Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses.
It's been a pretty wide-ranging discussion on this topic both from our witnesses here, Mr. Chairman, and our former witnesses. There are a couple of issues I'm trying to drill down into.
Mr. Dade, you made a couple of comments that I want to pick up on. One of them, certainly, is the fact that perhaps there hasn't been a lot of trade critics and analysts writing about this agreement in English, and I think that's unfortunate.
I go back to the basics on this potential agreement. Every time at every meeting we listen to the same criticisms from the opposition, but we still end up the seventh, eighth or ninth, according to which statistics you use, trading bloc in the world, which is significant. The fact that you mentioned that the Prime Minister was at the first meeting in 2007 is significant. That opens doors and provides opportunities for Canadian businesses.
Frankly, I reject the statement and quite honestly find it a bit xenophobic that somehow these countries have lower standards than Canada has. We quite legitimately heard from the witnesses that the standards actually are as high or higher. Application and enforcement of those standards is the problem. I see us as helping partners to obtain a higher level or aspire to their own laws perhaps rather than our sinking to a lower level, so I really don't understand that philosophy or mindset.
There are a couple of issues here. I think it's been rightly analyzed that this is really about seeking greater trade with Asia, an area in which we have a potential to partner. There are a couple of criticisms. One of them was that we already have bilateral agreements, so what's the advantage of the multilateral agreement? The other criticism was on standards, that somehow on the environment, on labour, and on human rights, we're going to lose our standards. Another one was on immigration and visas. Without question, where are we setting ourselves up here? Are we simply going to isolate ourselves and become isolationists?
I guess the other criticism was that somehow this hurts our position with Brazil. If you look at our record with Brazil, we've moved forward. We finally settled, quite frankly, the Bombardier dispute that went on forever and ever and hurt our position with Brazil. We've opened up. I think we are accepting 10,000 Brazilian students presently. We're moving forward on one front with Brazil.
What prevents us from doing the same thing and answering those criticisms on another front with the Pacific Alliance?
It's a bit of a rant, I'm sorry.