Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I'd like to thank each one of you gentlemen for appearing before us today.
Mr. Laws, we've seen you so much in the last little while. I think people are starting to wonder if we're dating on the side.
Mr. Read, I think what we've seen here is an example of what can happen when you become frustrated at committee, and I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to address the issue in the way I think I hear from you that you would like the issue addressed. We have to make sure we're careful that your comments aren't taken out of context, because I'm sure you didn't get into this industry hoping to have a captive market and simply only have Canada to sell to and compete with people like XL only.
I do know we have you and Mr. Nilsson, who's from my area originally, here as examples of Canadian companies that can compete with the biggest and best in the world, if they're given the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, and that's one of our problems.
You brought up SRM removal. It is something that the industry did push on us when we did get up here, but not in the exact form that it has taken. I believe one of the problems that you would agree with on SRM removals--and probably around the table--is that we've gone much farther than the U.S. has gone. Even though they said they were going to catch up, the U.S. has yet to catch up. There are other examples of regulatory burden that we put on our producers and our processors that the United States doesn't have. Is this what you would see as one of the biggest factors in moving forward with the competitiveness of our industry?