Mr. Chairman, the question by the member for Calgary Southwest is very pertinent. We absolutely need more transparency. Too many people want to know now what is going on in WTO circles, which was not the case a few years ago. We cannot blame trade ministers of the past for not having opened this up more. The constituency for international trade ministers was very narrow. We were negotiating down tariffs on goods and it did not affect that many citizens in such a direct way.
Now that citizens want in, I believe this is an opportunity to open the books and have more transparency. We should be sharing more information. I am very pleased that the draft ministerial, which has not been officially released, is at least now public and people know the 45 paragraphs that will be negotiated in Doha. It is public and we can receive contributions from Canadian citizens.
My department has a website as well which is open precisely for Canadians to tell us what they think on every angle of that. We pay a lot of attention to what citizens tell us.
I and members of my team have spent a lot of time in the last few months meeting with special interest groups along with business groups to look into the impact on the environment and labour. We have had better dialogue in the last few years than we ever had before.
I believe the progress made at the free trade area of the Americas and at the Buenos Aires meeting where we released the draft text of the negotiations, has been an extraordinary development on that front.