Thank you, Mr. Chair.
For the first question, yes, the right of collective bargaining is clearly laid out in Colombian law and, on top of that, Colombia has ratified the relevant ILO conventions with regard to that.
In Colombia, are labour rights respected? Colombia is a developing country. It is making its best effort to respect labour rights. We believe the government is making its best effort. We are supporting them and, through the labour agreement, they've certainly committed to a very high standard against which they can be evaluated.
With regard to the third question on how this labour agreement compares to other labour provisions negotiated in the context of free trade agreements previously by Canada, and by other countries with Colombia, this is, without any doubt, the most comprehensive labour agreement that has been negotiated in the world right now.
I'm going to make a distinction here that I think even some witnesses who appeared before this committee would not question. When I talk about comprehensive, I talk about the level of obligation. On the level of obligation, nobody disputes that in the commitments that were made on the level of obligation, we went beyond what was negotiated by any other country.
We now are starting informally to see the text of what was negotiated by the European Union with Colombia. The Canadian agreement goes much further than that. It even surpasses what was negotiated with the United States.
There is some debate as to the robustness of the agreement. We think it's very robust--just as robust--but there is an argument out there in civil society over the availability of trade sanctions to ensure compliance. We have mechanisms that ensure compliance by forcing government to pay penalties and resolve the issue, which we think in many cases actually would make the agreement more robust, but we acknowledge the debate out there on this particular point.
