Thank you for that.
Just to clarify a point first, Monsieur Cardin, what you said I think might be misinterpreted. Barrick is not releasing cyanide into the valley. They are treating their waste appropriately, and we wouldn't want somebody to misconstrue what was said.
Your point on multilateralism is an absolutely valid point. Canada will do better in a multilateral trading system. We do not have the power, the economic might, to negotiate the same types of agreements that the U.S. does, as we heard this morning, and the EU and other very large economies. The challenge is that a multilateral agreement requires....
We need now 147 countries to agree before we can get the next WTO agreement. We almost had a major step forward last July; unfortunately, India is said to have pulled back at the last minute and so we couldn't make progress. Now we're waiting for the U.S. and India to decide if they're willing to start the negotiations again. Canada is still very active over at the WTO, putting forward a number of interesting proposals to try to unlock the logjam. But without a strong multilateral agreement, we're not able to make progress.
Bilateral agreements can also be a mechanism to demonstrate how you can go further than a multilateral agreement, so it is an opportunity to extend trade agreements beyond what you'd get.
The bottom line is that multilateralism for Canada will always be the best mechanism, but bilateralism will always be a needed second stage, just as we have found with the Canada-U.S. agreement.