Thank you to all the witnesses for being here early after, hopefully, a great holiday weekend for everyone.
I'm going to start my comments with Mr. Lavoie. I know you focused on three areas, but I also noticed the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters in their post budget comments did talk about the preferential tariffs. I quote: “The government's decision to modernize this foreign aid program by removing some countries from the GPT list is a good decision...”.
It's been 39 years since we've updated it. It was meant to help developing countries like Hong Kong and Singapore. We were giving them preferential tariffs while their per capita GDPs were higher than Canada. The solution is what the government is doing, trying to negotiate free trade agreements with countries around the world so that we will not only drop our tariffs, but they drop their tariffs as well.
I guess I'd like to have you expand on those comments. As the countries that have been removed from the GPT list are developing countries, how do you see their removal as facilitating free trade agreements?