Thank you, and thank you for accommodating me by telephone.
As a short introduction, Tenaris is a global steel company. We are also committed to local manufacturing, so in Canada we have around 1,000 employees in normal times. We have operations in Calgary, Edmonton and Sault Ste. Marie. We are part of the supply chain serving Canada's energy sector.
We support Bill C-101, and we do that from the perspective of a user and a manufacturer of steel and a supplier to a Canadian market that understands and recognizes the global implications of overcapacity. We felt them here in Canada.
We are a manufacturer, and we believe that's an important value for the Canadian economy. Why do we support this well-thought-out bill? Our objective, and I think a sound objective, is for the Canadian steel sector to be free from distortions based on rapid changes in trade flows, be those rapid changes as a result of dumping or even undumped goods that are changes of flows due to government causes or others.
It's an important tool, and it's just a tool, to limit trade exposure to these changes in trade flows. It's also an important part of a broader policy commitment to defend Canadian jobs, and that broader commitment includes the April 26 announcement by the Minister of Finance of a working group, which we also support, and we would like to see the rapid implementation of those recommendations. It's also consistent with Canada's NAFTA position, with Canada, the United States and Mexico competing against the world.
Tenaris is a global company. We have operations in all three countries, and we believe it's important that NAFTA competes as an integrated economy.
Our view is that there's no downside to this legislation. It is a prospective tool to be put into the tool kit to be available to be used when warranted. This tool is there at the finance minister's discretion in case we again see rapid changes in trade flows.
In short, as a reminder, it is a safeguard in our view, only to limit distortions of trade flows. It limited increases from the level of a historical standard. It did not limit imports at all. Any changes in price that any subsectors would have felt were likely as attributable more to global implications as they were to specific actions in Canada.
For these reasons we support this legislation 100% and would like to commend the Canadian government for all its actions over the last five years—which includes more than one political party—that have been working towards having a Canadian market free from trade distortions.
Thank you.