Transparency, as you know, has been a big issue in international arbitration.
ICSID itself has actually taken a lead, and they amended their rules in April 2006 to go farther on transparency than any of the other existing regulations. Now at ICSID it is standard to have open hearings. There are obviously some exceptions for things like confidential business information. Those are obvious exceptions that we have in domestic law, as well.
Documents and pleadings are made publicly available. You can go on the ICSID website at any time and you will have access to all awards issued by the tribunals. ICSID has also gone a long way towards enabling what are known as amici curiae types of briefs where interested third parties would like to have a say or have something to contribute to the process. So ICSID has actually been a leader in that.
The other thing to note here is that Canada itself has been very forthcoming that this is extremely important to us, and we have built it into our model foreign investment protection and promotion agreements, or FIPAs.
We have made sure that if you are exerting a right under that FIPA, one of the things that is a given is that these will be, for example, open hearings. Documents will be publicly available, and awards will be published. We've actually taken the step before, saying that if you want to go under our FIPA and exert a right under that FIPA, here's what comes with the package: transparency.