Thank you very much, Chair.
I too want to echo the comments of the chair and thank you very much, Your Excellency, for coming here before us in committee to talk about the potential free trade agreement with Colombia.
As you know, this particular committee has come up with a study on Colombia because of, I believe, a lot of feedback that we received from grassroots, from many of my constituents and many organizations. Even when I posed a question on my website, I received the greatest number of e-mails and hits on this particular issue, which is free trade with Colombia. So it showed me that many people are watching this potential free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia and that it is top of mind to many people.
In your remarks, Your Excellency, you very much alluded to the notion of the importance of this free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. I wanted to get a clarification. You mentioned that you don't want to comment on the timing of the free trade agreement. But do you have any sense of, from your perspective, Colombia's perspective, how close you might be to signing this? We get indication from time to time that this agreement is in the final stages of being signed. Could you provide any clarification on that front?