Article 29(2) is on the equivalency agreement. Article 29(1) is what we are negotiating with the U.S. right now. Article 29(1) in the regulations says that if we have an equivalency agreement then we can export to the U.S. according to the agreement. Article 29(2) says that if we have an equivalency agreement with the U.S. but we don't have one with, say, Costa Rica, and the United States agrees to oversee all imports from anywhere in the world, then we would be allowed to import products from everywhere in the world. Basically, the United States is becoming the authority that will control our imports.
When the negotiations started, the rumour was that the U.S. would agree to this, which would mean we would not have many problems importing products. Our concern would have been more on what kind of agreement you can have with the United States. We know their standards are lower. There's a great fear in the organic community that we would sign anything in front of us, because that would be the only way we could import products.
The new rumour is that the United States won't agree to oversee imports from everywhere in the world into Canada. We'll know next week what kind of equivalency agreement we're going to get . Instead of delegating our import mechanisms, we are asking that article 29(2) be changed to say that Canada will unilaterally evaluate standards and use an accreditation system. This way, if we feel that they're equivalent, we can accept products on that basis. We would need it for the EU, which has a much better system than the United States. If the latest rumours are true, we will not be able to import organic products from the EU after June 30.