Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to the minister and welcome to our negotiators. It's a real pleasure to have you here today. I'm going to be sharing my time with Mr. Cannan, so I'm going to be brief. I do want to drill down into one point and I think it's important to note it.
I've been a member of Parliament for 14 years. We seldom have a minister ask to come to committee about anything. You broke the all-time record held by your former colleague, Minister Day, for coming to committee the quickest I've ever seen a minister come to a committee. For that, on behalf of the committee, I'm going to thank you.
It's nice to hear the NDP say they're going to support this CETA, that it's in the best interests of Canada.
I appreciate, Minister, that you came into Atlantic Canada, that you talked to the people on the ground and the message you received from them is much different from the message we get from the opposition critics.
I know Mr. Cannan has a number of questions he wants to ask, so I'm going to share the limited time with him.