Yes, I am going to give one minute, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Langrish, who is far more competent than I am, will give the other nine minutes, for a total of ten.
What I want to say first is thank you for your welcome and for holding this hearing today. We're on the eve of the fourth round of the negotiation of a comprehensive economic trade agreement with the European Union. We're at about the halfway point, in effect. But my association with the idea goes back a long way, not quite as far back as Lester Pearson, who proposed in 1949 that NATO be something more than a military alliance, that it be underpinned with an economic alliance.
That idea didn't fly at the time, and subsequently, as I tried in my later years as minister of trade to pursue the idea in Brussels, we didn't have much success, largely because the European Union believed, as to a degree we did, that trade enhancement and liberalization might best be pursued in the new World Trade Organization, or the GATT preceding it, rather than in regional or bilateral agreements.
I remember very well speaking with Leon Brittan about the idea, and subsequently with Pascal Lamy, and eventually with Mandelson, to push the idea of a Canada-Europe agreement.
Why did I want to push it? Well, I think the question answers itself almost, in that all trade is good for Canada, free trade is even better for Canada, and for the European Union it was an occasion to negotiate for the first time with a developed country. Europe had already completed a number of agreements with developing countries, but as I said, reserved their trade relations with developed countries for the World Trade Organization.
However, with the faltering, and now I would say the demise of the Doha Round of the WTO—most unfortunate, but I think we might as well recognize the facts—the European Union has decided that it's time to negotiate with a developed country to see whether a complex and comprehensive agreement can be successfully achieved, and also with a federation, because the European Union sees the negotiation with Canada as a template not only for relations with other developed countries or developed areas, but also as an opportunity to test a negotiating agreement with a federation, something that they will in time encounter when they turn to Australia and eventually the United States.
The business community in Canada has gotten behind this agreement 110% and are very enthusiastic about the opportunities. Canadian business has already made major investments in the European Union and clearly sees the opportunities in the time ahead for trade as well as investment.
At this point, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to turn it over to Jason Langrish and ask him to fill in some of the details.