That's a confrontation I can't face....
Anyway, thank you very much for inviting us today. We're delighted to be back with the committee. I haven't had the opportunity of meeting with you before. My colleague Jason Langrish has, on several occasions, and I'm particularly pleased that he's here with me because he knows all about it. I'm merely decorative.
I do want to say, however, that the negotiations have gone forward very well. We've made great progress over the past year and a half. The support of the government has been essential in that respect, and we welcome that continuing commitment.
We began our interest in Canada-Europe with the recognition that the traditional route Canada has followed in seeking rules-based trade liberalization, that is to say, the GATT and, more recently, the World Trade Organization, no longer offers the promise that it once did. We have in fact been disappointed, as I'm sure you have been, by the failure of the Doha Round, which is now dead. The multilateral route that we had already to a degree abandoned when we in Canada sought a bilateral agreement with the United States--NAFTA--is no longer a promising route to trade liberalization.
For our part, and indeed, for my part, if I may be self-centred for a moment, we sought an agreement with the European Union as the most promising route to further diversification in Canada's trade relations. That, for reasons we could go into, Brussels did not welcome. It took us a good long time to induce Brussels to contemplate an agreement with, one, a developed country, as the European Union had no agreements with a developed country, and two, they had no agreement with a federation, which of course raises immediately the question of subnational government regulation.
Finally Brussels did agree, a couple of years ago, and the Canadian government, for its part, energetically assumed the negotiation. It did so and we did so in the Canada Europe Roundtable because of our conviction that Canada needs to diversify its trade relations. Canada, of course, as all of you know better than I do, is a country that depends so heavily on its exports that it would never be advisable to be quite so dependent on a single market as we became on the market of the United States.
Europe, as I said, responded eventually, and we then became engaged in a negotiation that is far more comprehensive and far-reaching than anything Canada has embarked upon before. This is partly because, as I said earlier, the internal barriers to trade that exist in all countries are more pronounced today than they have been in the past, and it's possible that the free trade agreement with Europe, the comprehensive economic and trade agreement—I date myself by still calling it a “free trade agreement”—will provide a way in which we can escape from our self-imposed trade barriers internally.
Trade, after all, has moved from the borders. It's no longer a question of tariffs at the borders. Tariffs are not really any part of this agreement. They've been dealt with at GATT, and the WTO has essentially removed tariffs, or reduced them, with a few exceptions, to a point where they no longer have any meaning. But internal barriers to trade, that is to say, for example, interprovincial trade barriers, or provincial government regulation, have become over the years the much more prominent obstacle.
For my part, I welcome--as do we and the trans-Atlantic organization we represent--the removal of those barriers, which will necessarily flow from the agreement now contemplated.
I think that's all I want to say, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for inviting me today. I brought the brains of the outfit with me, so he can answer all your questions after Jean-Michel goes forward.