Thank you, Chair.
And thank you for appearing before us. I want to keep on going. I want to talk about free trade agreements. They are being initiated in the western hemisphere. In Costa Rica, I think we've finished that. There is also Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and I think there are some others too.
These agreements benefit the middle class. Mr. Goldring and I went to an African country just a few months ago. We saw the spinoff, what happens when companies are allowed to move and are encouraged to sell their products and get an opportunity to move beyond their own boundaries. It grows, and it encourages people to involve themselves in the economy; it generates wealth and a spinoff in employment.
Small and medium-sized businesses obviously are the first and probably benefit the most from this. I know that on this side of the House...I think even our Liberal friends would agree for the most part that these are methods by which we can certainly grow GDP.
You mentioned Gildan. I don't want to correct you, but I don't think it's 15,000; it's 16,000 employees. Gildan is a Quebec company, and they weren't here to defend themselves, of course. Neither were the mining companies when we were told that Canada—and I was frankly just incensed when I heard the charge that Canada makes off with countries' natural resources without any concern for society. Again, we didn't have the opportunity.
We really need to set the record straight. I think one of the things we have to recognize, and I don't know how far we want to get into politics...but the very fact that the coup took place was because the country was drifting toward Hugo Chavez, that type of a regime, and the influence that he's exerting on a lot of southern.... Let's make no mistake about it. A real power struggle is taking place, and it's what we believe in as a free society; that's to have freedom of goods, what we call the unguided hand, as opposed to total government control or freedom versus totalitarianism, prosperity versus poverty. I feel very strongly about that.
I feel very strongly about free trade agreements. As I said, they don't necessarily influence me as an individual; they influence us as a nation, and they influence other nations. There's a real war going on I think throughout the globe. There's a disagreement as to what free trade does and where free trade leads.
I wonder if you could explain to us the process involved in constructing a free trade agreement and perhaps outline for us the free trade agreement with Honduras and how we go about that.