International Trade committee  Certainly that's one of our aims. That's one of the service sectors that Canada is particularly competitive in internationally. We're also looking at mining services, engineering, architecture, a broad range of professional services. Our objective in any FTA negotiation is to tak

International Trade committee  Certainly they would all be on the table in the negotiations.

International Trade committee  Just one final word on that would be in terms of services. Again, we're aiming to have a services chapter, a chapter on temporary entry, for example, for professionals who need to follow the service providers; a telecommunications chapter, I think you mentioned that sector; finan

International Trade committee  Maybe it would be only to say that when Ms. Carol Nelder-Corvari and her colleagues were here last week or the week before, we had some detailed discussion about the labour and environment side agreements to the FTA, and they have their own dispute settlement and consultation mec

International Trade committee  Maybe I can just add to that a little bit, about the measures of success. What we're going for with Colombia--we do this with all of our free trade agreements--is to look for a comprehensive, ambitious FTA that creates new opportunities for Canadian businesses doing business abr

International Trade committee  When Pierre Bouchard was here last week I think he spoke about the dispute settlement mechanism for the labour side agreement. The dispute settlement mechanism for the FTA itself is a separate mechanism. There are some similarities and some differences. I'm not an expert on eithe

International Trade committee  Now we're talking about a third kind of dispute settlement, which is the investment dispute settlement. The investment dispute settlement mechanisms are a bit different, again, from the main FTA dispute settlement mechanism on the labour side agreement.

International Trade committee  I can certainly confirm that generally speaking, in markets around the world, the principal competitors of Canadian businesses tend to come from the United States.

International Trade committee  Maybe I can try to address some of that. On setting prerequisites, when Ms. Nelder-Corvari was here about a week and a half ago, she read a quote from the Prime Minister that I think addressed this question. On launching and negotiating free trade agreements and why we do it, t

International Trade committee  Was there a question about the U.S. political system? Is that what the question was?

International Trade committee  Maybe I can just confirm that there hasn't been a vote yet in Congress on whether or not to ratify the U.S. agreement with Colombia. There has been a lot of debate about it in the last week, and the rule was changed in terms of the deadline for the vote on the Colombia FTA. My un