Thank you for your questions.
Just to clarify my previous comment, I was responding to a question on whether we could sit down with Ukraine at this juncture and negotiate new provisions to the agreement. Since the agreement is signed, our leaders have told us that this text is now ready for ratification. I was not suggesting that this committee could not propose amendments to anything they see in the legislation. It is certainly within your purview to do that.
In terms of our engagement with stakeholders, we did follow our usual process before we launched our modernized negotiations. As Minister Ng indicated, after we had the original agreement come into force in 2017, at the time we were trying to negotiate services and investment provisions in separate chapters in the original agreement. At the time, Ukraine was not able to meet Canada's standards to do so, and we agreed to include a clause that would require parties to expand the agreement within two years, which we've done.
I believe that, in 2022, officials from my team came and appeared before this committee on two occasions. Then, prior to launching our modernization negotiations, we did meet on a few occasions with the provinces and territories, both in meetings designated to discuss the benefits of this agreement and their interest in this agreement and how we would modernize it. We also—