Thank you very much, Chair.
I understand the legitimate point you raised at the end of your remarks about not commenting on the specific negotiations, but I think having these discussions in committee and talking about this does empower negotiators, because it shows the Colombian authorities and the Colombian government that we're very serious about this free trade agreement and that we have specific concerns.
You gave us an overview of the primary purpose of reducing tariffs and market access and how important that is, but we on this trade committee view trade in a holistic approach. Market access is obviously very important, but so are other considerations, depending on the nature of the free trade agreement, and specifically with Colombian human rights coming up time and time again.
So I want to understand from the department's perspective what political direction you've been given or what mandate you've been given to pursue a free trade agreement with Colombia and on dealing with Colombia. But before we do that, I just want to take a more macro-level look.
In dealing with countries, Canada understands with the Doha Round discussions that are taking place that if that doesn't work, we'll have to pursue bilateral free trade agreements. In doing so, we want to essentially look at emerging markets, because as a mature market we see benefit there. On the value chain, we can generally maintain a high quality and standard of life because we can work with those emerging markets to really benefit our local industries here. So we target key emerging markets, and I believe Colombia is one of those emerging markets.
In doing so, we also recognize that we have to address human rights, labour standards, and environmental standards. We can't simply look at just the trade of goods and services. So what mandate do you have when you deal with free trade agreements? Do you have a mandate that clearly gives you authority to examine those other aspects, such as labour, human rights, and the environment, and to what extent?
You didn't mention them at any great length, and I'm not sure if that was done intentionally or you decided to focus just on the tariff reduction side of it.