International Trade committee  I would say that generally, for us, it has worked fairly well in Japan. Are there differences in regulation? Yes, there are. There's no doubting that Canada has the most conservative regulatory regime, in regard to capital requirements, of anybody in the world, and it has the m

International Trade committee  We're number one in Canada. We are the largest.

International Trade committee  It's not too bad a position to be in. But this year is our 125th anniversary for Manulife. Our first president was Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, actually, when he was the prime minister.

International Trade committee  I thought you'd like that. Our first foray outside of Canada and into Asia was in 1897 in Shanghai and Hong Kong. We've always seen that the future for us has to be outside of Canada. Canada is a great country, but it's a small country. So we've always had to go other places.

International Trade committee  To be honest with you, at the moment there is no Japanese life insurance company in Canada. We're not overly concerned. As long as everyone has to play by the same rules, come on in.

International Trade committee  Yes, when we came back in the 1990s.

International Trade committee  That’s absolutely correct.

International Trade committee  That’s correct.

International Trade committee  Yes, Japan is a good place for access to the Asian region, because it is a well-developed democracy with a good legal system. So it would be perfect for that.

International Trade committee  Mr. Hiebert, I would say the issue for us is not so much who owns it as much as how it's allowed to operate in the marketplace in that it has special privileges that we don't have. Under the new act, they'll be allowed—this is a simple one, and I'll go back to it again—to offer

International Trade committee  We have something similar to that in NAFTA and so on. It's trying to replicate that. Under a WTO sort of arrangement, a private company would have to go to its own national government first, convince its national government first that they want to take on the issue, then they go

International Trade committee  I have nothing to add. Thank you.

International Trade committee  I'll make one or two comments, then give it to Janice. I think we'd be in favour of an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism to be worked into this agreement. If we had an issue, it would allow an insurer like Manulife to go directly to the Japanese government to say that

International Trade committee  We've had success in Japan, since we went back in the 1990s, because we purchased a company to get back into Japan. It had a fairly good share of the market and an interesting product. Our management of it has gone well. We've had good management and good partnerships there. On

International Trade committee  Yes.