Thank you very much.
There were several points that certainly I would endorse in Mr. Cannis' remarks.
First and foremost, I think this varies depending on the regions and the cultures, but based on my experience in my four years of living in the Middle East, the role that government can play, the role that agreements play, the role that meetings and personal contacts play cannot be overestimated. Unfortunately, these can be time-consuming and cumbersome things to do. But anyone who's involved in developing our business relationship with this part of the world successfully has realized that this investment can pay enormous dividends.
What would benefit our Canadian export community enormously is to have as many resources as possible, including those from our political and ministerial personnel and committees such as yours, focused on building and sustaining these relationships. It can be done through a whole variety of contacts, including, hopefully, meetings of economic groups with your committee. In no way do I underestimate the time these things take, but the payback, as I say, is considerable.
With regard to air links and the situation that Canada faces with the U.A.E., I'd be happy to expand on this further, but my perspective is perhaps unique. I have long championed increased frequency of airline service between Canada and the United Arab Emirates—very strongly so—as I would with Jordan, with Morocco, with Egypt, with Saudi Arabia. I will stop there, but I'd be happy to expand, if this were of interest to the committee.
I will say as well, as somebody who had the honour and the very sad role to represent the government and our country in Camp Mirage on a number of instances, and speaking to those of you who saw the cartoon in The Calgary Herald and in The Citizen, it certainly struck a very poignant chord on my side. There are errors of judgment on all sides here, and certainly a step forward on both sides is what is needed to put what should be a very, very special relationship between Canada and the United Arab Emirates, as one example—but Jordan obviously is another—back onto the right track.
You mentioned the role of trade commissioners and so on. There's no problem at all in positioning trade commissioners into posts where the ambassador is not resident. I think this would be a very welcome initiative, quite frankly.
As regards the old programs, such as PEMD and others, quite honestly I find that those are missed. Representing a business council that tries to accomplish as much as we can and to play a positive and constructive a role, I'll say that we are absolutely cash-strapped; our capacity to do things is extremely limited, because there's literally no money available for geographically based business associations at this time.
Thank you.