No, I don't see that as a problem, and I'll tell you why. I think that to Mr. Obama and to the union movement to whom he is speaking—this is a domestic message for Mr. Obama—NAFTA is a word you use to talk about broad trade and investment problems. It is not to talk about specific issues between Canada and the United States.
In fact, it really speaks more to China and India than it does to Canada and Mexico, because that's the fear, in places such as Ohio and Michigan, about the erosion of the U.S. industrial base. NAFTA is taken as a symbol, and what can you do about NAFTA? Then they say, “We don't like the labour and side agreements.” I would be surprised if Mr. Obama has yet received a briefing on those side agreements and what they do.
Last week I took the time to sit down and read the provisions of the Australia-U.S. agreement, which is one of the later ones, to see whether there is any material difference between the side agreements we negotiated in 1993 and what the Australians have in their new agreement, and there isn't one. There is no difference. It's a very similar kind of thing, to say that both countries agree that they will fully implement their domestic laws relating to labour and the environment, and that if there is a problem, there is a dispute settlement discussion phase permitting them to say, we think there's a problem here and could you do something about it? And that's it.
If you sit down with the United States and ask exactly what their problem with Canadian labour laws or Canadian environmental laws is, they'd have a very hard time identifying what it is, because we're talking about a symbol.
Probably, this will ultimately have to resolve in something symbolic rather than something substantive. It's not even with Mexico; it's really with China and India.