Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the minister on certain aspects of this agreement.
However, I would like to ask him a question as well. Does this agreement with the four European continental countries involved explicitly provide a basis for those four countries that prevents them from banning seal products from their marketplace on the basis of perceptions of the animal cruelty aspects, which other European countries are currently providing? Does this agreement provide a rules-based approach that prevents those four countries from doing so?
Would the minister, in consideration of any potentially expanded European free trade agreement with other European countries, put the marker down right now that Canada will not engage in any discussions with any other European country unless they agree immediately to put into a rules-based approach that the banning of Canadian seal products would be explicitly illegal?