To what Hassan said, the fact is that this was the line in the sand. The American labour movement and the U.S. Congress basically said that that was one reason they weren't prepared to move the CUSMA ahead, and they basically got the amendments they thought were appropriate.
Our union is very much engaged with Mexico. You've heard of Napoleón Gómez, who is the president of the miners and steelworkers in Mexico. He was in exile in Canada for 12 years. The steelworkers harboured him. He's now back in Mexico, and he's a senator.
First of all, the labour chapter is very important. As Hassan mentioned, if you look at the labour rights, they've not lived up to them, and there are protectionist contracts.... There are a lot of workers in factories that belong to the union and don't even know it. Those are deals that are made that undercut the legitimate trade union movement. In fact, if you look at the salaries and the other things that are taking place, you see that these also affect us. Now that we have a mechanism in place, it's very important they be given the infrastructure to do it. This is why I said in my submission that Canada and the United States and Mexico have to be serious about it.
I was led to believe that if you look at the current labour law in Mexico, you see that they have some of the best labour laws in the world. The fact is it's not enforced. If it's not enforced, it's worthless. This is the mechanism and we have an obligation, because if you want to continue to see their auto sector grow from 1.2 million to 3.3 million vehicles—it has surpassed Canada's—it's going to continue to grow at our expense because we can't compete. The big companies would gladly go to Mexico and build their auto factories there.
We have an opportunity now to enshrine some mechanisms to enforce the labour laws, and that's what's crucially important. I see that as something like a watershed with respect to moving this in the direction. It's now up to all governments, in particular Canada and the United States, to make sure that this mechanism is enforced.
Thank you.