My point was that we're already seeing a trend in the hemisphere toward greater independence in the Latin American region. We saw this in the last OAS summit where there was a gaping divide between Canada and the U.S. on the one hand, and all of the other member states on the other.
I was very happy about the Americas strategy. It's a great initiative in general to try to increase our ties with the region. I'm just worried that this isn't going to be the best way to brand ourselves in the region as a progressive, forward-looking state that is interested in multilateralism, promoting multilateral trade initiatives and trying to bring states closer together rather than feeding into this tendency toward increased divisions.
At the same time, as I mentioned briefly, we all know that mining initiatives have tended to raise the issue of Canada's association with mining companies that have perhaps engaged in some questionable human rights or environmental practices. However that may vary across mining projects; there are different types of mining companies and so forth. That's a risk for Canada as well, as we enter into the hemisphere, so we have to be really careful. We can't just assume that because we're Canada everybody is going to love us and think we're the best country out there and that everybody is going to want to be friends with us.
We're not part of the region, so we can't come down to the region and lecture to those countries about how they should conduct themselves either. It's time to evaluate what's going on in the region and get a good sense of the complexities of the situation and not barge in with ill-thought-through initiatives.