Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks for coming here today.
Many of your recommendations are things that we can all support, primarily because Canada needs to have a different trade strategy. The one we have now hasn't worked demonstrably, part of the problem being that we've put all our eggs in one basket, and that's the American market. When 86% of our exports are dependent on going to one market, we have the kinds of vulnerabilities that lead to concession and capitulation, such as we saw with the softwood lumber sellout. Obviously we need to diversify our markets. Everyone around the table could agree to that. We certainly need to put a lot more emphasis on South America and Central America.
What is happening in South America, as you are well aware, is that there is a rethinking of trade agreements and how to approach them as a country, how to ensure that the benefits of trade actually go to the entire population rather than the very narrow fringe of the wealthy. That was a major issue in the American mid-term elections. We saw that the Republicans, who have a very limited, superficial approach to trade, were largely defeated by Democrats, who were pushing an approach to trade that was much fairer. In South America, as you know, there is a whole host of social democratic governments that are approaching the issue of trade hand in hand with social policy and looking at the whole issue of social-labour-environmental standards as part and parcel of how trade agreements should be structured.
We had a hearing with some social democratic countries earlier this week like Norway and Iceland, which have also succeeded in doing that. We had the ambassador of Chile here, who was also very strong in emphasizing that element.
My first question is this. Because South America has very clearly taken a movement toward social democracy, toward trade agreements that enhance and bring up the population as a whole, does that not mean that Canada should be shifting the way we structure trade agreements and what we should be looking at when we talk about trade agreements, so that with a country like Brazil, for example, we should be looking at social standards and labour standards and environmental standards as part and parcel of what is discussed around the trade table?