International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you and all the members of the committee for your interest in Colombia, for your patience in listening to what we have to say, and for taking note of it. We appreciate this opportunity. I'm available to come here as many times as needed to talk

International Trade committee  Not to my knowledge, sir.

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question and the opportunity to share this with you. It was actually before the U.S. We started negotiations with the U.S.... I could give you the exact moment; it was either the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2004 when we actually sat down with the U.S. and d

International Trade committee  I think development done in the right way, with social responsibility, is what leads to sustainability and to reductions of violence and improvement in the lifestyle of people in Colombia. Recently there have been two interesting events that have to do with Canadian investment in

International Trade committee  There are two things. First of all, for clarification purposes, I just reviewed the latest poll from last night. It's called La Gran Encuesta, which translates as the big poll. It says--and you can verify this on the Internet--Mockus has 38% of the intention of the vote, and he's

International Trade committee  It's La Gran Encuesta. It's an independent survey, like Gallup or any other survey of that sort. It's not from the government. Vargas has 3% and Pardo has 3%. Regarding the reporting on the progress of human rights in Canada under the FTA, this is something we have to think a

International Trade committee  I understand Mr. Navarro wants to comment on something here. If it's okay with you, I will allow him to go first and then I will take the question.

International Trade committee  I think Mr. Navarro has answered that question very well. I would only add that out of six presidential candidates--Santos; Mockus; the Conservative Party; the Liberal Party; Vargas, who is an independent; and Petro for the Polo Democrático--only one of them is against the trad

International Trade committee  There are several pension funds from Canada looking at Colombia, yes, like the Ontario teachers' pension fund.

International Trade committee  I don't know how that's structured here in Canada. I guess you're making a fair point. I just never thought of it that way. A lot of the Canadian pension funds are seeing long-term opportunities in Colombia--people who invest, for instance, in infrastructure look at assets to h

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Allison. To your first comment--and I appreciate that you have seen the effort in transparency in Colombia--I would say that these days there are people in jail who would not have been in jail under previous governments. There are lots of people in jail, you will

International Trade committee  I think it's a challenge, and we want to do it properly, right? If we want to do the right thing, and we want a public audience, we have to be prepared, and we have to engage other offices in the government. Obviously, the ministry of trade would help coordinate, but the minister

International Trade committee  Great. Thank you so much. There's been a lot of activity lately from Canadian firms in Colombia. Probably the biggest success story of the past year has been a Canadian company by the name of Pacific Rubiales in the oil sector in Colombia. It's been Canadian capital and Venezuel

International Trade committee  Mr. Julian, that has to be proven. When I look at the elections, a lot of friends of mine who belong to the government parties lost their seat, so we could also claim that those who lost their seat and belonged to the government party lost their seat because somebody bought the v

International Trade committee  No, it's not the attorney general. He's the person who investigates public officials.