Let me get my timer on, Chair. My machine has just gone blank on me. I have to let it see me to turn it on.
Thank you, Ms. Bartholomew, for joining us. It's been most interesting testimony so far.
In 2012, Canada entered into a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement with China; we call it FIPA. It's been criticized as being, in key respects, non-reciprocal in favour of China. For example, there's a general right of market access by Chinese investors in Canada, but not the other way around in China, and it allows wider scope for investment screening by China than Canada. Also, it omits a long-standing Canadian reservation for performance requirements that favour indigenous peoples, and it dilutes Canada's established position on transparency in investor-state arbitration.
Your commission recently did a study, in 2020, last year, on this whole issue in the United States. Could you tell us, first of all, what you think of this kind of one-sided agreement, part of it based on historical realities in Canada-China trade prior to then? What's your view on that? What recommendations have you made and how successful have they been in getting policy changes?