Yes. He does an excellent job, and so this will make mine easier. The excellence of our current diplomatic team on site, including in Germany, where there is a very strong mission at this time, will be of great assistance to me. The number two person in Germany—since the ambassador , Ms. Marie Gervais-Vidricaire, will be leaving her post—Ms. Jennifer May, is really very good. You know her. This will help us enormously. Mr. Costello is very effective.
What the Prime Minister is asking me to do—and I have discussed this with those two people, Ms. May and Mr. Costello—is to see how I can add to the dynamic so as to build a European approach. Our problem at this time is that we are very involved in our relationships with each country and with the European Union as the authority in Brussels, but it remains difficult to develop a European approach. Even the Europeans have trouble developing one, as you know.
This is not something we have focused on much up till now, because we had very few tools to do it, among other reasons. Now we will have the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. We are now officially strategic partners, and that is very important. Europeans have had a tendency to forget us a bit in the past, because they have a lot of problems to solve amongst themselves, and because they had a vital relationship with our neighbour to the south. Now we are officially a strategic partner, and I will have the responsibility of adding to this by devising a European approach.