Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to share my time with my colleague, Wai Young.
I want to welcome our negotiating team today. It's always a pleasure to have you here.
I don't know where Mr. Easter is getting all his facts, but it's nice to see and hear that one of the great successes of our free trade negotiations has been that ongoing dialogue with the provinces and territories, and also the fact that they are kept in the loop in these negotiations and other ongoing negotiations, such as the CETA with the European Union. The importance of this is that there are no great surprises at the end. For the record, Mr. Chairman, obviously you have to negotiate in privacy and secrecy, and then everyone has a chance to vote in a democratic way on the final results.
I would like to mention a couple of points that haven't been mentioned. I think we sometimes take it for granted, but the fact is that we have that huge market in India, with what will soon be the largest population of any country in the world. They have English as an official language—one of our official languages—which is a tremendous competitive advantage for many of our unilingual businesses in Canada. Also, there's the fact that they are concerned about food security. They can't supply the food for especially their growing middle class.
I forget the number—I'm sure, Mr. Stephenson, that you have it at the top of your head—but I think they're expanding by somewhere around 150 million people a year—some phenomenal number. They need about 9% to 11% growth just to supply that growing middle class, whereas they obviously don't have quite enough growth now. I'm going to stop there to leave some time for Ms. Young, but would you comment on that growing middle class in India and what they're going to consume?