Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for appearing here today. I do appreciate your comments, and particularly your comments relative to Talisman and what happened there. I do want to underscore the concerns here expressly expressed by EDC, but also relative, I suppose, to my 30 years of prior experience, too, of being involved in and around the extractive industry, and knowing full well the high standards they maintain--not just high standards, but pride in high standards. It's not just simply a buzzword, it's not just something they put on their letterhead; it's something they actually actively participate in. It's quite something to see, too--the standards.
There is the concern here of the chilling effect, I guess we could say, of EDC's concerns that the industry will look upon this bill as being rather a specification on how to deal with quotations or planning in other countries. If they have to subscribe to the perceived onerous details of this specification to compete in a foreign country, is it better for them, easier for them, to do this competition by locating their corporations in another country and competing from there, much like we have Canada Steamship Lines located in Barbados, because it's obviously a country of preferred flagging source rather than their being flagged from Canada? Is this what can happen? Can these Canadian corporations move out, relocate, so they can operate from an office in another country where they wouldn't have to subscribe to the perception of this bill?