International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the committee about the Canada–Jordan Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, which implements the Canada-Jordan free trade agreement and the related agreements on the environment and labour cooperation.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I'll defer to my colleague, Mr. Bouchard, from the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, if I may.

International Trade committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'll defer to my colleague from the department, Barbara Martin, to address that question.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I'll just give a preliminary answer to that, and then again I will refer to Mr. Bouchard. The agreement was signed at the end of June 2009, as you alluded to. The agreement is not yet in force. We anticipate that it may come into force fairly soon, as I mentioned i

International Trade committee  We are very optimistic about Canada's competitive position in Jordan vis-à-vis the two main competitors, the European Union and the United States. Despite the fact that Jordan negotiated and signed FTAs with both those parties quite some years before they did with Canada, those a

International Trade committee  I'll start and ask my colleague from agriculture to finish. As I mentioned, there's a very small number of exclusions on the Jordanian side. They requested exclusion of tobacco and alcohol on the basis of health and morality reasons. All across the board, from A to Z products, t

International Trade committee  Yes. I'll start with the environment and then ask Mr. Bouchard to talk about labour.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  It's not dealt with at all. It reflects, as I said, a couple of things. One is that when we did the Gazette notice, and solicited comments and input from stakeholders before the negotiations began, there was no request from stakeholders that services be part of this deal, which w

International Trade committee  No. There are only two: one on environment and one on labour.

International Trade committee  Okay. The chapter is relatively short on environment, but you asked about the side agreement so I'll mention the high points in terms of the contents of the environment side agreement. It commits the parties to high levels of environmental protection, to improving their domesti

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  As mentioned, I think there's every prospect of that. The commercial environment has been opened up literally as wide open as it could. Perhaps my colleague from agriculture wants to comment specifically about that sector. But in terms of the commercial environment, there are tw

International Trade committee  I would come back to the chapters on rules of origin, customs procedures, and trade facilitation in the agreement. What we're doing is modernizing the commercial relationship with this agreement and creating an environment that is as user-friendly, barrier-free, and transparent a

International Trade committee  I have couple of points. First, when projections are made, from whatever source, about future trade flows and increases stemming from free trade agreements, the benefits often go beyond what's measurable in tariff reductions. The increased awareness and the overall buzz in the