Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon, committee members.
Amnesty International appreciates this opportunity to be here and share some views and recommendations with respect to the TPP. Clearly I'm not here on behalf of Amnesty International because we are an organization that is focused on trade or trade policy or trade priorities. We don't have expertise or views on those issues. We have clearly very solid global expertise with respect to human rights and a growing body of work that looks at the relationship between human rights and trade, trade policy, business practices. That will be the area of my focus today.
When we turn our mind to something like the TPP, obviously we begin by thinking about the countries that are involved or potentially involved, a list, which of course with the TPP, continues to grow. In addition to the original four, now eight others are actively negotiating, and to our knowledge we have at least 10 others who have varying degrees of official or likely interest in becoming involved in the TPP. Amnesty International has varying degrees of concern with respect to human rights protection in every single one of those 22 countries.
I want to start my remarks by briefly highlighting some of those concerns in four of the countries, not because they're the worst or any other particular reason. In many respects these are countries where Amnesty has focused on some connections or implications with or for Canadians.