Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My compliments to our vice-chair, who is filling in capably in the absence of our regular chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your appearance here today.
As my honourable colleague on the other side mentioned, we are in a long-term study on what is going to benefit Canada and what is going to benefit Canada's industries, and this is an integral part of it. We talked last session, in the 38th Parliament, about emerging markets. We had a study on that, and talked about all of the potential in these emerging markets. I would like to get beyond that language; maybe we are just emerging with regard to realizing that there are markets out there. Russia, to me, is an opportunity more than an emerging market.
To comment on the consular closures, Mr. Cumberlege, as we've seen Canada evolve and change, and as we've seen our communications and infrastructure improve, I sense that's why we're looking at rationalizing—
What we have is a limited budget. We're trying to cut back on the excessive waste of taxpayers' money. We want to make sure we're doing it properly. So we're rationalizing some of these consular facilities around the world, but we also don't want to jeopardize the potential for companies to have the support they need. We look at EDC as being a pivotal part of that role, and we think it is an ongoing study as to what the proper position is.
You know, Toronto used to be the centre of the universe, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's now Fort McMurray. But not everybody here will agree with me on that.
So those things are changing.
To Mr. Dupont, we have an old foreign investment protection agreement, or FIPA, with Russia. Should it be updated? It's the old OECD model. Do you sense it perhaps leaves some of our Canadian companies vulnerable? We've heard about potential corruption. Do we need to update that to protect our Canadian investments?