Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
My comments will be very brief and, in some respects, impressionistic. It's worth noting that the EFTA with which we're negotiating is a smaller group of countries than the one with which we started out negotiating. That may reflect how long it takes to negotiate agreements between parties that have sometimes contentious issues between them. I'm glad the negotiations have concluded, because although this is a smaller group of countries, it's a very important one, and it is a group of countries that have for one reason or another quite self-consciously decided to stay out of the European Union for their own reasons. I think that makes them also quite interesting from the point of view of Canada, which of course has a deep interest in a deeper relationship with the EU as a whole.
From the point of view of the company for which I work, which is Bombardier—I will not bore you with more background on the company than you already have—these are significant economic partners. We are established as quite important manufacturers in the rail sector in Norway and in Switzerland. We have aircraft flying in all of these countries except Liechtenstein; I assume they fly through Liechtenstein quite a bit. That presence includes Iceland, whose coast guard uses our aircraft for coastal patrol and surveillance.
So these are not unimportant economic partners, and from that point of view, too, I think we welcome this agreement, not so much because the tariff reductions that are implicit in this agreement are particularly important for our sectors--although they obviously have implications in other sectors--but because an agreement like this creates a level of confidence among investors even if the text itself is a classical tariff-oriented one.
The notion that there is such an agreement between Canada and the countries of EFTA establishes that there's a community of interest, even though it's not necessarily exactly congruent; that there is a level of confidence between the governments of these countries that allows us to work on issues when they do arise; and that investors, both Canadian in EFTA and EFTA investors in Canada, have the assurance of an intergovernmental agreement that governs the relationships and the economic sphere. Norway and Switzerland, of course, are important investors globally, including in sectors of some direct interest to the Canadian economy. So it is important from that point of view.
My last comment would be that this agreement is also to be welcomed from the point of view of the relationship with Europe more widely. We have managed to find common ground with advanced European economies in this case. That should be a help in the effort to find common ground with a much larger and much more heterogeneous European Union in the future. And to the degree that we can find common ground with that enormous trading and economic block, Canada will benefit, and I think Canadians will welcome it.
That would be the end of my introductory comments, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.