of detailed discussions of financial

Agriculture committee  If we get into those issues--and whether we will is yet to be determined--we'll have to make that assessment. At this point, in previous agreements we have traditionally carved out the provinces from having any involvement in those areas; we've never negotiated that. The Europea

Agriculture committee  Yes, we have been spending quite a bit of time on the area of dispute settlement, both with respect to dispute settlement state-to-state as well as the possibility of an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. We've been having intensive discussions about this. We're tryin

Agriculture committee  Okay, thank you. I'll start with a response to the procurement question, and I'll leave the agriculture questions to my colleague. With respect to procurement, particularly at the provincial and territorial and municipal level, the EU has made it clear across the board that the

Agriculture committee  Sure. We've had some 20 years of experience with the NAFTA dispute settlement model, which is very much similar to the WTO dispute settlement model. So we think we're in a good position to try to learn from some mistakes, or some inefficiencies in those models. We are trying

Agriculture committee  Thank you. When we started looking into the issue of procurement at the provincial and municipal levels, the first thing we found out was that there is already a very open system, by and large. Municipalities and provinces often tend to go to where they can get the best deals a

Agriculture committee  The natural resources issue is obviously an issue of some sensitivity in some cases. The Europeans have access to fewer natural resources than we do. We have a lot of natural resources. We want to sell some of them commercially, and Europe is an attractive market. We want to pres

Agriculture committee  No. Under the agreement within the European Union, member states don't have the option to opt in or out. The European Union will either accept the agreement as a whole--applying to all 27 members--or it will reject it, but there is no middle ground between those.

Agriculture committee  If the decision is taken at the level of the commission of the European Union, then it would apply across the entire 27 countries.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. It's been an issue in the negotiations partly because the EU has raised some questions about the breadth of our cultural exemption in previous trade agreements, but by and large, we don't have huge differences with the EU over culture. Certainly the Governmen

Agriculture committee  I think there is a very great difference between the cultural industry in Canada and the agricultural industry in Canada. Certainly from the perspective of agriculture in the west, and, for that matter, in parts of Ontario, Quebec, and the east as well, they have a great interest

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I think we've been putting a lot of effort behind the whole area of regulatory cooperation, because we see this as providing a lot of benefit over the longer term. It's always easier if you can prevent a significant difference from occurring rather than having to dea