International Trade committee  Windsor-Detroit is probably the key crossing. I know there are members here who are from the west coast, and I think probably there are issues at the crossings between B.C. and Washington State. Also, there are the issues at the Peace Bridge, where there have been proposals for a

International Trade committee  You might be interested to know that currently a study is being conducted by the University at Buffalo looking at the issue of how the border is impacting, or potentially impacting, investment decisions. Within, I guess, the last couple of years, the university has conducted the

International Trade committee  I think that's a potential concern. Certainly the United States takes this problem very seriously. It's been identified by the USTR and the Commerce Department in the United States as being a serious concern. In terms of the bilateral trade relationship, I think we shouldn't unde

International Trade committee  Certainly the private sector is very much engaged in terms of conducting investigations and doing what they can to protect their intellectual property rights and to try to raise awareness of this issue. But when you're dealing with counterfeit and pirated goods, the civil remedie

International Trade committee  There are obviously issues relating to the port infrastructure itself, and terminal capacity, and so on. There's also the issues of the infrastructure leading up to the ports—being able to access the ports and leave the ports. Those are critical to members. The other issue that

International Trade committee  It's very difficult to calculate what the costs are, because it's basically a black market. When you're dealing with a black market, you obviously don't have clear figures. We base it on estimates that have been made globally and estimates in the United States. I believe in the U

International Trade committee  Not knowingly, no.

International Trade committee  Those are very good questions. It goes to the root of the problem that we have in Canada. Unfortunately, we don't have an effective border enforcement system in Canada for intellectual property rights. Part of the reason for that is we do not have a clear mandate for the Canada B

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  In terms of issues, really, given the makeup of our membership and the nature of the association, a key focus for our association is on issues related to customs procedures, regulations and requirements, and so on; issues related to the border and related to our ports of entry; i

International Trade committee  It's not so much a focus of our discussion. There's a recognition, clearly, that our trading relationship with the United States is going to continue to be our principal trading relationship and that we need to pay attention to that relationship, to pay attention to issues at the

International Trade committee  I don't know if I brought my statistics with me, but as I mentioned, we have just completed a survey of our membership. We have just over 750 members, and I think close to a third of our members responded to that survey. I believe the breakdown was something like 20% of our membe

International Trade committee  Right. I'm not sure. I don't have the statistics from ten years ago, so I'm not sure what the evolution would have been over the past ten years.

International Trade committee  Sure. In fact, I may have a copy with me. And I can also send on to you the submission made by IE Canada and some other Canadian associations.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure how far back we've been doing these annual surveys, but I can certainly check that for you.