Mr. Speaker, I would say to my colleague that I heard the point raised by the NDP member. He was contrasting the need for diplomacy in general and the fact that we enter into bilateral agreements. From what I understand, in terms of diplomatic efforts, Canada or any country that must come to an agreement with other countries must do so in a very general context.
Diplomacy means that we can talk to more than one country at the same time and come to an agreement with them all. What he was pointing out is that entering into bilateral agreements sometimes perhaps creates—and I did say perhaps—some difficulties with a third country. In fact, we may sign an agreement with a country that is in conflict with another country with which we would like to sign a separate diplomatic agreement. That perhaps undermines—again, I said perhaps—some diplomatic efforts when the government focuses on entering into bilateral agreements even though multilateral agreements are probably more suited to diplomatic efforts.