Thank you, Mr. Chair.
From my perspective, this is quite a timely report. A couple of weeks ago I was down in Bogotá and Cali. I have a sister-in-law from Cali, so I was down there on some family business. I've been there before, and it's an absolutely beautiful and spectacular country. We drove an hour outside of Cali in the countryside.
I think the thing that would surprise a lot of people who haven't been there is how secure it is. I didn't see a single police officer, with the exception of a couple of highway cops checking for speeders, as they would in Saskatoon, and I only saw one soldier the whole way. The public image of the country and the reality on the ground are quite different.
I want to follow up on something Mr. Plunkett spoke to, and Mr. Cannis was going this way in some of his earlier questioning: Canada's advantage in ratifying the treaty earlier, relative to the EU and the United States.
I was wondering, Mr. Plunkett, if you and perhaps other witnesses could elaborate in more detail on the advantages Canadian businesses would get if we went earlier. Could you give some specific examples, such as the auto industry--where apparently tariffs in Colombia are dropping 35%--or agriculture and so on?
What are our advantages--speaking very specifically--by getting this done sooner?