Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Ambassador. We too would congratulate you on your success; we just won't be as flowery as the parliamentary secretary over there.
We already have a free trade agreement with Colombia, and it was going to be what the government promoted as the be-all and end-all, and yet now we're talking about a Pacific Alliance. So could you tell me how this Pacific Alliance would work? As I said, an FTA, a free trade agreement, was going to be the move. We were going to increase our GDP, increase our wealth, do more trade. It hasn't happened that way in Canada. We're finding in all of our trade agreements that we're not doing as well as many governments have promised.
In fact, we've had trade deficits in 10 of the last 12 months. Our manufacturing sector is in decline in this country, so there's a problem here.
How do you see the so-called Pacific Alliance being a huge boon over and above the FTA? How would this thing work?