Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here.
Minister, I want to compliment you. It's nice to see your enthusiasm and your passion for the job. It really shows in how you go about conducting yourself in the work you do, and I definitely hear that in talking to the business community and to people who have worked with you. I'd like to compliment you on that and wish you to keep it up, because you're doing a great job.
One thing that I think this committee has been lucky about was to be able to go to Peru—not as a committee but through ParlAmericas—where we toured a Canadian gold mine and saw exactly how they operate in the field. We learned about some of the issues around Peru and some of the human rights and growth issues they're facing.
What really was unfortunate was that this committee wanted to do a study on the Pacific Alliance and wanted to travel to the Pacific Alliance countries, and because of partisan NDP games in the House, they basically.... I'm not sure if it's because of the things that were going on in the House or in fact that they didn't want to hear the evidence of things that are happening in countries like Colombia because of trade agreements, but of course we couldn't travel.
I wonder if you could give us an overview of the Pacific Alliance, of exactly how we're interacting there and just what it means for the region, and why we need to be engaged, or, for sure, at least be at the table observing.