I think that question is a little bit out of our remit, because none of us at this table is actually directly responsible for Latin America and the Carribean. Colleague David Morrison is the assistant deputy minister for the Americas. I was talking before, as was Alex, about the four geographic ADMs. David is responsible for the Americas, including the United States and Mexico.
Having said that, maybe I can throw out a few ideas. Hopefully David won't rap my knuckles when I get back to the office.
I think we've engaged quite heavily in Latin America and the Carribean over the last number of years. The areas you've identified—in terms of prosperity, in terms of security, in terms of projecting values, in terms of democracy promotion—have also been pursued in that region by Canada. If you look at our presence in the region, you can see it's not just in terms of government but that there is also private sector engagement, in particular in the financial sector and in extractives. I think outside of Canada, our largest presence in the world from an extractives perspective is in Latin America, in Peru and countries like that.
We have very strong relationships with key countries in the region. There's Colombia and its free trade agreement; it's a country of focus for our development. There's Peru, and there's an emerging relationship with Brazil. On the development side, we have a memorandum of understanding with Brazil on development assistance.
There's a lot happening right across the board. I think it's for the government to decide how they want to build on that and how they want to engage regionally through the OAS, as well as bilaterally through various countries and what have you.
Falling back on the mantra we've had, we'll see where the government wants to go at the end of the day. The mandate letters are very ambitious. I think we'll be playing in a lot of different places, so we'll have to see.