Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today, and thank you to the clerks for keeping track of what we do.
Those were very powerful opening statements. I appreciate all of you and what you've contributed here today.
Mr. Kingston, last month this committee heard some pretty powerful testimony from Alberta auto dealer Doug Green. He described the necessary infrastructure investments at the dealership level that were seemingly unrecoverable: inventory that couldn't be sold and shrinking margins with rural customers walking away. We can couple that with his statement that roughly 50% of the vehicles that typical dealerships sell, especially in the prairies and rural areas, are vocational vehicles that impact trade and GDP-generating activities.
How widespread do you think these pressures are across the country with this forced capital spending on infrastructure and the unsaleable inventory? Can you talk to this rural-urban mismatch and how this manifests?