I guess this gets at the life cycle of a trade negotiation.
We usually begin—just about always—with what we call “exploratory” discussions, which in this case were undertaken over the last year, more or less. Those were launched by Minister Ng and her previous Ecuadorean counterpart about a year ago—a little more. That involves a series of meetings between all the different expert-level groups that compose a free trade agreement negotiation, usually presenting past models and discussing ongoing policy reviews and policy thinking to arrive at a common expectation about whether it's an appropriate partner to proceed with.
That's when we proceed towards a decision regarding whether to proceed with a launch of negotiations. On the parliamentary side, that includes the 90-day notification of intent and the forthcoming publication of negotiating objectives for Parliament to react to before we commence the negotiations, typically with what we call a “first round”. A round is typically a one-week sort of conference—you could see it that way—where all the negotiating teams meet, whether virtually, hybrid or in person, in what would be 12 to 14 concurrent meeting rooms.