Thank you for that question.
It's very important, not just for people who believe in the values of the Council of Canadians, but this is a process that makes our trade agreements better. We can all agree that the more people are involved, and the more democratic and transparent our process is, the better our agreements will be.
Within the U.S. process, we saw a process where Congress was very involved from the very beginning, from the negotiating mandate, to being consulted during the negotiation process, having the negotiating texts, having economic studies on time and having hearings with civil society and other participants. That resulted in a much richer debate, not just during this NAFTA process, but even during the TPP process.
This is a common-sense approach on how we can do better, and this approach is not just in the United States; it's within Europe. When we started CETA, they had done economic impact studies right from the beginning. They had planned a negotiating round with civil society. They had gone in and had several points where the EU Parliament and the EU council were involved with the agreement. There were times when the negotiating texts were made public.
I think those processes would make Canada have a much more balanced and better process, because then we would be able to actually evaluate it: How is this agreement actually helping us? Are our exports going lower as a result of this trade agreement? Is it actually benefiting us? I think those questions would give us a lot more rigour and a lot more democracy in how we approach trade and would make all Canadians feel more a part of the trade process.