Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, I was part of the government that brought in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement twenty years ago, and if anybody had said to me twenty years ago that we would be having free trade with the United States and Mexico but not within Canada, nobody would have believed it.

Finance committee  My trait, Mr. Chairman, was to speak much longer than this.

Finance committee  Thank you Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank the committee for having giving me the opportunity to present the viewpoint of the Chamber of Commerce of Canada on this important topic. The Chamber of Commerce of Canada represents some 170,000 companies. Its members face numerous challenges every day.