I will first go to Mr. Moffatt.
Thank you for joining us. Your various writings and analyses have been extremely useful. They have really helped us understand the issue of tariffs and the impact of government initiatives.
Minister Flaherty tried to justify the measure in his open letter published in The Globe and Mail. He put forward three main arguments. His first argument was that this was a foreign aid program. He talked about countries such as China and India—so once again, BRIC countries—which no longer need international aid. However, 72 countries still need that kind of assistance. Some countries that cannot be considered economically developed now find themselves on the list of countries that can no longer benefit from the general preferential tariff. The list includes countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Namibia.
Why have those countries been excluded even though they are still not economically developed?