Thank you very much, and thank you for all the excellent work you've done with respect to the auto industry, both in my time as Minister of Industry and since, in my time as Minister of the Environment. We've had an opportunity to work together. It was interesting; I had the opportunity yesterday to meet the new president of Ford Canada, and he was very complimentary about the progress they're making with you in Windsor with respect to the Essex engine plant investment, which is so important there.
The essential challenge, and this has been on the table for a number of years, is how to fulfill our industrial and environmental objectives simultaneously with respect to the automobile industry. Obviously, the industry is in trying circumstances at this point. I won't get into that in all its detail, other than to say that our government is clearly working together with the U.S. administration to ensure that the steps we take are taken in concert and that they are oriented toward ensuring the industry is not only competitive domestically and internationally, but also achieves the highest possible environmental standards.
The announcement yesterday is an extremely important one, not only because it achieves that objective but it really sets the regulatory process in place to ensure that we will have harmonized fuel economy and carbon emission standards in North America. Every effort will be made, using the CEPA legislation year after year, to ensure complete congruity between the Canadian and the American standards. We will never again find ourselves in a circumstance where Canadian federal standards are discordant with North American standards in the North American marketplace.
There is an obvious rationale behind that--namely, in Canada we produce 20% of the automobiles in North America. More than 80% of the vehicles we produce are exported to the United States. They are sold into a different market than they are produced in, so this is a large integrated marketplace.
When I spoke yesterday, I reminded people that one of my first acts as Minister of Industry was to load myself into a Linamar truck, along with 18 rear-axle portions of the truck. We travelled across the border just to measure the time it takes to move auto parts back and forth in your neck of the woods. By the time a North American vehicle is produced, some parts in that vehicle have been back and forth across that border up to eight times.
We believe we are fulfilling our environmental promise going forward. We will be the first jurisdiction federally in North America with tailpipe emission standards. Henceforth, automobiles in Canada will be regulated in terms of the amount of carbon they emit, not in terms of fuel economy. We will harmonize those numbers with the United States.