Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses. Your Excellency, I appreciate your coming here today.
I as well would like to certainly extend our condolences to the police officers, to the aboriginal people, to everyone who lost their lives in this unfortunate incident. I appreciate your candour in coming here today to discuss it.
I have a couple of issues and questions.
It's my understanding that the way the Canada-Peru free trade agreement works on human rights and on the environment, the way the agreement is written, Peru cannot sign an agreement that actually denigrates or takes away from environmental protection or makes it weaker, or takes away from labour rights or human rights. I'd like you to enlarge upon that a little bit.
I'd also like you to explain maybe for the committee how you're attempting to mediate the conflict now, how you can bring both sides back together. I think your Peruvian government has been very proactive in attempting to bring both sides of this conflict together, to bring them to the table and try to get beyond this terrible incident and position that you're in now.