Thank you very much.
I'm very happy to have the opportunity to respond to the question.
I currently oversee 26 Canadian embassies and high commissions in the Americas. Our economic footprint in the region is a lot about investment and exploitive industries as well, where the CSR issues are front and centre. The ability of the people in our missions to engage constructively has been set out by my colleagues.
I'd like to mention one concern that can be identified about this. It's in the latter part of the draft, which deals with the Special Economic Measures Act. It seems to me there's a very unclear linkage between the discourse on corporate social responsibility and the larger intent that's written in here, to change the act to in fact address entire regime offences against human rights violations.
First of all, procedurally there's a lack of clarity about how the issues involving a Canadian corporation on the ground in a given country would then be extended to deal with the broader issues about human rights abuse, past and present, as it's currently written in this draft.
Secondly, there's a question here about whether this is an appropriate mechanism indeed to get into the classification of regimes in this region or other parts of the world.
It does seem to open up a great window. When we talked about the number of resources that would be required, I think Mr. Manuge was addressing himself largely to carrying out the corporate social responsibility elements of this. If we extend this to take into account assessment of human rights regimes in the Americas or around the world, it becomes an enormous task.