International Trade committee  --than EFTA had in the beginning. A number of EFTA members have joined the EU since we started negotiating with them. That was my fundamental point. These countries have their own reasons for not joining the EU, but none of those reasons precludes an agreement with us, at least

International Trade committee  I do have to put these markets into perspective, Mr. Miller, and I think I tried to answer in that spirit earlier, when Mr. Julian was asking me about this. These are not very large markets--not for what we make. They're not by any means insignificant, but they're not the enorm

International Trade committee  I meant that really as a general comment to indicate that there is a sufficient commonality of view to allow us to reach a broad agreement, even though the agreement itself is reasonably narrow in scope.

International Trade committee  I do not have any exact figures, Mr. Julian, but given the size of the markets concerned, I do not foresee any major growth in the immediate future. It is part of our European strategy and will doubtlessly have a positive impact; I could not, however, be more specific at this tim

International Trade committee  Symbolic benefits are always important in this domain. As an investor in the two regions—Canada and the EFTA countries—I believe that the agreement will offer a psychological boost. I have to say, however, that I was not invited here as an expert on the agreement. I was under the

International Trade committee  From the point of view of the manufacturing sector, I expect it will have a positive impact, but it is not a key element of our industrial strategies for the future.

International Trade committee  My answer will be shorter than that of my colleague. The benefits per se that Bombardier stands to gain are modest. However, as investors in two of the four countries involved in this agreement, we stand to gain a significant psychological boost. The agreement would give us, and

International Trade committee  I'm not sure I used the term “gateway”, and if I did, my intention was not to indicate that this is a first step towards a Canada-EU agreement. What I was driving at was a notion that we are able, in this instance, to demonstrate that there is enough of a community of interest

International Trade committee  I would probably regard the comment I made as referring more to the general economy than to the company itself. We are established in these markets as we are in the markets of the European Union more generally. So for us, this is really potentially levelling a playing field if th

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My comments will be very brief and, in some respects, impressionistic. It's worth noting that the EFTA with which we're negotiating is a smaller group of countries than the one with which we started out negotiating. That may reflect how long it

International Trade committee  Yes, I've heard of it.

International Trade committee  I go back to what I was saying about living in an imperfect world. It is ironic, at least in our case—and I'm speaking very narrowly—that for us to be able to compete in our own country, we're competing on less favourable grounds than we compete on in other countries. So I guess,

International Trade committee  I have one supplementary comment, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for allowing me 30 seconds. With respect to other countries, a great danger of not having liberalized access to markets like Korea is, as I said, that the United States does--and increasingly, it's going to do so. So what

International Trade committee  Well, we live with what is on the ground. In other words, we have established in many markets where we have to establish in order to sell. So we are local producers. In some cases that is a natural outflow of the expertise and the comparative advantage that's present in that mark

International Trade committee  I don't know about other Asian markets, but Korea is a big market. It's home to an important set of competitors--one in particular, I should say. If in global markets we are operating on rules that provide them with the same disciplines we have, then we can compete. I mean, thi