International Trade committee  Wow. Well, answering the easiest question first, on the consultative group, basically we are consulting with all segments of the industry. That's the main point. The consultative group itself has the CVMA, which includes the big three, as you know. We also have the CAW and Honda and Toyota.

International Trade committee  With respect to the auto studies, they are being finalized. As I was mentioning earlier, in the context of the broader government analyses that were done and are being refined, our intent would be to release those also when they become available sometime in the fall. The results have been shared on a confidential basis with our automotive consultative group, so they have an indication of what the magnitude is.

International Trade committee  I think there was a third question pertaining to negotiating mandates, which I obviously can't discuss in a public forum.

International Trade committee  I would prefer not to comment on the subject of my negotiating mandate. Nothing should be inferred from that.

International Trade committee  Taking the last question first, we basically started that immediately after launching the FTA negotiations in July 2005. The consultative group was struck about then; I think the first meeting was in the late summer of 2005. To your question about impact assessments, the government does a whole range of internal assessments and analyses before we enter into FTAs.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. I guess I'll take these in the order they were presented. I'll try to be as brief as possible. Are we talking to the U.S.? Definitely, we're talking to the U.S., but not in any kind of formal sense. Obviously, given the integrated nature of the Canadian and U.S. economies, we take more than a passing interest in developments in the U.S.

International Trade committee  Thank you for your questions. I will ask my colleague, Gilles Gauthier, to answer the third one which deals with negotiations about investments. Why Korea? I tried to answer this question in my presentation. Clearly, Korea is one of Canada's major partners, it ranks seventh as far as trade is concerned.

International Trade committee  I think that I just explained our point of view regarding shipbuilding. In our consultations, the representatives of the industry said that they were much more worried and concerned with the negotiations with Norway, which is a member of the European Free Trade Association, than with the negotiations with Korea.

International Trade committee  During the consultative process I alluded to, we did receive something in the order of about 100 submissions. I would say that the opposition came from the automotive sector and to some extent from the shipbuilding sector. We had broad-based support from virtually every other area of the economy.

International Trade committee  That is again a very good question. There's no doubt there are concerns on the part of the shipbuilding industry. My sense is that their primary concern is not the free trade negotiations with Korea. I think the challenges facing that sector are much broader than any one trade negotiation.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Thank you for the question. As to why the industry is opposing the measure, I understand there are going to be witnesses at the next session. That's probably a better question to put to them. Non-tariff barriers are what the industry has brought to us as being their principle concern with this initiative.

International Trade committee  Ultimately the decision on whether or not the agreement is accepted would be taken at a political level. My responsibilities are to negotiate the best agreement I can. Yes, I wouldn't close an agreement that I didn't think was in the best interests of this country and one that I didn't think was worth bringing back for ministers to consider.

International Trade committee  We actually have auto parts companies that are investing and pursuing strategic partnerships in the Korean market. Right now Korea has an 8% tariff on automotive parts, and that applies to U.S. parts as well because the U.S. does not have a free trade agreement with Korea right now, so U.S. parts makers are also facing that tariff.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Actually, we're only going to be making one presentation. I brought a big group to help me with the tough questions, but we'll limit ourselves to the one presentation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the whole delegation, in giving us this opportunity to speak to you about the Canada-Korea initiative, for which I lead Canada's negotiating team.