Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Clark, and thank you, Mr. Sinclair, for coming here today.
Mr. Clark, I haven't read the material Ms. Guergis takes such objection to, but I'm sure it's well worth reading, so I hope to be on your e-mail list in future.
Mr. Sinclair, I appreciate your being here today because I've read some of the books you've written on this subject. You probably know more about trade policy and the WTO than virtually any other Canadian I can think of, so we appreciate your being here today.
I'd like to direct my questions to Mr. Sinclair first, because the previous witnesses at the meeting from 3:30 to 4:30 seemed quite confident that the exclusion on government authority of services such as health care and education was satisfactory, to make sure there was no negative impact on those service sectors. From your opening comments, my sense was that you have some very broad concerns about how the service sector is being negotiated. So I wanted to get a sense from you of the implications to the service sector.
Second, you referred very specifically to two examples: one, the issue of health insurance and auto insurance under GATS, that existing provinces might be excluded, but if the voters, the citizens, of Prince Edward Island decided they wanted to have an auto insurance plan from the public sector, they might not be able to. I'd like to know the concrete implications of that. Does it mean ongoing litigation and millions of dollars for citizens to have the right to public auto insurance, or does it mean the WTO would say because we have made this agreement, no, you can't do that, the citizens can't have public auto insurance?
You also mentioned telecommunications and doing away with the majority Canadian ownership we have in telecommunications. What are the implications there? Again, if public policy...if Canadians decide they want to have a domestically owned sector, is it litigation that results from that, which costs Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars, or is it a question of it simply not being allowed?
I'd like to know the implications of that.