Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I'm interested in following up, because a year or so ago in Argentina—and, actually, part of the discussions that were held in Paraguay—there were issues with Mercosur and its complications and complexities, which I was learning about, and which came with this South American market opportunity.
One of the things I'm wondering about is this. When we were there, we had a number of discussions with a number of Canadian-invested companies there, particularly in agriculture, mining, and oil. We talk about the complexity and the difficulty in maybe getting a free trade agreement, but we've made these very important initial steps in engaging ourselves, particularly with Brazil right now. We've made significant investments in time and resources, with the Prime Minister and the trade minister going there. It takes time to develop trade agreements. Even if we can't reach an agreement, can you talk a little bit about the benefit of just having these types of discussions happening in South America? By just having us there, does that benefit our companies already there in terms of what they might be able to accomplish?