I think the Canadian government would do better to focus on creating some strong regulations to provide more significant oversight of the overseas mining industry, rather than focusing on promoting these sorts of investment agreements, which do not have any significant mechanism to ensure further protection for the environment or for workers or affected communities. They provide an additional mechanism for the mining industry to access international tribunals in the case of disputes and a sense of greater legal stability for them to stand on, which I don't think does anything to respond to the situations in the country.
What I heard from the two witnesses who spoke on Tuesday is some ambiguity about even the extent to which it matters to them, in the context such as Panama, where things are already very much skewed in their favour in terms of legal supports for their interests, so I'm not sure. I don't see what this does to improve our engagement or to improve the response to the conflicts and to the abuses that are happening at the hands of the Canadian mining industry in a country like Panama.