If it happens, first of all it will be the U.S. and the most progressive economic units in Asia. It's not clear that it will not include China at some point in the future.
It will only include Japan if they are willing to talk about everything. So I don't see Canada-Japan as an alternative to TPP. We would have to do bilateral trade agreements with all the members of the TPP, which would be a double-digit number of countries, possibly including China. I don't think we have the resources to do that. It doesn't make any tactical sense to proceed that way.
As I said earlier, I don't expect huge returns from this effort with the Japanese. It will not be a free trade agreement. It will not qualify for the TPP if we behave in ways that we have in the past, insisting, as we did with the Koreans, to accept certain sectors before the negotiations even began. The Japanese, as I say....
That's one of my big questions: what do the joint study people know that we don't? You should find that out. Are there exceptions? Is there talk about exceptions? If there are, then basically as a strategic alternative to the TPP, I don't give it very high marks.