 I would like to recognize certain former colleagues of mine, Canadian Foreign Service Officers, Ambassador Paul Durand, Ambassador Dean Brown, I see at the back Percy Ables, Ambassador Robert Robert Colette, Ambassador Chris Westall, and I'm also happily welcome representatives of the Government of Canada, especially the Federal Commissioner of Law being Karen Shepard and from the Department of Foreign Affairs International Trade. Members of the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, as well as the private sector. And now it's my pleasure to ask the Director of the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, Dr. Dane Rowlands, to introduce our speaker. Thank you, Larry. And as always, I'd like to give my thanks to Larry for organizing me on behalf of Carleton University. So on behalf of Carleton University, the Office of the Vice President Research International, Carleton International, and the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, I'm very happy to welcome you all here today and very pleased to have with us the Ambassador from Mexico. So I won't do any of this in Spanish, since all I could do in Spanish I think is order two beers, so I won't. Ambassador Francesco Suarez, Davia graduated in law from the National University of Mexico City and earned a Master's of Law from King's College at the University of Cambridge. Early in his career, between 1972 and 1992, he served at the Bank of Mexico as General Manager of International Economic Affairs, and he continued in that financial role as Executive Director of the OIMF, Financial Director of Mexico's Industrial Development Bank, Nacional Financiera and Undersecretary of Finance and Public Credit, and Director General of the Banco Mexicanum, so Mexico now Banco Santander. Ambassador Suarez also served as a Federal Congressman from 1994 to 1997, during which time he was Chair of the Finance Committee. In 1997, Ambassador Suarez was named Ambassador of Mexico to the OECD for the European Union until 2000. Prior to his appointment as Mexico Ambassador to Canada, Ambassador Suarez served as the Secretary General of the Colosio Foundation, the think tank of the President of President Peña Nietzsche's PRI Party and Vice President of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. Please welcome the Ambassador of Mexico, his excellent Excellency. Thank you very much for Director Dianne Rollins for his kind welcoming remarks. It is a pleasure to have been invited by my friend Larry Lederman to this very prestigious Ambassador Speaker Series at the Norman Patterson School. I come here with a bit of hesitation because I'm getting a very bad name. I arrived in Mexico last Monday and the day after there was the coldest day in the recent history of Mexico City, we were reached, you know, like minus one temperature. And now I come here in the middle of a hurricane, so I think I'm not going to be... Well, the other thing I would like to say, I really feel very much at ease in an academic community. I've been probably more often in academic activities as I've been in the Mexican Civil Service. And I really enjoyed it because it's one time in which I can say absolutely what I want. Sometimes my colleagues say, you know, remember, you're an ambassador, you're not an academic anymore. You have to be... There are some things that you shouldn't say. And my wife was the other one who said, you know, be careful, you're a diplomat. Here I will say, in the questions and answers, I will say things, you know, not in the usual diplomatic way. What I will be dealing with is first I will refer to some basic features of Mexico's place in the world with a certain amount of historical perspective. Secondly, I will comment to you on the transformations that are currently taking place in Mexico, which are very important. And particularly these transformations as they relate to the future and to the relationship between Canada and Mexico. For us, next year is a very special year because it will be 70 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and Mexico. It will be 20 years of... 20 years of the establishment of a North American free trade treaty. It's something like the 30th year of the agricultural workers program. It's been working very well between Canada and Mexico. I will just remind, I just came back from Mexico yesterday with a binational parliamentary delegation. I was reminded that it would also be the 15th time that the both legislations meet. So it's a very special way and I will address it. In my first part, I think Mexico's place in the world, I will try, although briefly, to address many myths, stereotypes and misconceptions on Mexico and Mexicans. The first thing that one normally tries to clarify is that Mexico is in North America, not Central America. That is why we sign a North American free trade treaty. Of course, we are part of Latin America in the cultural sense and we're, as you know, the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. We certainly want to go beyond the stereotype of a country and I will very much mention that it's part of a campaign here that, you know, Canadians go to Mexico in large numbers, but they normally seek saun, sand and margaritas. So I think we'd like to try to convince Canadians that, you know, you don't have museums in the beaches. I think you should go to the center part of Mexico where I think there's a lot of culture. I normally emphasize that Mexico no longer sleep siesta, no longer wears umbrellas and I think that's, you know, we're changing its stereotypes. I will later deal with a negative image that we're having and that's the violence and the drug cartels. I will deal with it. But I think generally speaking, the basic fact is Canadians do not know enough about Mexico and Canadians do not know enough about Mexico and Mexicans do not know enough about Canada and it's really stupid and we have to work on that. As you know, Mexico is the 11th largest economy in the world. If you measure it by what the economy is called purchasing power of the currency, we're about the same as Canada or Italy, right in that group. In geographic terms, we're the 40th largest country in the world, population-wise, we're the 150 million, we're the 11th country in the world. We hold, and I think it's very important, we hold a very strategic position and I think it's interesting that Canada, United States, and Mexico all hold a strategic position and that's the privilege of being countries that have an access both on the Pacific and on the Atlantic. So we hold both the Pacific and an Atlantic vocation. Of course, we are the largest, of course, we are close to the largest market and recently with the Canadians who were in Mexico, the parliamentarians, we said, you know, in fact, we are neighbors. Canada and Mexico's neighbor, we have a rather wide frontier between us, which is the United States, but aside from this wide frontier, we're neighbors and we are in a very spiritual sense, we are. We are the third largest partner to both US and Canada, with China in between. Trade with the United States is about a billion dollars per year. We're exporting to the United States something like 350 billion dollars per year and importing about the same amount, so the trade is, you know, close to half a trillion. And this means that we're exporting more to the United States than all of South America combined. That is, we're exporting more to the United States than Brazil, Argentina, and the whole of South America. And with Canada, the figures are very close to that. Another obviously basic strategic element is I think the very large number of Mexicans that are living in the United States. I think that was recognized as a geopolitical factor. I think they play a very important role in the elections. I think people of Mexican origin are about the same as the total Canadian population. We have about 30 million, or they're about Mexicans of, Americans of Mexican origin, plus the actual migration figures whether they're legal or illegal, but we're there in the order of, you know, over 10 million, 10 million people. So I think, you know, I was commenting to the Canadians, it was by national delegation. And we mentioned, I think we can consider in some time in the long term that there should be a, one could envisage the idea that North America, the North American continent, could in fact be, you know, a trilingual continent. So I think it's, and if you go to the historic area, there was a point in time in which actually New France, New Spain, and New England actually had shared borders. The Mexican growth model is not, and I think one can see it in Latin America. There's two countries which deal particularly with a resource-based growth development models, basically Brazil and Argentina. I think Mexico leads really a manufacturing growth model, which I think is not easily understood. 80% of our exports are manufacturing products, but at the same time, we have also an export base, obviously, with Canadian participation, Mexican participation. We're now, again, like in colonial times, the first producer of gold, sorry, the first producer of silver and fourth producer of gold that's Mexican and Canadian companies working in Mexico. And if you take a range of 20 important agricultural products, the main exporter to Canada is either the United States or Mexico. In some elements, it's Peru. But to give an example, I myself was surprised, Mexico is the first exporter of berries to Canada. Obviously, we export berries in the winter when you can no longer produce berries. We help along on that. Let me avoid, they mentioned, I cannot avoid it. It's obviously, I would like to avoid it, but we cannot avoid it, and I will not avoid it. The drug, violence, and organized crime element, it's a recent feature. It's probably a feature that has developed over the last 10 years, maybe particularly the last six years. I remember maybe 20, 30 years ago when one of my sons actually came to, well, probably more than 30 years ago, but I will not say exactly where. Anyway, one of my sons came to study in Carlton College, Ottawa. And he came to Carlton College, Ottawa to study in high school. At the time, it was very fashionable that Mexicans would, middle class Mexicans would send their boys and girls to study in Canadian schools because basically they considered that, you know, if they went to an American, to American high schools, you know, there would be a drug problem. And in Canada, there was no drug problem. And the Canadians were very, it was a good writing between, you know, some of the best advantages of the Americans, not only the defects, some of the best qualities of the British, and none of the defects, also the French. So they came here. Actually, for the last 10 years, for the last 10 years, a very prestigious think tank in Mexico, the sidae. Over the course of 10 years, they made poll reports. And the country that's most popular in Mexico as a country and as a people, the Canadians, were number one. Number one, during those 10 years. Somebody equipped it because we don't know you enough, but anyway, that was just the creep. I think you absolutely deserve the first place for the reasons that I mentioned. Later, there's a little obstacle, which I will not mention until the end, but that has altered this first place that you have. But going back to the question of the drugs, obviously, this became a problem in the last 10 years. One of the very basic problems is that Americans were successful in stopping the inflow of drugs from the sea, particularly from the Caribbean. When they stopped that, then Mexico became a thoroughfare road for many of the drugs coming from South America. It's clear that in the drug war, I think, unfortunately, it's a tragedy, I think more than 60,000 Mexicans have been killed in the drug war. I would say immediately that it's mostly in wars between the cartels themselves. There's a very vicious fight between the different cartels who are fighting for the entry points, the five or six basic entry points in the United States. And when you see that they're killing each other in Juarez or in Tijuana or in Matamoros, it's actually they're killing themselves to get into the US market. Obviously, there are some policemen and military that are killed, but that's what most of the problem is. You can imagine that it's a serious problem when the cost of producing heroin in Colombia is $2 per ounce, where in the US market, in the European market, it's $100 per ounce. So it's difficult to combat that. We sell drugs and the Americans sell us weapons. To give you an example, in the narrow border between the United States and Mexico, it's not a very long border, but in the narrow fringe, there are 10,000 stores which are weapons stores. I assure you those 10,000 stores in the Mexico-US border are not selling shotguns to kill deer or duck. They're selling AK-47s, and that's what they're selling there. And it's export drugs and they export weapons. I am discussing a lot of this, and it's not similar to the open wars that the British had in the Far East. It's not the same to the participation in the Vietnam War or heavy drug trafficking involving high personnel. So they're very powerful interests. I think that now the government has changed the strategy. Initially, it was a very serious problem. The previous government declared war on the cartels. They had to take the army out into the streets. And now the government is following a different strategy. It's prevention. It's intelligence. It's technology. You're working on the young people to give them jobs, to give them health, to give them employment. I think there is obviously the idea. I think that we have not taken the position there, but I think it's not something we can solve on our own. So I think there's a need for international debate on the internationalization of drugs. But that's a debate and we have not taken the position on that. The transformation of Mexico as a second topic. Well, there have been very strong changes in Mexico in the last 20 years. After what's called the last American lost decade of the 80s, which was related basically to a sovereign debt crisis and bad economic fundamentals. Recently, and I think Uriah, who was Minister of Finance at the time, has been approached by the Europeans and they are told, Uriah, we would like to have your technical assistance because now we're dealing with both the problems that you were dealing with. And that was the need to get back to right economic fundamentals and the need to introduce structural reforms. I think we did both and that helped us very much. And I think it's a type of thing that one is commenting that the Europeans or some Europeans should do. In those structural reforms, Mexico underwent large-scale privatization. We had something like more than 1,000 public sector enterprises that went from oil or telephones to production of bicycles and even tacos. There was actually a taco, which a public sector enterprise. I think 1,000 enterprises were more than 1,000 enterprises were privatized. We opened up the banking system, particularly after the 94 crisis. Opened up banking system to foreign participation, Mexican foreign participation. We deregulated the sector. Our banking system, as the Canadian banking system, after the two, well, you would stood, the Mexican banking system, like the Canadian banking system, we stood very well the 2008 crisis. We didn't have any banking crisis. And so the banking sector is solid, it's well capitalized. On the democratic process, we've been really going up a process of democracy transformation. Opposition parties have been gaining strong position in the state governments and in the legislative levels. In 2000, there was a crowning point for the opposition. I think we certainly welcome that. The PRI was defeated for the first time in 65 years. Maybe we thought the PRI will never relinquish the power peacefully. It will relinquish the power very peacefully. The PAN went into the right of central party, went into the government. And for 12 years, the PAN was in power. The PRI was in the headlines. And now, in the last year, the PRI again was voted back into the government. President Pena has embarked in a process of reforms. We had a problem not uncommon to many other countries, that there was no, since 1997, the PRI no longer had majority in parliament. And therefore, it could not pass an energy or a fiscal reform because it did not have a majority. After 2000, the PAN didn't have a president, but no majority. And again, it was very difficult for the PAN to put forward basic reforms. It did many other things. For example, the budget was approved by unanimity, but it had problems in getting the major, the difficult reforms. So President Pena started with a mechanism that's now held probably as a politically interesting innovation. It started out with a pact for Mexico. The pact for Mexico, they discussed for a long time, the three major parties, the center, the right and the left, a substantive program of action to embark upon large-scale political reforms. They got a message, which other countries have not got a message, that political paralysis was doing them damage. And political dysfunctionality was really causing havoc in the prestige of the politicians. So therefore, they engaged in this party, in this pact. And with the pact, they have since introduced a labor reform. That was the first one. That basically entailed the labor market in Mexico. Again, like many perhaps European countries, we have a welfare state. So with a welfare state, people were reluctant to hire a worker who, when you hired him, immediately had to pay social security benefits, pension benefits, et cetera, et cetera. So it was this incentive to hire workers. So now what they've done in the labor market is it's easier to hire workers. The young people in particular were penalized. So now the young people can be hired as an apprentice for a probation period, or workers in the light of the economic cycle can be hired per hour. And the severance, and it's easier to hire, and unfortunately also easier to hire, easier to fire. Telecommunications reform. It's really a process which sometimes the president has gone with the right, and in other words it's gone with the left. It was extremely unpopular that in Mexico we had a public sector monopoly with just the left one of the Mexico. It was a public sector monopoly who owned the telephone company all over the country. Nobody could participate. They privatized the telephones as one of the things that was privatized. Who got, who won the privatization? It was, as you know, Mr. Carlos Slim. So what happened is we privatized, and we went to a public sector monopoly to a private sector monopoly. And Mr. Slim became the second wealthiest person in the world. So that's why privatization has to be done with great, with great care. The other, the other very much opposed, that's not a monopoly, it's a duopoly. And you have Televiz and TV Azteca, the only two television channels. And one is open to other television channels. I, however, in that area do not see another common element with Canada. I think we also defend the cultural exception. I don't see, I don't see, I don't see ABC or CBS getting a television channel in Mexico that I think won't happen. It will be open to them, to the private sector to participate in that. And education reform was done. Mexico acknowledges that we have a, it's really an effort, the education effort that Mexico did since the 20s. It was basically crusade to unalphabetize to the whole, the whole country. Teachers did a stupendous job. When I was in the OECD, I somewhat commented the type of problems that the developing country faces. In Mexico, every six years, you have six million people born, well, born and they, they move. So every, every six years, six million people. And the, so I told them, the problem with developing or imagine country is that every six years, not only schools, but hospitals and roads, we really had to construct a completely new country, a completely new whole country from the point of view of infrastructure services of the size of Belgium or Switzerland. So that was the effort that was, that was done. But unfortunately, equality is disastrous. We qualify in the OECD in the so-called PISA, PISA tests. And there, you know, Brazil and Chile and Colombia were, you know, in the 50, we're, you know, 47, 48 and 49. Very low standards of quality in basic education, the ability to read, to write and to, and to make mathematics. So we went into an education before. That's causing a great problem because there's something like 7,000. We have the largest trade union syndicate in Latin America, 1.2 million teachers. There's this in the group of maybe 10,000. They have succeeded in blocking the streets of Mexico for a long time. They wanted to provoke the government. The government did not fall into this provocation. But these seven, 10,000 teachers are, who come either way from the poor states of Mexico. Basically, what they're resisting are the things, elementary things, which I want to think that's elementary. Like, you know, in the teaching, this, this teacher's thing, you know, the workings in the 20s, they started to inherit the jobs. So, you know, it was, the grandfather was a teacher. Then without any qualification, the son was a teacher and the granddaughter was a teacher. So that was obviously changed. They don't like that. You know, they think it's, you know, why, why we cannot inherit teaching jobs. And one thing is, we have to assess teachers. That's an evaluation of teachers. And again, if you evaluate students, I think the teachers should be assessed. Obviously, they resist the benchmarking or the evaluation of teachers. And obviously it was said, if you leave classes for a month, you get fired. These teachers basically from the poor states have been not giving classes. They've been camping out in Mexico City and have not given classes to very poor children for one or two or two years. The government will now embark on two major reforms. One is the political reform. Again, that's a very heavy weight reform because Mexico had resisted re-election, all sorts of re-election. It was very important that, you know, because we had a president from 1870 to 1976 to 1910 that lasted in power 35 years. Porfirio Diaz, I will say in many other words, was a good president. He was in power for 35 years. The revolution started effective voting and no re-election. So at the presidential level, it was also leading forbidden. That will never change. I know, you never say never, but I think that's not an advice. Six-year presidential period. But what's happening, and there's a big pressure by the political scientists to have re-election for deputies, deputies and senators, up to 12 years to make them more accountable for their work. Now, the other big reform, I will probably maybe in the questions I will comment on this, the other big reform is the energy reform. That's a huge reform. Essentially, it's changing something that goes back many decades, and that's eliminating the exclusivity of the Mexican state exercised through Pemex. The exclusivity on only Pemex could do drilling, production, distribution, petrochemicals and refinement. If this constitution reform passes, which I think will pass from now until the end of the year, it requires a two-thirds majority. I think that's over. We have to look into the secondary law, but I think that will enable, that will be huge, I think, for Canadian and American participation, because they will be able to participate in twice, which I will comment briefly later. Relationship with Canada. Well, I think certainly the relationship with Canada, they are not new. We say that the first background to the North American Free Trade Treaty were the monarch butterflies. The monarch butterflies fly from Canada to Mexico. They're just doing that now, and they go back in the binational parliamentary meeting that was the major, and says North America with the butterflies moving from Canada to Mexico. The First Nations, I've been very surprised, I've been traveling wise, an important way through Canada, and I'm extremely struck, particularly with the great art that you have on the Pacific coast, and there you have the masks. The masks of the different tribes, I know that there's a tribe called the Haita. There are others that are as difficult to pronounce, and I say we're in an equal footing to pronounce the kawakwakwas or something like that, tribe in the Pacific to pronounce Teotihuacan, they're equally difficult, but it's the same art. And we're thinking for the 17th anniversary to put a back-to-back exposition, Canadian masks and Mexican masks of essentially the same people that were moving down the Pacific, and certainly some of them were looking some warm climate than the Haita's found in British Columbia, so I think that's, you understandably. But you find those sorts of interesting things. Captain Narváez in 1788, a Mexican sailor still operating under the Spanish colonial flag, Captain Narváez sailed from San Blas on the Pacific coast, not far away from Canadians go for summer, and Captain Narváez was the first Westerner to travel and map and map the Bay of Vancouver and the islands around Vancouver. He explored them and mapped them out. Since Spain and England for that brief period after this was done, they were in peace terms. Captain Narváez provided Captain Vancouver with the maps. So what I could say, it could be, it could equally, Vancouver could either be Vancouver Island or Narváez Island, but anyway, that's historical. All sorts of interesting things. An important entrepreneur from Vancouver, Frederick Pearson, he went to Mexico. He discovered very strong hydraulic dams, and so he said, he did an hydroelectric dam. From then he established the light and power light and power company in Mexico in the early part of the century, and the Mexican light and power Canadian and British company operated really until 1960. In 1960, a Mexican president nationalizes the Mexican light and power, by the way, exactly, or almost exactly the same year in which Hydro-Quebec is nationalized. So it happened at the same time. But this company established the Mexico City trolley. There are all sorts of interesting things. We established Japan. The Mexican foreign policy history is, I think, quite interesting. In 1988, Mexico established with Japan a treaty of full reciprocal rights, which no other country had given Japan. The Japanese still recall that in 1988, we were the first country to establish a treaty with the Japanese with full historical rights. In terms of political or social asylum, in the 1920s, some of the 30,000, 40,000 men on nights went from Canada to Mexico. A Mexican president gave him a decree, which they could not obtain elsewhere, giving the decree whereby they could follow their own rules as to marriage. They could follow their own educational system, and obviously they were exempt from the army. That's an interesting. The other, in terms of sort of a foreign policy that's been, I think, very special, I think, in the best sense of the term, Mexico supported the Spanish Republic all the way. And when the Spanish Republic, as the democratically elected government of Spain, fell, we gave asylum to many members of the Spanish Republic, members of the cabinet, who were received in Mexico, and they really contributed very much to our educational system. There were many lawyers who came, for example, to Mexico. And there was a famous Mexican consul who under Bixi-France operating out of Marseille was putting out through Marseille, Spanish Republican refugees, and to an important extent also Jewish refugees to Mexico. He was eventually imprisoned by the German Nazi government. So at the time of the Chilean coup d'etat, and Mexico has normally not gone to the issue of recognizing, we don't recognize or not recognize governments. We think that's not done. We suffered that from much. We simply maintain the right to establish relations with whom we want. After the Allende, after the NFO, we again received very important people from the academic and teaching distinguished Chilean intellectuals who came to Mexico, including the widow of Allende. Interestingly also, together with Canada, we were the first, but we were the two, the two only countries in the Western Hemisphere to recognize the Castro regime. We did so at the beginning. I think it was on the Prime Minister de Fingbacker's government and the Mexican president. We recognized the Castro regime, and we are the only two countries from the beginning and maintain diplomatic relations all the time. Mexico played a role together with Colombia, Central American Republics, supported by Canada, to pacify Nicaragua during the time of the Civil Civil War, and at the Security Council, we did not support the invasion of Iraq. Leaks with Canada are considerable. I mentioned that after NAFTA, NAFTA was by no means a foregone conclusion. I speak with both Canadian entrepreneurs and Mexican, in fact, I'm a friend of the Mexican ambassador, who Alfredo Phillips, who you might know, and initially, there was many people in Canada who thought it's a nuisance to go to a free trade treaty with Mexico. We already have a free trade treaty with the Americans, but there was really a large number of public and private sector enlightened Canadians who thought it was going to be a good idea to join the table with the Americans and to make a free trade treaty. I think they were proved right by events. As I mentioned, we're the third trading partner in trade. Second source of tourism, one point seven million Canadians who visited Mexico. To put this in perspective, each of the major cities, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal sent to Mexico 300,000 tourists to put that in perspective. Each city, each of those 300,000 are the total number of tourists that come from Spain as a whole, with whom we already had a good. And the foreign investment relationship, it's extraordinary. I think one of the best examples there is anywhere of good foreign direct investment that fulfills what they should fulfill is the case of Bombardino They started to establish a narrow space industry and they started it on their own. Now, Bombardier, around Bombardier in the city of Queretaro, we have something like 40 firms from all over the country, including French airplane or tele or helicopter companies that are working there. Canada is always very important in mining, as I already mentioned, and Canada, United States and Mexico were extremely important in the automobile industry. I think Mexico is right out of the big leagues to be other Canada, United States, Japan, Korea in the production of automobiles. I think the relationship has now reached a certain plateau, and now I think that we have to revive that. There's a high plateau, but we have to, and that's part of our job here, is to, you know, it's a good potential, high potential, let's move it. I think that there's a new strategy, and the new strategy in which we're working very heavily with the Canadian government, the Canadian parliamentarians, and obviously with the American government and Canadian and American firms, is I think that we want to establish North America as a concept, North America as a concept, as a region that grows fast and becomes very, very competitive, but as a region. That doesn't mean that we exclude relations with other countries. Mexico already had many years ago a free trade treaty with Europe. We're delighted you also have a treaty with Europe that the Americans will have it, but I think we start from a base, and the base is North America. And I think we're also, in the TPP negotiation with you, we are also, we have a negotiation for a free treaty with China, we have an excellent relation with China, so I think it's not exclusive. But I think what we're saying is that, what has changed? I think there is really a fantastic energy revolution. It's an energy revolution, a result of new technology, both the deep water oil discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico, and the new technologies of fracking of shale gas in the Texan Basis will make, and that's a big change, the U.S. will become a net, eventually, very quickly, a net gas exporter and also a net oil importer. Now the interesting thing about this is first, we can work on the grid of pipelines crossing throughout the whole of North America. We wish you luck in the Keystone project, I think it's necessary. I think there's also the east-west pipeline, but Mexico is having also its own grid linking both to the west of Mexico and to the east of Mexico. A Canadian company that TransCan has already in place contracts or wins some biddings to develop five new pipelines, and those five new pipelines signify it's not a significant 2,000 kilometers and a 2 billion investment. We are very short at present in gas. The pipelines are completely saturated, so we need more pipelines to get gas to. We have the ridiculous situation where we're producing electric energy out of oil or carbon, which is not only dirty, but it's very, very expensive. Since we didn't have the pipelines, we're bringing in gas through the Pacific ports, but that gas costs something like $16 or $20, whereas with gas produced in North America, it's $4. Now, I think that with gas at $4, and Mexico will now be working as a result of this energy reform, we'll be working in deep water perforation. The same wealth in the Gulf of Mexico where the Americans have drilled 130 wells, we have only drilled six, but it's the same area. Out of those 130 wells, the United States has become a major oil exporter. We have the same amount of wealth, so what we need is to, there's no way, and they were told to the people in Pemex, you're crazy. Pemex is one of the five largest oil companies in the world, and still Pemex being as large as it is, it's crazy if you go drilling deep water wells where you have to share risk. So I think that will be opened up to foreign sector participation. And in shared gas, you have a completely different ballgame. There you have 90,000 wells, the Americans have 90,000 wells in the Texas basis. You cross the Rio Grande the same, but the Americans have drilled 90,000, and Mexico has drilled six. That's an area which I think has enormous promise, and Pemex has said, I'm not going to go into that, I don't have the capacity, and I mentioned in Caldera recently, that's a great opportunity for medium-sized Canadian companies. The three of them, Canada, Mexico, and the United States, we are according to the measurement, out of the, we are either Canada or Mexico, fourth or fifth. The United States is probably sometimes second or first, second or third, Canada fourth or fifth or sixth. That means the three countries are amongst the six, three of the six, three of the six largest producers or gas or shared gas. There's no region in the world that even can remotely compare to the reservoirs of gas that these three countries have. That's an enormous opportunity. It's a big geological and geopolitical change. As I mentioned, the three countries become an energy powerhouse, but producing gas at four dollars, it makes manufacturing extremely competitive. That means with cheap gas, the manufacturing sector and the whole industrial sector of the three countries became extremely competitive. If you add to that innovation and financial resources, as I think recently Schultz, the former minister, there's no doubt about it. North America is a new economic powerhouse and a new energy powerhouse. I would like also to highlight one important that we think it's important not only to go east-west, but to go north-south. We're extremely enthusiastic about the Pacific Alliance. The Pacific Alliance, it's Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. It's very important because it's not only economic. It's also political. Costa Rica will soon be joining. I think Panama will soon be joining. Canada is a very active observer. It's a country which I think should fit there. I think somebody wrote it's a good fit. Canada already has free trade treaties with those four countries. I think the advantage of that is that it's the most dynamic area of the North-South Pacific is the most dynamic area of the continent. It's countries which grow fast. They're like-minded. They're open to free trade. They're democratic. They change governments and they still maintain that, which is quite a different thing. It's an open system. We hope that our friends from the Atlantic will join us, but for the time being, it's a very homogeneous, very fast growing area. Well, one of the areas here is trade. We're interested in trade negotiations, and we're interested in the free. I've lasted almost, I'm bringing it at the end of the conference. I will not say the word, but at the end of the conference, I would like that we are committed to the free movement of people. These four countries, which in many ways one might consider are not easy because they have drug problems, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Chile established a visa-free system for the four countries recently. We did it by way of way to Brazil. So that's the word I'd like to mention. So what I probably, you know, I should not use the word. Basically, I say there are only two problems between Canada and Mexico. One is a problem with a big B, a four-letter word with a big B, that's beef. We have resisted the importation of 30-month-old cattle from mid-Canada because there are problems of sanitary, at least some risks, until we're satisfied that there's no risk in importing this beef. It's a big B problem. The other is a little B problem. The little B problem, I think that now there's a major, you know, I would say almost overwhelming crusade in the crusade of, you know, self-generated because now I think I've been speaking with many people. The tourist people say, you know, I was in Vancouver. Vancouver would have doubled its inflow of Mexican tourists. I was told, you know, they like very much whistler, they have these penders, you know, they like the snow. It would have doubled the number of tourists. And that's the same in Montranilá and everywhere, which should have doubled the number of tourists. And I think it would be exponential, the number of tourists. In fact, instead of doubling, it's half, half what it should be. Okay. Everybody tells, I cannot send Bombardier, you know, four seasons. You know, I want to send my mid-management to training in Canada. I cannot do it. Recently, there was somebody that brought in a huge Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition. He wanted to have it in Toronto and then he went to other cities. That was the chairman of the Board of Trustees. He was given a single entry visa for a limited period of time. His curator was given a multiple entry visa. He became very angry because he was only given a single, so he canceled the exhibition. There are at least two ministers of high level of Mexico who have one had a flat in Whistler and he decided to sell it because he refused to go to the indignity of going through the process of the information that is required. It's creating a bad image to this great image that Canada has. It has a great image. So this is literally damaging the image of Canada in a country that's very friendly to you. It's affecting business. It's affecting tourism. And, you know, and we absolutely need, as I mentioned, there's going to be a visit to the Prime Minister's Harbor to Mexico and there's a visit of opinion to celebrate the seventh anniversary. I think we have got extremely good reactions. I think we're finally, as a result of everybody saying that this is ridiculous. I think it's... I mentioned one thing which I completely accept. The problem was there was an abuse of the refugee asylum status and there were people that, you know, went through crooks and they came into... There's no way we don't have a political, you know, repression and we don't have... It's a country that's, you know, I think it's a free country. There's no repression of any type, except with a very limited... There's something that comes... I'm a refugee because my father hit me and then I have to go because I'm a refugee from my father who hits me on weekends. Well, okay, that's a definition that he could be called a refugee, but you get those types of refugees. So that's done, okay? Now there are only 60 refugees coming from Mexico, so that was the root of the problem. Having eliminated the root of the problem, then it's... Yeah, I think that we can solve the problem. I know that Canadian system, I think we've got a very good constructive that you need to put in place a number of technological devices like the electronic travel program. So we have to change good databases so that, you know, the crooks are detected, but crooks don't detect the flight to people, and so it's there. This time I was in Mexico and I... Enormous problems, and I mentioned... This was raised very frankly with the parliamentarians. I had enormous problems, and I mentioned obviously, you know, really getting along well. I think we're advancing concrete solutions. We understand Canadian concern. We will meet the Canadian concerns. We'll work to solve this problem, but this problem has to be solved. Imagine me explaining, and that's with all due respect, because I'm delighted that some of the visa requirements have been eliminated as we eliminated for Brazil or Chilean. Imagine me explaining why, in terms of the requirements or the qualifications, why the Czech Republic got... I know what's the reason, I won't say it, but I think you also know it, but why the Czech Republic was... The visa was eliminated, and Mexico's visa was not eliminated. And it's difficult to explain because we have been... For 20 years, your third major trading partner, and you know this, huge flows of tourists, huge flows of business, huge flows of investment, and obviously we have problems that we have to tackle, but I think it's difficult to justify that we will not meet completely all the objective criteria that is met by other consequences, which are delighted that they no longer have visas. So that's, I think, the two points. The future, I think, looks very good, and I will conclude, I think, by that. I think in the last months, I think we've gotten out of this violence, which is still there. It's a serious problem, but I think Mexico's seen a different light. Recently, there's been a wave of sort of major newspapers. You have the question of the economy started last year, the rise of Mexico. They speak now of the Mexican Jaguar. Some of them speak of the new China. In some sense, the bricks, they are obviously very much in fashion. They're the strongest economies, but now it's the mix. And now you're really having fashion in terms of Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, and Turkey as sort of coming up as a focus for investors. The prospects of mutual, and we are very much on this within North American concept. By Pricewaterhouse or wherever, the OECD, et cetera, by the year 2030, Mexico will become the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world. That's 2030. That means Mexico, the only countries in the G7 that will be larger than Mexico, will be the United States, Germany, and Japan. That's it. Among the emerging countries, China, India, and Brazil. We have together abundant energy. We have a young population when everybody's population is aging. We have a working democracy. We share the same values. We are free trade oriented. And we have good and sound economic fundamentals. Inflation, 4%. Fiscal deficit, 2%, 3%, 4%. About half of what's the OECD average. The level of debt is about half or a third of what the OECD average has. So I think that we share a lot with Canada. And I think we are very much committed, as I mentioned, to work very hard with our Canadian friends for a more active and more constructive role. At the same time, Mexico is again taking a more active international role as it did in the past. Thank you very much for your patience, and I'm delighted to be here. We'll take questions. We don't have a lot of time, but for those of you who would like to ask a question, I implore you not to make a speech. Just ask the question. And there is a microphone here. If you're over there, you could just stand up and project. I would appreciate that very much. First question. You're excellent. Thank you. I think we all benefited a great deal from your information, your insights, your candor. May I ask you, in your role as ambassador, what would you like to see as your legacy, in terms of the relationship between Mexico and Canada after your time here? Well, I think that's obviously a very important question. As a general point, I think that I would like to work in really getting through this concept that it's North America, together the three countries, acting to become competitive, dynamic countries. I think that's in a sense the vision. But the mission should not be made just of a vision. I think there are a number of three or four specific things on which we have to work. I think one very important thing is that we have to have a complementary energy policy. And that complementary energy policy is that there'll be a grid connecting the three countries, and we use energy not only to export abroad, but we use the energy to develop a very competitive manufacturing sector, particularly in the manufacturing. There are many areas I think there are any productive changes. So that's working in energy. Secondly, promote participation of Canadian companies in infrastructure. I mentioned Transcam already doing pipelines, but we will be developing within our new strategy. We're going back to railroads, and there are five large projects of railroads in which it would be interesting for Canadian firms to participate. Again, I think we're working on the idea of corridors of infrastructure, which go from Mexico to Canada, not only oil, but infrastructure where manufacturing and other products can travel. That's a second point, infrastructure. Third, labor mobility. Labor mobility means, I think at present, we're working very closely in that we have to, we have excess people in the semi-skilled industries. That's carpenters, electricians, people in construction. I see very clearly that there are severe shortages in areas like Alberta, Calgary, and we don't want to export people. We want to do it exactly as what happened with the Temporary Agricultural Workers Program. It was a one-year program. Again, exemplary program because they gave social rights to the Mexican workers, social rights of every sense, social insurance education. They were for one year and they went back. So I think that we can do that for semi-skilled workers, and we have to do the same in terms of increasing substantially the interchange of, and we were talking about with the president of the university, that we have to develop more exchanges at university level, students, students who study and then work. Professors, both sides that teach on both sides to develop, I think, their areas in which we have strengths, in which it would be interesting to have Canadian researchers, students, and obviously you have one of the best innovation and research areas in the world. So I think that would be a third area that I think would be important. The other area I think is that I think working so that you know Mexico better and know better the Mexican, better the Canadians, and to work very closely with your very strong private sector. They were the ones that drove the government to sign in 1994 the Free Trade Agreement. I think there's a very large number of entrepreneurs. Some of them are already in Mexico, and I think one has to expand now from large companies to middle, to medium-sized companies, and then you have to bring in banking and finance. Sometimes the middle-sized companies in both countries don't have it. So I think those would be, I think, some of the key areas to uplift the level of our relation, energy, infrastructure, labor mobility, tourism. Again, tourism, you know, there's no reason why you shouldn't double the number of Canadians going to Mexico. You have 1.7, which is seasonal. It's half a year. We can compete absolutely with anything that Europe has to offer. You'll see you like baroque. We have as good baroque churches in Mexico. You like pre-Columbia. Well, obviously we have pre-Columbia, and the Europeans don't have it. They come to us in the summer, not only in the winter. Germans, French to go to see our monuments. That's very important. And so the visit, I think, are colonial sites, and of course, modern Mexico. We're only one of the two countries that have been granted status of world heritage status, only France, I think, maybe China and Mexico. I know, I see there's a revolution. I think there's a sort of taco revolution. Everybody is eating these tacos or tequilas or mezcal, but I can't Mexican food much more than that. So I think that that's another aspect in which we would like to work, to get the Canadians to, that is a problem. There's a problem, airlines. Except for charters, very few, very few airlines are going to Mexico. So I know it's four ambitious things, but I think the idea is raise the level of the relationship and get it a new dynamic. Ambassador Suarez, thank you so much for speaking tonight. My name is Antoine Nouvez. I'm with the SACDF Foundation, a think tank based here in Ottawa. We do a lot of research in Latin America, an example of which I have here for you on our Mexico research. We will come up in a place this week. I just have one question which focuses more on some of the darker issues as positive ones. In twofold, one of them is Mexico's NERCA work, which has intensified over the last 10 years, as you said. Is it important to Canada? And if it is, what should Canada focus on doing if landing assistance to Mexico with this situation? I would say very briefly, the NACA war, of course, the first country which is damaging is to Mexico. There's a saying that we're in the sense of putting the dead for the water drugs which should be conducted by the United States. We put the dead and they pay the money. It's a very serious problem for Mexico. I would immediately say against, in this time of these stereotypes, that the problem of drugs is highly concentrated, as you probably know, in certain areas of the country. It's concentrated in the poorer areas of Mexico. That's the southern Pacific states, which is Guerrero, that's where Capulco is, by the way, Guerrero, Michoacán, very importantly, Michoacán, and also Chiapas. That's where the problem is. And then the other problem is the cities into the United States where they fight for the distribution. One is to some extent related to production and the other is related to the distribution. I would say that this is a problem of security, certainly for Mexico, and it is to start to stand to the United States, because finally it's the border there which affected both ways. And there have been killings on both sides. And it's a very porous border. You have there a very porous border. There's a lot of contamination that happens there. So I think that the problem of war over drugs is a particular border problem to the United States. It's not to Canada. It's too far away. It's not to Canada. That's why problem migration, which is an important problem, the problem of migration is important for the United States. A million crossings a day, like you do Canada and the United States. A million crosses a day between the United States and Mexico. So that's the migration and the flow of people is a very serious problem between the United States and Mexico. It's not for Canada. You are simply too far away and it's difficult that the drug problem for Mexico will go into Canada. I think you require there a minimum. And it's maybe the same problem that you get, you know, Mexican drug traffickers as you get drug traffickers from Marseille or you get drug traffickers from Asia. But I think you're sheltered, I think, by the distance. So I think it's not a security problem. But I think it's a problem, obviously, that we have to tackle together. And I might highlight it to one extent, which again, mainly a problem for us, and to a certain extent to the United States. And that's we have a very serious problem in some of the Central American republics, where I think the drugs have the drug, the drug lords have acquired enormous power, which sometimes the power of drug lords is higher than the power of the army or the police in certain areas. They have a lesser states, no? In the case of Mexico, it's a problem. But you know, you know, we have a whatever, a 200,000 strong military and we're building our 50,000 strong police. And I think there's a problem in limited areas of the country, but it's not a national problem. For Central America, in some cases, it is a national problem. And I think that's why I mentioned Contadora. I think Canada, the United States and Mexico have to work in Central America and to some extent the Caribbean to help fight the problem of drugs. And as Contadora showed, it's not a problem only putting the military or putting the police or working at the institution building of the judiciary. We have to work at developing the region. I think we can do it. And why don't we have a problem with people coming out of Panama? Because Panama is growing 10% per year. Why isn't there a problem in Costa Rica? Because Costa Rica is a democratic country with 6% of growth per year. The countries where there's a problem is because they're not growing. So I think we have to work and say, how do we root out the problem? And that's the strategy also in Mexico. You attack the problem by attacking the causes of the problem. Youth employment, youth education like. But to sum up, it's not a problem for Canada. It's a problem except in a limited sense. And to the extent that we share common problems. It's a problem certainly for the United States, and it's a problem for Mexico. Thank you. One last question. If not, we will have an opportunity in a few minutes to join the ambassador for our reception, where you can corner him and ask him whatever you'd like. Maybe I shouldn't have said it that way. It is now my pleasure to ask our former Canadian ambassador, Paul Verrani, who is Ambassador to the OBS, Costa Rica, Chile, to thank our guest speaker. I think we all learned a great deal from the ambassador's comprehensive presentation about Canada and Mexico relations, and we learned it from the Mexican perspective, which is most much valuable. And this is the value of diplomatic relations and the exchange of ambassadors. And in this context, I want to say that I believe that Canada is very, very fortunate that Mexico named someone of your stature and qualifications to be ambassador here. Your experience in the financial sector at the OECD, at the IMF, the Republic of Mexico, and also your experience, your political experience in the Congress, are surely going to serve you very well and serve us well also. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the other qualifications, and that's the tennis skills you bring to work every Saturday morning. I've noticed there are quite a few tennis players out here. It's the first time I've seen them wearing real clothes. It's the same about me. You mentioned the visa problem ambassador, and I think that you're in good company there, because most Canadians recognize that this system is dysfunctional, it's broken, and it has to be fixed. Fortunately, I think that we're on the way to doing that, and I really hope that it will be resolved very soon. So, I just want to thank you again, Ambassador, for that wonderful presentation, and wish you all the best of success in your time here, and we have a small token of our appreciation for you. Look forward to seeing you in the tennis court. The other thing I know you mentioned is, yes, as long as there is Canadian one, you'll be Canadian one? Yeah. I thought we were getting Mexican one. Please join us in the other room.