International Trade committee  I'm not sure whether you were asking specifically whether we'd be able to move forward with a free trade agreement with Brazil.

International Trade committee  Sure. First I'll touch on the point you raised about their relationship with Mercosur, because that's important to the approach we're taking with them. Mercosur is a customs union, and they will only negotiate free trade agreements as a bloc. If you're going to negotiate a free

International Trade committee  We usually try to conclude an overall agreement that touches on the investment, protection of investors, exchange of goods and services, as well as public procurement. We explore with them the possibility of doing something that deals with all these issues. But as we explained, t

International Trade committee  Thank you. We're engaging with Mercosur in good faith, with absolutely every intention of looking into the possibility of launching free trade negotiations. That said, I think a number of people have pointed out the challenges, and it's clear that there are some. We don't know y

International Trade committee  I'll give you a quick answer. I think you made an important point that the free trade agreement is really one option in a very large tool kit. We've got a lot of other things going on. It's not by any means the only thing happening in the bilateral relationship. We try to have a

International Trade committee  I don't have a lot of statistics with me on beef imports from Brazil. I'm not sure that we have a quota system for the import of beef, so I'm not sure. But in terms of certificates, it may be more on the phytosanitary requirement side of things. I know we've had some issues with

International Trade committee  On the first question, I don't believe the U.S. has an agreement with any of the countries. They're certainly not currently in negotiations with Mercosur. Mercosur is in negotiations with the European Union and a number of other partners, but the U.S. isn't present there. In ter

International Trade committee  The decision on whether to launch an agreement is a national decision. So they would each make a national decision. Then once all four had agreed to move ahead, the Mercosur decision would essentially be made.

International Trade committee  I wasn't personally involved, but I have some history.

International Trade committee  There were a number of challenges. The interests at that time didn't align well enough for the conclusion of a negotiation. We never launched full-fledged negotiations with Mercosur. We were in discussions with them as part of the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Ameri

International Trade committee  Currently some of our key exports to Brazil are fertilizers, coal, newsprint, and gas turbines. I think you could expect to see those expand if we were able to get a comprehensive trade agreement. But it's obviously a very large market with important demand for industrial goods

International Trade committee  Let's talk about small and medium enterprises and the competitive conditions in Brazil and the Mercosur countries. If one day we had a free trade agreement, we would really like to have certain conditions for the exchange of services and access to the market for all our companies

International Trade committee  I understand your concern. It's impossible to predict with certainty, now, what type of agreement will be made. But it is in Canada's interest to establish rules about the exchange of goods and services and also about the treatment of Canadian investments, and that these conditio

International Trade committee  Just to clarify that question, were you were talking about Mercosur advancing...?

International Trade committee  Or Brazil. Yes, it's a little early to know at this point. But the purpose of our exploratory discussions is to make sure we have a very clear picture before entering into a full-fledged negotiation, because we don't want to commit all of our negotiating resources and time to a