Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses here today.
Thank you to the hard-working negotiating team for getting an agreement to this stage. I believe the conclusion of a free trade agreement with Colombia will definitely receive strong support from many sectors and Canadian businesses from coast to coast to coast.
When we heard from the Colombian ambassador in the committee on Monday, we talked about dealing with a democratically elected government and about trying to expand to have a more liberalized trade agreement, with the protection and promotion of human rights as a complementary exercise, with mutually supporting economic growth at the same time to try to bridge the economic gap within this country for so many years. We've heard about a lot of civil unrest there for over four decades, so we're trying to bring some stability to the country.
This committee is also dealing with a trade agreement with South Korea. I'm sure you're familiar with that. Looking over the information from the witnesses on South Korea, and hearing some of the information from witnesses today as well the previous information we received, I see there seems to be some similarity between the negotiations of the free trade agreements with Korea and Colombia.
I guess what I'm trying to say, using a sports analogy, is that sometimes the best offence is a good defence.
Ms. Nelder-Corvari, in your presentation you talked about a defensive free trade agreement, and you alluded to the United States having concluded a deal with Colombia, whereas the negotiations have still not been finalized on a Canada-Colombia agreement.
We've heard from our study on free trade with Korea that should the U.S. get a deal with them and Canada not secure such a deal, there would be a lot of negative implications for Canadian businesses. And after doing some of my homework, I see that agricultural tariffs in Colombia right now range from 15% to 60% on certain products and that many Canadian manufacturers who export a great deal to Colombia are affected by these tariffs.
So my question to you, as the lead negotiator, is whether you could elaborate on how a potential U.S. agreement with Colombia would impact on our Canadian exporters and investors in absence of a Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.