I don't claim to be a real veteran of these negotiations, but I have been over to Geneva, and most recently to Davos, and I've had a lot of bilateral discussions with different countries that often share our interests on sensitive products, and sometimes don't. But all those discussions convince me, as Mr. Emerson has already mentioned, that for us not to be engaged during the give and take of negotiations—
What I didn't realize when I first got involved in this is that a lot of these negotiations take place in myriad ways. They take place in formal rooms like this. There are groups of 10; there are groups of 20; there's the Cairns Group; there's G-10, G-20. There are groups of developing countries. There's the EFTA group. On and on it goes. The more of those you can get into, both formally and informally, the better chance you have of influencing the outcome.
So you can go to the final wrap-up, and go to the green room, and I was there with Minister Emerson last July, I guess it was—You can go to the green room and say let's see what everybody's got for us, and this is where we ended up, or—and I think this is preferable—you say we engaged at every step of the way and at every forum we could, large and small, formal and informal, putting forward aggressive ideas to protect Canadian interests.
I think we're very fortunate—I can say this publicly—to have people like John Gero and Steve Verheul. I've talked to people internationally who say that we have some of the best negotiators in the world on our team. So the more they can engage, the better it is for Canada.