International Trade committee  There's a very vibrant industry in Quebec, particularly in the Lac Saint-Jean area. They have certainly been successful in growing that industry. For the most part, we're not doing any further processing. That is done by our customers. They're putting it into a whole variety of products.

International Trade committee  I think the major existing markets we have continue to be there if TPP is not ratified, and that would include the United States. Europe, of course, is not affected by TPP, and neither is Japan. We sold the first wild blueberries in Japan 40 years ago, and we continue to sell to the same customer and other customers there, so I think that will continue.

International Trade committee  If you think about yogourt, we're an ingredient in fruit base in yogourt, so that you see blueberry yogourt. Think about all the other yogurts that are on the grocery shelf. You have strawberry, you have raspberry, you have peach, you have mango, and you have vanilla. We compete with all of those.

International Trade committee  Yes. Access to markets is critical. We know we have to be an exporting company and industry. We have reasonable access today to many markets. We do have some significant trade barriers and tariffs, which are major obstructions to access to new markets. Vietnam, for instance, would be one of those.

International Trade committee  I don't think I can give you the exact numbers. We have four plants that process wild blueberries in the Maritimes and two in Maine. We would probably employ, on the processing side, maybe 1,000 people, and more seasonally. On the harvest side, of course, there is a lot of effort during the harvest season and in the growing season as well, and there are probably at least as many again.

International Trade committee  When we talk about process, we're talking about having cleaned and frozen them. Generally they're packed into a 30-pound box. That would be the format for most of the exports. When we talk about process, it's cleaned and sorted. We go through a lot of those kinds of processes to make sure the quality is perfect so that when it arrives in the customer's premises, it's ready to put into whatever product they're ready to use.

International Trade committee  For our industry, I think trade is critical. We cannot survive on the domestic market, so we start with that. From a world perspective, this is where wild blueberries are produced, so we have to have access to markets. I think that the broader the access, the better. I know that the same applies to cultivated blueberries in British Columbia.

International Trade committee  We're innovating all the time on the production end. We're funding research into better growing techniques, so that's ongoing. That's been extremely beneficial to the growers. We're looking at research on how to improve productivity within our factories, so that's continuous. In terms of market development, we do that as a company, and we also do that through the industry trade organization, so that's ongoing, too.

International Trade committee  Yes. This is a precision sprayer that we developed along with the agricultural college, the Dalhousie agricultural faculty. It's using cameras on the sprayer to identify the different plants in the fields. Some of them, of course, are blueberry plants, but others may be weeds and less desirable.

International Trade committee  Thank you. I need two seconds. The specific opportunities we see are reduction of tariffs in Japan. We are already in Japan, but reducing tariffs will enable us to be more competitive. Vietnam will be the other one in the longer term. We see it as a market that with a 30% duty is going to be very hard to access, but if we can have that duty reduced or eliminated, that will help.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to talk to the committee. I've distributed a couple of pages of notes. As you've already mentioned, there are 800 million people involved in the TPP, and I think $29 trillion of GDP and $31 billion of Canadian agricultural exports, so those are very important numbers.