Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your opening comments.
Mr. Robertson, I'm going to start with you, because you have the most experience with the Canada-U.S. trade file.
One of the things you didn't mention in your opening comments was the influence of the Mexican election next year. There was a very elegant timeline created by one of our previous witnesses, Mr. Carlo Dade, from the Canada West Foundation. What I gleaned from that timeline was that the earliest possible date, if everything works out well, the agreement would be signed, but not implemented, is August 28, 2018. That would be after the Mexican election.
If you look at the current state of domestic politics in Mexico, the leading candidate there, Mr. Andrés Obrador, from the left-wing AMLO party, I don't think is too keen on this deal.
We're putting a lot of emphasis on our bilateral negotiations with the United States, but we haven't looked at the possibility of actually.... We will be entering into a trilateral negotiation, and we don't talk about Mexico so much.
My question to you is this. If Mexico decides not to sign, what will be the ramifications of that? Also, there will be congressional mid-term elections in November. There are a lot of things we don't control. No matter how good our negotiating stance is, there might be factors beyond our control, ones that we don't have any influence over. What would be the repercussions? What would be the ramifications? What do you see happening if Mexico does not sign?