Foreign Affairs committee  The Americans aren't bashful, so if they have an issue, they're going to bring it to us, and we will try to work things out the same way as they try to work things out when we have issues to bring to them. Sometimes we have some very real constraints in dealing with issues and so

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me just make one other comment. The dispute settlement mechanism, with the exception of this particular industry, has worked reasonably effectively for quite a period of time. So let's not throw out the whole system just because we've had some differences of opinion in one p

Foreign Affairs committee  I think you're trying to put words in my mouth. The point I'm making is that the dispute settlement mechanism has worked. I forget your words precisely, but it is not without good use, and it has been put to good use in a number of ways over the course of the past 15 years. The

Foreign Affairs committee  In my opening remarks I said we had to anticipate and try to get more ahead of the wave than maybe we have in the past. That requires a lot of dialogue so you can see the development of issues on the horizon. Sometimes it's not possible to do that. Sometimes things just come out

Foreign Affairs committee  If you have been noticing what Minister Flaherty and Governor Dodge have been doing, they have been raising the question of the role of the International Monetary Fund in the context of the global imbalances and what can be done to achieve a more effective response to them. You

Foreign Affairs committee  If I miss my plane tonight, you're in trouble.

Foreign Affairs committee  The dispute settlement mechanism has been used. I said earlier that I'm disappointed as to how this has proceeded as it relates to lumber. There are differences and different interpretations between the United States and Canada on this. I'm not sure whether this is the place to g

Foreign Affairs committee  The decision was taken earlier on in the mandate of this government that a negotiation was the appropriate way of proceeding to try to get this behind us once and for all and in as permanent a way as possible. Based on that, we proceeded with the negotiations in the direction tha

Foreign Affairs committee  I can't put a number on it, Mr. Allison. I don't have it at the top of my head. Also, we don't know how long this could have gone on for. The legal advisers were telling us that with various forms of appeal, it could have taken another year or two. And because there's a strong

Foreign Affairs committee  It's very clear that—don't hold me to the time here—shortly after the legislation was passed, the United States realized that the option of requiring everybody to have a passport was not practical. It doesn't lend itself to fast-reader technologies, with which you can put a card

Foreign Affairs committee  There are three questions, Madame Bourgeois. Let me respond to each. I think I've responded, actually, to the first one: will the dispute settlement mechanism work in future? There's no reason why it can't; however, I have to say to you, to be quite direct, that it has been a f

Foreign Affairs committee  I attended a meeting where Minister Strahl and Secretary Johanns, the Secretary of Agriculture in the United States, met, and one of the key points they discussed was BSE. A very interesting point that they both stressed in the course of that discussion was the importance of scie

Foreign Affairs committee  The answer is no. The dispute settlement mechanisms in NAFTA will continue operating as they have. Both countries will still be able to call upon those mechanisms, as you've seen quite recently in the way the corn dispute was resolved. On chapter 7, with Darfur, there has been d

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Obhrai. You're quite right that we have a number of allies in the governors or members of Congress from those border states. That also stretches down into the southern states, because people in those states see a lot of Canadians going through in the win

Foreign Affairs committee  You're absolutely right, the timeframe is closing in on us. We have a little over a year and a half. So as I said in my answer to Mr. Masse, we're watching that timeframe very, very closely. I'm not in a position to judge what the access was, what the dialogue was, with the prev