Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I should be clear that because B.C. is on the Pacific Ocean and we're Canada's Pacific gateway, according to many, we've been quite keenly interested in the process leading up to the TPP. We were very much pushing for Canada to be at the table prior to the decision that we would actually be there.
It's a big deal from a Canadian point of view because of course you have the U.S. there, and you have a number of the rapidly growing Asian markets. It's going to be a more complicated process, I think, than the Canada-EU agreement, because you have countries that are much more disparate in terms of their levels of economic development and maybe their environmental and labour standards. When we're dealing with the Europeans, we have I think a somewhat more common platform.
The Canada-EU agreement is obviously much further along. Our view, I would say, is that if we can't get over the finish line with Europe, it seems to me that it would be quite difficult to envisage that Canada could successfully be part of an emerging TPP agreement. That's why, in our written testimony, we noted that concluding the Canada-EU agreement will help to set the stage, I think, for Canada to credibly be part of the TPP process. We are supportive of it. Obviously we don't have as much information on it at this point in time, but we've communicated with government officials on a number of occasions.
Our province seems very supportive of the TPP, so we are looking forward to getting more information on that. But we're full-square behind it, based on what we know today.