Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Mr. Dade, for your intervention today.
In addition to your points, one of the facts that surprised me after speaking to Canadian companies that do business in both Colombia and Canada was that the labour laws in Colombia are actually more robust and rigid than are the labour laws in Canada. There is an issue around enforcement, but through HRSDC, Canada is providing funding for hundreds of enforcement officers. That's an example of economic engagement and the capacity to strengthen labour rights as part of it.
You raised another issue in mentioning Venezuela as a risk to the Andean region and particularly to Colombia, where there's such dependence on the Venezuelan market. There's another factor there, which is that FARC is increasingly based in Venezuela, and the threat to the geopolitical stability and economic stability of Colombia represented by Venezuela is very significant. I'm glad you raised that point.
The public sector union leaders in Colombia are opposed to this agreement. There are a number of private sector union leaders who are supportive of it. In Canada, the opposition is largely from the labour movement, and there's a question I ask them: although Colombia has faced a lot of challenges in terms of security, in terms of violence, in terms of rights, and we can go down the list and agree there are challenges, when you get to the bottom of it, how can a free trade agreement with the most robust labour and environmental agreements of any FTA signed anywhere in the world have the potential to make things worse?
That's where I go in a different direction. We can agree on the points in terms of the fact that there are some challenges.
Do you view the opposition to this FTA as being completely ideological, as opposed to fact-based?