Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I would say in beginning that in terms of her fund-raising tactics, Maude must have taken her fund-raising style from the Conservatives. They used the same tactic during the gun control debate and in many other issues. So you don't need to feel bad about that, because they set the pattern for how to raise money that way.
I would as well like to put on the record that I congratulate the Council of Canadians. I may not always agree with you on everything, for sure, but I congratulate you on going out and raising that money and doing some very important research, because we need research institutions from a different political perspective from those of the C.D. Howe Institute and the Fraser Institute. So I congratulate you on that.
I am pleased to hear the position you outlined in the beginning, that the Council of Canadians is not basically saying “full stop” to the discussion. Scott Sinclair, when he was here the other day, talked about the whole area of investment as well.
You're basically telling us to have a serious look at investment protection, and you're right. There are a few corporations out there around the world that have greater wealth than countries, and they can use the investment protection under a trade agreement to basically break a country's sovereignty, and especially local governments'. How do we, in an agreement, protect against that?