The question is a bit difficult, because you have to have trade agreements. I'm a great believer in multilateral trade agreements, as opposed to RTAs, as they're called, bilateral trade agreements. But the latter have become necessary because of the failure or slow-down in completing the Doha round of negotiations on trade.
Still, if you have a major trading partner and that major trading partner is encouraged to make its best efforts, for example, to clean up its corruption, tax, human rights, or labour laws, you can incorporate these conditions into the trade agreements.
We're venturing a bit afield here. We have the multinational enterprise guidelines at the OECD, and these are being more and more incorporated into trade agreements. The guidelines essentially require corporations to behave as good citizens of whatever country they are operating in. That's whether it's a Canadian company or an American company or whatever, and there's a system of sanctions and reporting. You're looking for transparency in their activities in these countries. But I think you have to be cautious about mixing the two.
We know there's a lot of corruption in some of the major economies of the world. Now, are you going to not sign a trade agreement with them because of that? That's a judgment the government has to make. I would not be in a position to second-guess what the government would do, but you have to be realistic about these issues.
That's why I'm so keen on the OECD's getting Russia at the table. Russia has a lot of internal problems. I tried to get Russia into the OECD, because when Russia's at the OECD, sitting at the table like this with other countries and people are pointing their fingers at them, they are much more apt to be moved to make some changes. You get things changed by engaging them rather than isolating them.
I'm not very enthusiastic about isolating countries or saying that we're not going to trade with them. I'd rather have them at the table and be able to constructively criticize their domestic policies. And that's what the OECD is very good at.