International Trade committee  I can comment only on what we have in Canada. We do have an indigenous working group that we consult with throughout our FTA process, and we will continue to do that. I understood the question about Ecuador.

International Trade committee  If I could just add to that as well, speaking about infrastructure, government procurement is the other piece of that. I think that's another important chapter for us, broad-based but certainly within this FTA, to make sure that there are meaningful market access commitments and

International Trade committee  Thank you for your question. If I understood correctly, you'd like to understand how many jobs were created based on the number of exports. Did I understand your question correctly?

International Trade committee  Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate that. Our economic model, to the best of my knowledge, does not necessarily equate jobs created with numbers of new exports. Opportunities to access new markets certainly create more production and more exports. Our agriculture syst

International Trade committee  I don't know about topping, but certainly, I think we have an opportunity to increase our exports. Again, just to go over what I said, where we stand to benefit the most is where we pay the most duty, and that's certainly on goods like wheat and lentils. As my colleague mentione

International Trade committee  That's a good question. I'm not aware of all the measures in place for the export of LNG. You have to be able to process it to transport it. There are no pipelines between Canada and Ecuador. So it would have to be transported by ships. I'm not aware of a plant in place that wo

International Trade committee  I think it's an important element of an economic model to consider the opportunity costs. I'm just not sure if ours does that. I'm not saying it does or it doesn't; I don't know. I would have to check with our chief economist's office to answer your question more fully. I'm hap

International Trade committee  I think it absolutely can. It's one of the areas that certainly we see through our experience and when we see what happens with an FTA after x number of years being in place. You establish your linkages with companies, whether it's enhanced supply chains or whether it's finished

International Trade committee  That's an excellent question, and I think it's one that our ambassador would be best placed to answer when he's online.

International Trade committee  As part of our discussions with Ecuador, we are looking at a comprehensive environment chapter. Whether Ecuador is interested in discussions about that, I'm not aware. However, given the fact that we are in preliminary discussions with Ecuador about launching an FTA, I'm not sure

International Trade committee  Certainly, mining is number one, as you know. Others, I'm not....

International Trade committee  There are a couple of pieces on that. Thank you for that information. We're just at preliminary discussions with Ecuador. We haven't delved into where our interests lie with specific products as we study their economy and what their dutiable exports are—that's from our assessmen

International Trade committee  I guess it depends on the kind of oil that's coming in and what it's used for. Again, if it's coming in at no duty.... The MFN duty rate on that is zero. It could come from anywhere, whether it's Ecuador, the United States or....

International Trade committee  I think, absolutely, that is a key priority for the government and for us in our FTA negotiations. What we have seen, starting from a broad base, is that indigenous-based companies certainly have opportunities similar to the opportunities that other Canadian companies have. Howev

International Trade committee  I can give you a dollar value of our imports. In fact, wheat is our top duty bill, export, into Ecuador's market and we sent an average, over the time period from 2019 to 2022, of about $261 million worth of exports.