Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Brian Zeiler-Kligman. As mentioned, I'm the international policy analyst with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
I will keep my remarks to simply a few comments on what the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has been doing in terms of its long-standing advocacy that Canada should ratify the ICSID convention.
Primary among these is our policy resolution process. We've had a series of policy resolutions over the years that have continually called on the federal government to ratify the ICSID convention. The most recent of these was passed at our 2007 AGM in September, in Markham, Ontario. It was passed unanimously by well over 200 local chambers of commerce, from coast to coast to coast. I have provided to the clerk, in both French and English, copies of that policy resolution, which should hopefully be distributed—if not already, then following the hearing.
As has been mentioned previously, there is a need to have our provinces and territories also implement the required legislation. In addition to our advocacy at the federal level, we have been working with our provincial and territorial chambers of commerce to inform them of the issue and also to get them to engage their own respective governments and put in process the implementation of legislation in those jurisdictions.
I will leave it at that, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.