International Trade committee  That's a great question. I think, first, when we look back at various trade agreements and whether Canada has taken full advantage of them or not, we also have to take it in the context of global trade opportunities. Under CETA, fish and seafood were benefiting quite extensivel

International Trade committee  No, I haven't heard that. I'm not too concerned about which salmon is better. Are our farmed Atlantic salmon better than their farmed Atlantic salmon, or are our wild Pacific salmon better than what they have? I think that is for the consumers to decide, and I hope our companies

International Trade committee  A trade agreement doesn't eliminate the competition. There is growing global competition in all markets, so any tariff advantage that we can have will definitely give us an edge.

International Trade committee  Maybe I'll address that a little bit. As Mr. Poirier said, I think we would prefer a fixed review over a sunset clause for a transitional agreement. Our focus in the short term has been that a rollover agreement of CETA would certainly be preferable to not having something. Also

International Trade committee  For any tariffs that get applied without a deal until a new deal is put into place, there are measures to enable companies to get that back, but they have to pay it first. There are cashflow issues and certainly, given the certain circumstances of the marketplace now, that could

International Trade committee  That's a good question. No, you don't have to be in Ottawa, but you have to be proactive. Sometimes as part of our consultations, the government was contacting us, and sometimes we contact them. For example, in September I was curious about the status of the negotiations, so I r

International Trade committee  No, we're above zero. We're based in Ottawa, so it's much easier for us to stay engaged with various departments on issues. We had been following this, much like Fawn said for cattlemen, and as soon as we saw that Brexit was indeed going to happen, we stayed engaged with the gove

International Trade committee  Well, essentially we were looking for a rollover of CETA as a transitional arrangement and this is what we have. The officials have told us that there will be virtually no change in the tariff schedules from what we're facing under CETA and how they're being scaled down. We're ve

International Trade committee  I'll just add that I think Mr. Sawyer touched on a very important point. The impacts of not having the transitional deal in place by January 1 would last much longer than just a month or two, because to have access to a market, it takes time to build up the relationships with cus

International Trade committee  Thank you. Mr. Poirier, I think, spoke a lot about measures that would apply to a multitude of sectors, so I think basically everything he said would also apply to fish and seafood. The part that I would perhaps add is that because our products are food, we would need to make su

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, if this is directed to me first, thank you for the question. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with your June 2019 report on SMEs, so I will take a look at that. However, as I said in my opening remarks, if we don't have a deal in place by January 1, we will face high

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the committee for the invitation to testify today. The last time I appeared before this committee was in the previous Parliament. Oddly enough, if I remember correctly, I did that one remotely as well, due to business travel. Before I ge

Fisheries committee  Most of my members are not eligible for the fish harvester grant or benefit, but there are a few smaller members who could benefit from them. One of the issues that we flagged for the government, and that is addressed through the fish harvester grant, is that for a share persons

Fisheries committee  Like everyone else in the sector, including many of the harvester groups, we all flagged that people were falling through the cracks from the economy-wide measures, like the business account and things like that. We said that the share persons crews were not being captured and th

Fisheries committee  I think that if they expand that.... As I said, my members are too large, so they're not eligible for that. Their payrolls go above $1.5 million, but Mr. Lanteigne did mention the fee relief. As this pandemic continues, if the market disruption continues longer than we originally