Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, witnesses.
I'd like to extend congratulations as well to Monsieur Fréchette and the rest of your team. Welcome to the committee, and, Mr. Fréchette, thank you for your service to the Parliament of Canada before this appointment.
A number of points have been raised. I just have to question one of the points Madam Nash raised. She mentioned—and maybe we could get some real numbers here—67,000 fewer jobs. I'm trying to understand where that came from, when we know that the jobs that were lost during the economic downturn of 2008–2009 especially have been replaced. I'm questioning where that came from.
Taken along the lines of Mr. Jean's comments about commodity prices and lack of pipeline capacity, in your comments you looked at the improving fundamentals in the U.S. They're still modest, but they are improving. We heard just a few moments ago that their entire debt ceiling has dropped by two-thirds. Now they still have one third of enormous debt which affects our ability to trade with them. But if you take that back again to pipeline capacity and commodity prices, and if we actually had that extra $18 billion a day, that would adjust every measurement we look at in our economy. I guess I'm just asking if you would agree or disagree with that, and how we as a nation can move forward on that type of infrastructure.