Right. Well, I guess there are two issues here. There's the issue of the relationships we have with other TPP partners, and concerns they would have about having a single country just simply taking the text, and, let's say, throwing it up on the Internet, which we assume, quite rightly, is a non-starter.
We joined this TPP late, and as has been widely reported, we were forced to accept a number of conditions as part of that. Perhaps one of them was the level of secrecy that's associated with this agreement. But I would submit that Canada ought to be publicly on the record pushing the various other partners. I suspect, at least from my experience within ACTA,that there are some other TPP members that were similarly supportive of greater transparency, pushing to make the text, officially and in a draft version, available as quickly as possible, and I think that's in the interests of all negotiating parties.
In terms of what takes place domestically in the establishment of essentially a two-tiered approach, from my perspective that has to stop. That's not to say that you can't have discussions with various industry groups. Certainly, where it's a conversation, where the industry group is providing them with information about their concerns, that doesn't necessitate the need for confidentiality or an NDA. You need a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement only when you're providing information back to those groups. If they're providing that level of information back to those groups, frankly, I would submit that that information ought to be made publicly available to all.