International Trade committee  Again, as I said, part of how we help the economy is to work with free markets and to be part of international trade. We joined the WTO. That was one of the first things we achieved after His Majesty acceded to the throne. We tried for a long time to become members of the WTO,

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. Allow me to add something: I followed with interest your intervention either in this committee or in the House of Commons, and I appreciate how fond you are about the subject. That said, yes, they can strike. It used to be that they had to get the approval

International Trade committee  It is the ones that the labour law indicates, excluding the four groups that you mentioned, again because the law is not there yet—but they can go out and do it, and nobody is going to stop them. They'd be one of the 4,000 demonstrations that happened.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. I think that also has been covered by the first question. It's not a matter of the origin of the worker; it's the industry itself, and the number of workers. The right of association is there and does exist, but it's not applicable in an industry that has a

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for your kind words. I know we've been very close, yet, as you said, it's politics. In Jordan we understand the pace at which things are going, but we are eager for the free trade agreement to come into force. As I mentioned, I think what prompted the Arab S

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. Merci. My French is a little bit worse, so please bear with me. You referred to His Majesty as “His Majesty”, and I thank you for that. In that particular article they referred to him as “Mr. Abdullah”, so that article was not really very accurate, but I

International Trade committee  Sure, I'll work on that. It's a pleasure.

International Trade committee  Thank you.

International Trade committee  The net impact of...?

International Trade committee  Okay. So far, the volume of trade between Canada and Jordan has risen to $100 million per year. We're looking forward to increasing it. If we want to go with the ratio that was applied to the free trade agreement with the U.S.—multiplying that by four—within four or five years,

International Trade committee  After discussing all these matters, we came out with advanced status, so there is a process and there is progress.

International Trade committee  To start with what has already been achieved, our potash industry in Jordan, our national company for potash, has been opened for a strategic partner, meaning it went under the process of privatization. Our Canadian partner owns 28% of the shares of that company. That's already e

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. That's a very excellent question. To start with, the problems that we have in our region were not made yesterday. I mean, this is the story of our lives: we try as much as possible to maintain peace and security in our region and at the same time deal with d

International Trade committee  To start with the Carleton University event, I was there last evening, and it was very interesting. I wish there had been a more optimistic view than what you heard yesterday, and I assure you that at certain times in history we were very optimistic.

International Trade committee  I wasn't one of the speakers, so I'll leave that to whoever spoke. To convince you, we have to convince each other. We are committing to this as partners. My role is to shed light on what questions you might have. This is to the benefit of both our countries. I know our econom