Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here today.
I want to talk a little about the new Market Access Secretariat and get a feel for how you see that being used most effectively in the future as one of our tools for helping our producers better market their products and make a living in the global marketplace.
In the past little while we've seen the reaching of several different agreements in principle and memorandums of understanding, which I think will have the great potential to really expand our markets for our products, and quite significantly in some cases. I want to get the sense from you, because I really think these alternatives and these options will make a really big difference for the bottom line for many of our farm families in Canada. I'm wondering if you can explain how the creation of this Market Access Secretariat will be used by our government to build on the recent successes that we've seen in gaining access in different overseas markets such as India and Hong Kong. Because certainly we need to try to reduce our dependence on the United States as a market. We need to open up new access. So obviously I'm curious to hear how you would specifically see this Market Access Secretariat used as a tool to expand our access in this and some other very promising markets.