Oh. Two minutes may make my point.
Welcome to our witnesses. I appreciate your coming back to committee.
You can see that this has been a thoroughly divisive discussion for some members of Parliament. I think most of us have tried to look at this in a positive manner and to take the positive points from it. We very much see this as a progressive agreement with a country that's moving in the right direction in a very progressive way in a part of the world where democracy and the rule of law sometimes are challenged.
But they've made great strides. President Uribe, in particular, has made great strides. To me, the coalition he's put together, when you really look at his cabinet, is a coalition from the centre, from the right, and from the left. These Colombians have one thing in common: they want a peaceful country to live in, they want the rule of law to apply, they respect the judiciary, and they want jobs and opportunity for their people. We've heard that time and time again.
To me, there's one overriding factor here that we continue to ignore. The Americans signed an agreement with Colombia. It's held up for strictly political reasons at this time. We have an opportunity here to actually get ahead of our American competitors in a very important part of the world where good things are happening.
In order to do that, we need the support of the opposition parties. I suspect that two of those parties we won't get the support of. I think we do have potential to get support from the official opposition. I respect the position they've taken on Colombia.
But we also need not just your support here at committee; quite frankly, we need your support in lobbying members of the opposition and convincing them of the merits of this agreement.
We do live in a bit of a vacuum sometimes in Ottawa. There are a lot of jobs, there are a lot of opportunities, and there are a lot of companies that would benefit from this agreement.
I think we need both of your associations to carry that torch a little bit.