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I will call this meeting to order.
Today we're going to be studying the WTO and the recent announcement by the minister on article XXVIII and the milk protein concentrates.
We have Steve Verheul, our chief trade negotiator at the WTO, appearing before us. We welcome Steve to our committee. He has been here before.
I'll turn it over to you, Steve. You have about 10 minutes, if you need that, to make your presentation.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Steve Verheul. I'm Canada's chief trade negotiator for agriculture. I'd like to thank the committee for asking me to appear here today to talk about the status of the WTO negotiations.
I'm going to begin my remarks by reviewing some of the recent developments at the WTO and what they mean for Canada in particular.
As you all know, the WTO negotiations are the key forum through which Canada is working to expand opportunities and achieve a fairer international trading environment for Canadian agriculture.
At the WTO, we have been working to achieve the elimination of all forms of export subsidies, the substantial reduction of trade-distorting domestic support, and real and significant improvements to market access. We've also been strongly defending the interests of our supply-managed producers.
The negotiations have been ongoing since November 2001. Although various deadlines have been set, not very many of them have been met. The most significant developments in the negotiations were a framework for agriculture, which was agreed to in July 2004, and in December 2005, at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting, we agreed, among other things, to the elimination of export subsidies by the end of 2013.
As the negotiations have progressed, they have become increasingly difficult. In July of last year, the director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, announced that the negotiations had reached an impasse on the issue of market access for agricultural and non-agricultural products and on agricultural domestic support. As a result, the negotiations were suspended at that time.
In November, following a period of increased informal discussion among WTO members on the key stumbling blocks in the negotiations, the WTO director general obtained support from the WTO membership for technical discussions on the various issues at play to resume across all areas of the negotiations, including agriculture.
Earlier this year, on January 27, and joined ministers from about 30 other WTO members in Davos, Switzerland, for an informal ministerial meeting on the WTO negotiations. Ministers at Davos clearly expressed renewed commitment to put the negotiations back on track.
This was later followed by an announcement from the director general at a meeting of the trade negotiations committee on February 7 that the negotiations were to be fully re-engaged.
While negotiating activity has increased since that time, the discussions are still largely informal. There has been particular attention focused on the U.S. and on Europe, who have been engaged in detailed technical discussions over the last several weeks to try to narrow the differences between them.
It is clear to Canada and to others that key WTO members, particularly the U.S., Europe, and some of the more advanced developing countries, will need to significantly narrow differences in their negotiating positions and show movement on the issues for real and substantial progress to be possible. It will be important to achieve such progress within the next few months or we're going to face a much longer delay in the negotiations.
Progress is needed on three key issues if the negotiations are to move forward: the U.S. needs to go further on both cuts and disciplines to trade-distorting domestic support; the European Union needs to show more flexibility on market access; and developing countries need to show more openness both on market access for agricultural products and for non-agricultural products.
For our part, Canada is continuing to work intensively in Geneva and elsewhere with a range of other WTO members to exchange ideas and advance technical work with a view to resolving the outstanding issues. We continue to be among the most active countries involved in the negotiations.
Looking forward, the success of the Doha Round will clearly remain a key priority for Canada. The WTO remains the cornerstone of our international trade strategy for Canadian agriculture. Our efforts at the WTO agriculture negotiations and through other trade initiatives will remain geared toward ensuring that we have an effective overall international trade policy strategy for Canadian agriculture, including both supply-managed products and export-oriented interests. Continued, active engagement with the provinces and the full range of our agriculture industry stakeholders will remain central to our efforts.
l also understand you may have some questions regarding milk protein concentrates. In the second hour of my appearance l will be joined by officials from the Department of Finance, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada Border Services Agency, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and we will be happy to deal with your questions on those issues at that time.
So with those opening remarks, I would be pleased to take your questions on the negotiations.
Thank you for being here, Mr. Verheul. You are at the very heart of international negotiations, and you more often than we committee members are in the countries where all these negotiations are taking place. It is important for us, as well as for farmers, to have your viewpoint and to know exactly what is going on in these negotiations.
The Doha Round, which began in 2001, was devoted to developing countries. Since the start of these negotiations, I note that those countries do not seem to have much of a voice in the matter. It's currently more a major battle between the European Union and the United States.
First, I'd like you to tell me whether I am right. The European Union and the United States obviously resumed negotiations in February. As a result, they have agreed to restart discussions.
Do you think that the decision made with regard to the Doha Round to benefit developing countries is still on the table now? Or are we witnessing the appearance of a completely different scenario?
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Certainly, as you say, the major objective of the Doha Round was to improve the opportunities for developing countries in the international marketplace, and I think that while the current focus has been on discussions between the U.S. and Europe, the issue of development, improving the situation of developing countries, is still front and centre in the negotiations.
I think part of the reason so much of the focus is on the U.S. and Europe is that, in the case of the U.S., developing countries very much want to see some real cuts to the U.S. subsidies to give them a better chance to compete, and with Europe, they want to get some real access into the European market. It's 25 countries and growing, so they want to get some access to what is a very wealthy market from a development perspective.
So those issues are there, but the pressure is really on the U.S. and Europe as the two biggest players to make some real moves, and then we'll see whether they're taking the development issue seriously or not. For our part, we've been aligning ourselves very closely with developing countries and spending a lot of time working with them, because we have many similar objectives. We want to get subsidies in the U.S. down. We want to improve market access to a lot of different countries. So we've been conducting a lot of joint analysis with developing countries and doing a lot of work with them.
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In the United States, there have obviously been some changes: the Democrats have taken control. Have you heard anything about what might happen? Without the United States, we won't be moving forward in these negotiations.
There's been a lot of talk about fast-tracking. Would the Democrats, who historically are usually a little more protectionist than the Republicans, let President Bush fast-track this?
The new Farm Bill has also just been announced. This isn't very clear. Would you have any more information? We hear about reduced subsidies. Will there nevertheless be excessive use of the green box?
How is that lining up, from what you've heard in the United States? In the context of these negotiations, we can't disregard what's going on there right now.
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Yes, as you imply, the focus now is really on the U.S., and what happens in the U.S. will determine whether or not we move forward.
The trade promotion authority, or fast-track, is going to be essential, and if the U.S. doesn't obtain fast-track approval, then there's really no basis to negotiate.
The problem we're experiencing right now is that we're trying to pull together a package that the U.S. administration could then take to Congress. But we're not really sure what Congress might do with it and want to add to it, in order to get the approval for the trade promotion authority. So there's an issue of whether the administration can obtain authority, and there's also a timing issue as to how much detail we can put into any kind of package before it goes to Congress.
More recently, there is more potential for the U.S. to obtain that approval from Congress, partly because they're looking at a broader package than just the trade promotion authority on the Doha negotiations. They're also talking about including things, such as trade adjustment and assistance, as part of a broader package. So that may appeal to some of the Democrats and make this a little easier.
Your comment on the farm bill is also a very interesting case of timing right now, because the U.S. is in the midst of starting to design their new farm bill while the negotiations are going on. Many of us in the negotiations are clearly trying to constrain them in what they can do when designing that farm bill.
We saw some proposals from the U.S. administration a couple of weeks ago. Our view is they don't go nearly far enough in terms of what will be needed to conclude the negotiations.
There's going to be a difficult debate within Congress about what that farm bill should look like, but the connection with the negotiations is going to be very direct.
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What is your perception of Canada's role in everything that's currently taking place? We were talking about those two major players, the European Union and the United States.
You've always mentioned that it's been tougher for you since that motion was unanimously passed by the House of Commons on November 22, 2005. How have you been feeling since then? Do you keep clear of the negotiations?
I read articles in newspapers to which you've granted interviews. You have a reputation for being very frank. That's all to your credit, except that we claim it's important to defend the supply management system, of course. According to a Léger Marketing survey, 85% of Canadians think that as well, whether they're farmers or not.
Are you a participant in those negotiations, or are you watching what's currently going on from the sidelines? How do you view matters in relation to the negotiations that are resuming?
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Yes, that's certainly an important question in the negotiations right now. Canada has been probably the most active player in the negotiations in terms of providing new creative ideas for trying to move the negotiations forward and advancing our interests.
When it comes to the issue of sensitive products, we have taken a very hard line and said that consistent with the motion, we will not be accepting or talking about tariff reductions or tariff quota expansion for supply-managed products.
That has meant that we aren't in a position to engage in the design of the approach on sensitive products that others are engaging in. We're certainly aware that the U.S. and Europe have been talking primarily about the treatment of sensitive products. That's most of what they've been discussing over the last several weeks. So they are starting to design an approach on sensitive products, and there are also discussions taking place in various other forums.
We're a bit limited in what we can do in terms of having those discussions. The U.S. is talking individually to various countries now. We're likely to get a request to meet with the U.S. in the next month or so. They will be coming to us and saying, what are you prepared to offer us on dairy, poultry, and eggs, because the rest of our market is open to them under NAFTA. At that time, we will be saying that we're not prepared to do anything.
Obviously that's going to bring some kind of reaction. It's also going to mean that we're not going to be able to have a discussion about where we might be able to provide access that won't cause any kind of impact, which would be the case with respect to some supply-managed commodities. So we won't be having that kind of discussion.
I think we have a very strong position in support of supply management, but we run the risk of the discussions among other members going in a different direction.
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Yes, I think we certainly have heard from industry and various others that we should be having a more ambitious bilateral negotiating agenda, and we have been pursuing that.
We've been advancing bilateral negotiations with Korea, as you know. We've also been negotiating with a group of Central American countries and with Singapore, as well as with the European free trade area, which includes a number of northern European countries. All of those negotiations are advancing at the moment. We're also hoping to initiate new negotiations with the Dominican Republic, with a group of Caribbean countries, and with some of the Andean pact countries in Latin American, particularly Peru and Colombia.
So we are trying to have a much more ambitious bilateral agenda, and we see that as complementary to our efforts at the WTO, not in opposition to them.
In terms of ambition, Steve, is there any thought to bringing in labour rates and health and safety standards for workers within countries? If you look at what's happening in the auto industry right now, that's one of the reasons our auto industry is going down.
With regard to environmental standards, we have farm environmental plans in this country, but in Brazil or Argentina or China, theirs are much lower. We're competing against countries under so-called free trade rules, or WTO rules, compared to which we are at a very distinct disadvantage.
So in terms of ambition, is there any thought of bringing up those factors and putting them on the table? There wasn't for a while, but is there any thought of putting those factors on the table? I think they're crucial to this country as we move ahead, especially labour and environment, not only for agriculture but for the industrial manufacturing base as well.
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I actually think those two sides of the equation now, as we're into more and more the environmental factors, are perhaps every bit as important to agriculture as they are to other industries. We didn't see them that way, I don't think, four or five years ago, but they certainly are today.
A number of us from both government sides--not on this committee but the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary Association--were in Washington two weeks ago. There's no question in my mind, having spent about three hours with the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, that the members in the House are far from where Secretary Johanns is. I really think there's a willingness on the administration's side to try to cut back on the subsidization. There is certainly not on the political arm in the House. That's a problem for us.
Given the proposals that were on the table, I think the discussion in Hong Kong was perhaps the farthest we were ahead to getting an agreement. I think we fell back since that time. Then there was strong pressure for us to basically go to tariff reductions where we favoured tariff quota increases. In negotiations, especially with the United States, and they're our major competitor, we met our tariff quota increases. We lived by the previous agreement; the United States didn't. Yet they want us to start at where we now are instead of their coming up to where they're supposed to be.
Where are we on that side of the discussion, or did the motion in the House completely put that off the table? I mean, we might as well be frank about it, because if it did, it did. Where are we at on that area?
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Yes, certainly a number of elements in the negotiations are becoming clearer, at least among a number of members. On export subsidies, we've agreed to eliminate all export subsidies, as have all other members. That will have some impact on our dairy sector, but it's generally viewed as something that can be managed. All of our dairy exports right now, or almost all, benefit from export subsidies.
On the domestic support reductions we will have to face, along with others, our reductions will be considerably less than the reductions in the U.S. or the reductions in Europe or Japan. And that's because of a Canadian idea that the reductions should be different and much greater for countries that are larger players. That will have some pressure put on our current pricing system because we will probably have to make some adjustments to that in order to meet the obligations that we would expect on the domestic support disciplines.
Finally, on the issue of sensitive products and how many are going to be allowed, the U.S. and Europe, including in their most recent discussions, have been talking about 4% or 5%. And there's some suggestion that Europe could agree to 4%. That's not something that other countries--not just us, but others--would find acceptable. Certainly Norway needs significantly more than 4%; Japan needs more than 4%; Switzerland needs more than 4%. So we have been having some discussions with these countries about that challenge that we're going to face in getting the right number of sensitive products.
I just wanted to make an observation first. had talked about the previous government's support for the Canadian Wheat Board. You mentioned that the export subsidies were going to be done away with. I believe they had negotiated away the export credit programs and the initial price guarantees that were provided by the government. So those two things alone would have made substantial changes to that system.
I want to talk a bit about the Americans and the Europeans working together. In Uruguay they were able to basically come up with an agreement that led to the completion of that round. You talked a bit about that, but I'm just wondering if that type of agreement is likely, in your mind, this time. If it is, there are two other things I'd like to know. What role are the developing countries going to be able to play in that? And secondly, what role is that second level of countries going to be able to play as well? What are the dynamics there?
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A lot of us are certainly concerned about the U.S. and Europe talking and trying to narrow the gaps between them. We realize it's necessary and we want them to do it, but at the same time, we're concerned about what they might come up with. Unlike the last round, though, I don't think there's a possibility for the U.S. and Europe to agree on something and then simply impose it on the rest of the membership.
The power relationship among WTO members has shifted considerably, particularly with developing countries. If the U.S. and Europe come up with something, but it's opposed by some of the other major players, such as Brazil, India, China, and some of the key developing countries, then it's really not going to fly.
I think the U.S. and Europe are conscious of this. I think if they narrow the gap, they're going to start to try to sell whatever they put together more broadly. They'll gradually go to more and more countries to try to convince them of the merits of what they've come up with. The developing world will be the biggest challenge they'll have in that regard.
Part of our strategy in response to this is to work very closely with developing countries, as I mentioned. We're providing a lot of analysis to them, including Brazil and India specifically, on the impact we would see on offers put forward by the U.S. and by Europe. I think we've been of some help in advising them on whether or not an offer put forward has any value to it. To be honest, particularly on the domestic support side, we haven't seen offers that have been all that valuable up to this point.
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If we fail to make any real progress over the summer, I don't think the negotiations would be dropped entirely. I think there would be an effort to try to keep them going at some very minimal level until we could re-engage, most likely with a new U.S. administration. If they're elected in 2008, it would probably take them half a year to get all the right people in place. Then we might have a chance of continuing the negotiations.
But after that length of time, we wouldn't really be sure where we'd be starting from. Things would have changed in many respects. The conventional wisdom is that we would continue the negotiations and pick it up again at a later date. To this point, we've never had a negotiating round completely fail. Having a negotiating round directed towards developing countries fail would send the world a signal that would not be helpful.
On the second part of your question, if the negotiations did fail, then clearly we'd continue to move forward on our bilateral agreements. We can get some improvements on a lot of those.
There will be more dispute settlement cases at the WTO, and we may well be a part of that. You're all familiar with the initiative we've taken on corn.
We're getting into a much less predictable environment. We not only lose the possibility of getting some real changes in terms of cuts to subsidies and improvements to market access, but we lose the strength of a rules-based system and the ability to get new rules in place, which benefit Canada probably more than anywhere. We need those rules to have a fair environment when we're competing against the major players.
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Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the initiatives recently announced by the government with respect to milk protein concentrates.
Just to very briefly recap, on February 3, Minister Strahl announced that the government will be initiating negotiations under article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to restrict imports of milk protein concentrates in response to dairy industry concerns about the increasing use of these concentrates in making cheese and other dairy products.
On a separate issue, he has asked the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to launch a regulatory process related to compositional standards for cheese and he has urged the producers and processors to continue the dairy industry working group.
As mentioned before, in addition to the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, there are a number of other federal departments and agencies involved in these issues. I'll just briefly introduce them. I am joined by Gilles Le Blanc, senior chief, international trade policy division, Department of Finance; Darwin Satherstrom, director general, trade programs directorate, Canada Border Services Agency; Gerry Salembier, director general, multilateral trade policy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade; and Debra Bryanton, who is the executive director of food safety with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
In general, the Department of Finance is responsible for Canada's customs tariff. That's the law that sets out the tariff rates for imported goods. In addition, the department is responsible for other import policy legislation, including the Special Import Measures Act, which sets out the rules for addressing dumped and subsidized imports.
Mr. Le Blanc will be our lead negotiator for the GATT article XXVIII negotiations.
The role of the Canada Border Services Agency is to ensure the proper classification of imported goods, and we follow a process adhering to classification principles that are internationally mandated under what is known as the harmonized system for goods classification as well as national subdivisions within that system.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is responsible for the broader international trade elements of the issue, and specifically with respect to article XXVIII of the GATT, that is, DFAIT deals with the intersection of this agriculture-specific issue with Canada's international trade obligations and our engagement with WTO members as a whole. While Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is responsible for agricultural trade policy, DFAIT is the lead agency on Canada's overall trade policy and as such deals with the implications of the MPC issue and any government action on it from the perspective of Canada's overall trade relations.
In short, the four departments, Finance, DFAIT, CBSA, and AFC, are working together on the article XXVIII negotiations.
You have been provided with a backgrounder setting out how GATT article XXVIII negotiations proceed. Although I understand that your main interest today is to discuss the import of milk protein concentrates, our colleague from the CFIA will be in a position to answer questions you may have on the development of compositional standards, the other part of the announcement the minister made at the dairy farmers' meeting.
CFIA is mandated to safeguard Canada's food supply and the plants and animals upon which safe and high-quality food depend. To deliver its broad regulatory mandate, the CFIA verifies compliance with 13 federal acts and their respective regulations that promote food safety, consumer protection, and animal and plant health. A backgrounder outlining the federal legislation related to food safety and quality for dairy products has also been provided to you.
So given the number of organizations being represented at this table, it has also been agreed that for the purposes of this meeting, I would lead for the government representatives and ask the most appropriate person to reply to each question. I hope this will allow us to expedite the process of responding to your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Article XXVIII, from our perspective, certainly makes sense, Mr. Chair, because I think the current import of milk protein concentrate goes against the intent of the tariff lines that were established in the beginning, and I think to a great extent the industry found a way around that by the importation of these milk protein concentrates. Originally when this system was envisioned, milk was milk was milk, and now it can be broken down.
So I know in principle that we certainly agree with the call to go to article XXVIII.
In terms of the article XXVIII action itself, though, will it apply to products coming in from the United States?
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Let me start at the end of your question. Where is the supply coming from?
Part of the problem in coming to grips with this issue is that the relevant tariff line, 3504.00.00, I believe, includes more than just milk protein concentrates. Exactly what imports of milk protein concentrates are coming in and where they're coming from is not a simple matter to ascertain. We're doing some work to try to figure out exactly what and how much is coming from where.
Your question started, I think, by asking if the government is trying to sort of get around this issue of the provisions of the NAFTA. The actions we will take will be in full compliance with our obligations under the NAFTA. We're not going to try to circumvent the obligations we have under any of our trade agreements, be it the WTO or the NAFTA, in this case.
You made reference to the legal opinions on both sides of the issue. In our view, the more widely held view is that the terms of the NAFTA do not allow for the establishment of a new tariff rate quota.
With respect to the first question, the answer is no. There is an interdepartmental team that was established soon after the announcement by Minister Strahl. We are basically right now working and preparing the notification. There are certain technical issues that need to be dealt with before we put the notification forward. For example, one was mentioned by Gerry, the import stats. There are no publicly available data with respect to protein concentrates, and therefore we need to do some work in that regard. I think that responds to your question.
With respect to the implementation, an element of your question, what I can say is that in article XXVIII it's quite clear that you can modify concessions, but it's by negotiation and agreement with the affected parties. First we need to go through negotiations before we can change the provisions. We intend to try to get notification soon to the WTO in order to start the process associated with an article XXVIII renegotiation.
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I've just briefly explained the process. As regards notification, we first have to resolve certain technical questions. When we give notification, some information must appear on it, like the trade for the products concerned. We're working on that right now. We can't send notification without having these basic elements. We hope to be able to present notification in the near future. I can't really commit to giving you a date.
As regards the time that a negotiating exercise might take under article 28, as I said earlier, we have to negotiate with our trading partners and try to come to an agreement whereby the parties are mutually ready to move forward with the change we've made. The ultimate goal is for our trading partners to accept the modification of the concession we've made. As discussions and negotiations have enabled them to obtain compensation, they came to the conclusion that the concessions had been rebalanced. Following that agreement, we'll be able to put the measure into effect.
Two or three parties, even more, are taking part in these negotiations. So we really have no control over the time the negotiations can take.
Dairy farmers in my riding, and farmers in general, have a really basic, straightforward question when it comes to these negotiations, so perhaps this can go between the five of you. They feel that they themselves can compete because of our quality standards, our environmental regulations, our strict definition of what constitutes certain products, our protections through our inspection systems, legislative safeguards, plus they feel they have some good marketing and they cooperate when they're selling, and above all it's efficient production.
So they ask this one question, and this is what troubles them, I believe, as it does me: when we negotiate, why would we allow imports that do not meet those same standards of production, of safety assurance, of quality inspection, environmental security, and even the definitional consistency, so that what we would hold to be milk-like ends up being not milk or the definitions are obviously contrary? They know what they have to do to produce a quality product. They want to know that if they have to compete, what comes in has to meet the same standards and rigour, the same level playing field, in essence.
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The regulations that apply to the safety, quality, and labelling provisions for food in Canada apply equally domestically and for imported products. On a domestic basis, of course, we are able to actually experience the conditions in our establishments and are able to verify that the reputation Canada has for safety and quality of food is, in great part, because of the efforts of our industry in producing safe, high-quality foods.
For imports, we do have an import regime that focuses on the importer as the responsible party for the imported product. And we have a program that looks at the imported finished product, where we do review the labelling components and the compositional components, but also, of great importance, the safety components of those products. So that does include a comprehensive sampling program that looks at chemical residues, including veterinary drugs and microbial issues that may relate to certain cheese categories. The overall compliance rate of imported cheese products, in particular, is very high.
Now, we also must take into account that the dairy products that are imported into Canada do come from countries that do have effective food safety systems in place. We certainly take that into account when we're identifying and targeting areas for specific attention.
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Certainly that is an issue that's part of the context of the negotiations. We're not dealing directly with health and sanitary issues in the negotiations. It was decided that we wouldn't address those issues this time around. But clearly in our approach to the negotiations, competitiveness and those kinds of issues are front of mind.
It is a fact that with respect to our dairy industry, for example, our domestic prices are two to three times what world prices are, so we have producers out there in other countries who can produce at a far lower value than our own producers are producing. Much of that is because of the high value of quota in Canada, which makes up somewhere between 40% and 45% of most producers' asset value. That's a cost that producers in other countries don't have. It's a feature of our system, and they don't have that kind of system.
So there are various factors that go into our ability to compete with others. What we are trying to achieve is a level playing field, to use that commonly used phrase, that allows our producers to compete under the same kinds of rules and conditions as others to the extent we can.
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Our minister has announced that he has asked the CFIA to launch the regulatory process to work toward implementing the recommendations of the moderator of the dairy industry working group into our regulatory framework. We have begun that process already, and we have begun our internal processes toward the regulatory process, which includes the writing of the regulations themselves and also the writing of a regulatory impact analysis statement.
We have been in contact with key stakeholders to seek information that will be included in that regulatory impact analysis statement. Although the regulatory process can take 12 to 18 months, we are doing what we can to accelerate that process. It will follow Government of Canada regulatory policies, so it will be transparent and there will be the opportunity to comment when the regulations are pre-published in the Canada Gazette, part I.
Also, in keeping with our international obligations, there will be a comment period of 75 days and a notification to the WTO that these regulations are available for comment. Any comments that we do receive will be considered before we go to Canada Gazette, part II, so we are looking at trying to have a regulatory process that is approximately a year.
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Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for being here today.
Earlier one of the other members asked a question about where the MPCs that are currently coming into Canada are originating from, what the volume was, and whether there has been a significant change in the volume in the last year or so.
I think the answer was that's difficult to determine, both where they come from and the volumes. If that's true, if you don't have access to that information, do these other countries declare themselves in terms of where the MPCs are coming from? When they declare themselves, do they tell you how much they're sending into Canada, and since you are unable to confirm that, do you take their word for it?
It would seem to me there's some basic information--which countries the MPCs are coming from, how much from each, and how that has changed. If you don't have that information now, how are you going to have that information before you get into these negotiations?