Great.
To save time, a lot of questions have been put to you and answered briefly. I think it's important, as I close, to give you a message as well. We had President Uribe here, as you know. We had Minister Adriana Mejia here as well, who very kindly gave us some statistics of the great progress that has been made. To save time, I'm not going to go into the exact numbers, but we know they've been continuously in a decline, and we commend you for that.
You said, look, we're not perfect; it's a low number. We say the same thing in Canada. One climb is one too many. We're always working to eliminate that, and I commend you. You can take solace in one thing. You talked about learning from Canada. Let me tell you, sir, we're not perfect here in Canada either, but we're working toward that perfection.
What I do want to tell you, in closing, is that on average, each and every one of us here represents about 100,000 to 120,000 constituents. At least from my point of view, and others I've canvassed, we are saying we want to do this deal for various reasons. Yes, we want access for Canadian goods and services, to create opportunities for Canada, but to save time, we want to be able to be partners with you to help you and your country get to where you really want to be--a good, strong, peaceful society. The one thing that impressed me, Minister, if I may say--and I will not stop saying this--was the statistic you gave me today that you've got 200,000 jobs in your industry, of which 60% are women who otherwise would not have an opportunity to make a decent living. I commend you for that. On that alone, we have an obligation to thank Prime Minister Chrétien, who commenced this dialogue.
In closing, was it Chrétien that started before the U.S., or was it the U.S. that started the negotiations?