I would like to thank you for appearing this afternoon.
You have already appeared before this committee on a number of occasions, in particular as part of its studies on the softwood lumber and Buy America issues. Had the government understood what was at stake, following your presentation on softwood lumber, we could have avoided a significant loss of jobs.
In your presentation today, you said that the Europeans were reluctant to undertake negotiations. I would have four questions.
First, should we be concerned that, during the negotiations, Canada sign on to another "fire sale" agreement, somewhat like was the case with the Buy America provisions or the softwood lumber agreement, where too many concessions were made, all because of that reluctance on the part of the Europeans?
Second, in your view, what would be needed for us to strike a good deal with the European Union, and vice versa?
Third, what should the multilateral priorities be? You did say that could be the government's priority.
Fourth, you talked about bilingual labelling. That issue had not been raised until now. We have only had three briefing sessions on the agreement. Could you give us some more details about that issue? Is this a question of adding other languages, or are you concerned that the Canadian principle of having labels in our two official languages could come under threat during the negotiations?