Thank you very much for that question, Mr. André.
I don't know that what you are proposing is very different from what already exists because, to my knowledge, both in Ottawa and Quebec City, as well as in some of the other provinces, parliamentary committees have been used in the past, and are used regularly, to look at issues relating to international trade negotiations.
As regards consultations with the provinces, there is no requirement to do that at this time. That is one of the things we should be trying to formalize. As I said earlier, this proved impossible in the early 1990s, as well as in the late 1990s. There is only an informal agreement in place.
However, we are talking here about a much broader question. This is really a constitutional matter. The Constitution is clear: the federal government has jurisdiction over all matters relating to international trade. There is no doubt about that. But, in many cases, the issues under negotiation in future will involve areas of shared or exclusively provincial jurisdiction. That is certainly a marked trend that will be even more evident in future.
Without a formal mechanism, Canada runs the risk of being incapable of taking a position that is truly in the national interest, since it will not have had an opportunity to properly analyze all of its interests. It is very difficult to do that when negotiations are ongoing. Once the negotiations have begun, it's a little late to start designing a tool. It is far better to do that between negotiations, when you have an opportunity to look calmly at what has been done in the past and what it would be possible to do in future. That is my suggestion. There are a number of ways of making improvements that do not involve amending the Constitution.