Mr. Speaker, again the member for St. Catharines raises important questions. I am sure we could work very well together in terms of what kinds of things we need to do to get business promoted.
We have a lot of people of various ethnic origins in the country and we must utilize them. In dealing with the Asia-Pacific we have a million people of Asian descent whom we can
utilize in the process and who can be an important part of what we do.
Again to go back to globalization, the EU has the advantage of being a more sophisticated market. It basically thinks nothing of knowing three or four languages and understanding much more broadly the cultures of other people. English stands one in fairly good stead in most European countries except for the eastern bloc. That will help us deal in that market.
English is pretty important in the Asia-Pacific but Mandarin is more important. That is where we can utilize Canadians of that descent to help us.
Let us face it. In the Americas there are 34 countries in the OAS and only one of them uses French. That happens to be Haiti. All the rest use Spanish or English. We must recognize the importance of those languages and the importance of using South American Canadians in that regard. It is extremely important. We need through foreign affairs to put a lot more effort into developing and utilizing Canadian citizens of those origins.