Thank you.
My question is for Mr. Nantais.
First of all, I'd like to thank all of you gentlemen for taking time out of what I am certain is a very busy schedule to come up and speak to this committee.
Just as some history, we know the government is looking at proposals submitted by General Motors and Chrysler, and they must have an answer by the end of the month. Concurrently with that, this committee was conceived by Mr. Michael Ignatieff, who thought it was important that we look outside the box and determine whether or not there are some things that could be offered by the industry as part of the overall solution.
So with that in mind, I move back to last year. I look at what I understood was going on in this industry before I became an elected member of Parliament. What I saw was a decline in the industry. I noticed from General Motors documents that in 2005 they were employing 20,000 people here in Canada, and that has steadily gone down to about 8,000 to 9,000 this past year, with an expected reduction to about 8,000 by mid-year in 2009.
Mr. Nantais, over that period of time, I am curious if there were proposals by the Detroit three in Canada to the Canadian government, proposals that could or should have evolved into a national auto policy of some sort to deal with this—not exclusively a national auto policy, but a North American auto policy, given the integrated nature of the American and Canadian industry. I ask this because I'm looking at an October 2007 document that was submitted by the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, which shows that much of what's being discussed today was actually thought of and conceived back in 2007.
So could you talk to us about what was presented, what was asked, what was not responded to? And in your estimation, should we have a national auto policy, and what should it include?