Foreign Affairs committee  We meet at the discussions themselves, at the talks themselves. When I'm leading a delegation, I like to have a morning meeting every day, so—

Foreign Affairs committee  Or consult by e-mail.

Foreign Affairs committee  First off, speaking fluent diplomatese, I understand why people have trouble understanding it.

Foreign Affairs committee  The composition of the delegation is the responsibility of the minister. The minister decides who will be on the delegation, so I would ask that you ask the minister that question.

Foreign Affairs committee  We discuss with the minister what the minister's office might want, of course, to get a better understanding of the minister's instructions to us so we can better formulate our views.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have a wide variety of consultations. Before every PrepCom we actually consult quite a few groups. If anybody else wants to write to us and send us their views, we of course welcome it. But my experience has been that every minister is different. We try to serve the minister

Foreign Affairs committee  I wouldn't refer to myself in that way, no. Members of the delegation all sign a confidentiality agreement because we have to be able to speak freely. Our Canadian delegation to each of the PrepComs has worked very well. We're very pleased we get along very well. I have never s

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me clarify. There is no distinction between civilian and military firearms. As for what our approach is now, rather than focusing on firearms, we are focusing on the user. So rather than trying to make a distinction about this type or that type, which is, quite frankly, dif

Foreign Affairs committee  I will turn it over to my friend here, who knows much more than I do.

Foreign Affairs committee  First, let me point out that I'm not a lawyer, so if in a legal discussion I get it wrong, I apologize. But as our lawyers have explained it to me, by putting this text in the preamble...the preamble starts to give a defining character to the whole text. Once you get past the pre

Foreign Affairs committee  We report fully consistent with national and international laws. If you want the change in the national laws to have us report more, we'll abide by Parliament's decision.

Foreign Affairs committee  The language you're referring to refers to the internal trade, the domestic trade, and it has been very clear from the very beginning that the ATT is about the international transfer. It does not touch in any way domestic transfer or domestic ownership issues. What we're proposin

Foreign Affairs committee  Certainly, many of our allies understand that the purpose of the ATT is to target bad people—let's just say, very generally, terrorists, criminals, and human rights violators—and there has always been the implicit understanding that, look, this is not meant to target legitimate,

Foreign Affairs committee  No. Initially it was identified by Italy and Japan, which felt that this was important to them as well. We were just more active in exploring options to achieve this goal.

Foreign Affairs committee  I hope you're not mistaking goals with approaches, because the goal of focusing the treaty on impeding the trade to terrorists, criminals, and human rights violators has been generally accepted and generally agreed on. It is about how that approach is to be achieved. The simple f