Thank you very much.
Reading the information here, I'm really astounded that this was signed on December 2006, when Canada became the 155th country.
I come from a manufacturing background, and I am quite conversant with importing, not so much in the exporting, but the companies I dealt with did considerable exporting too. I fully realize that for companies like Gildan, that are setting up working factories and plants in Haiti, that is a huge risk. What are the risks that can befall them? One of the largest risks of course is to lose their investment and not have any mechanism for recovery. When you have large capital costs on buildings, that is a considerable loss. I would think that would restrict some companies from wanting to go to the unknowns of international investing.
So I'm not sure you can ask what the hesitancy was, to be the 155th country in the world to recognize the benefit of this. Myself, and yourself, representing businesses and corporations...and we just talked about softwood lumber. We talked about Research In Motion. There are probably tens, dozens, maybe hundreds of other initiatives that might have been impacted, that might have been helped in their resolving, by being a signator to this earlier.
Can you comment on what on earth the reasoning would have been by the past government to be so hesitant to sign something that, in my humble opinion, is so obviously of benefit to not only Canadian businesses doing this investment and doing this work in foreign countries but also the number of businesses who were prevented from going into investment in other countries? How much did this hold our business communities back?