At the global level for customs classification, goods are listed at a six-digit subheading level. Individual countries have the ability to further subdivide those into eight-digit items to serve their own economic policy objectives or, for example, as a result of trade negotiations.
Since 2009, successive Canadian governments have undertaken a proactive tariff policy whereby we have been undertaking significant amounts of unilateral tariff elimination, such as elimination of tariffs on imported machinery and equipment, production input and agri-food processing input.
What has happened as a result of those tariff reductions is that the six-digit parent item is duty free. We may have had a variety of eight-digit items with variable duty rates and these have all each become duty free as well, so it's no longer necessary to have that level of specificity in law. What we've done is effectively roll up those items to the six-digit level.
Again, as I said, the benefit of that is for importers. It will reduce the scope for misclassification and the need to file for corrections, and it will also result in less need for enforcement resources by the CBSA.