As I mentioned, protectionism is looming because of the economic realities. It raises its ugly head when everybody is thinking about jobs and not understanding that you lose more jobs than you gain through protectionism. If you happen to be somebody with one of those interests who's looking to be protected, it's a hard argument to see the other side. That's just a reality.
I can only stress again that the importance needs to be understood amongst not just policy-makers in Washington, but governors, mayors, union leaders, and the news media in particular. They have such a role in defining what becomes a story and how that story gets spun even when they're talking about things such as these kinds of provisions in order to understand how fundamentally important the economic integration is. Again, I think the more you get away from the discussion of trade, the better.
Trade is a dirty word. I don't know why it is. It doesn't make any sense. It's been the single most positive economic force in raising the quality of life for people globally through all of history. It has very little constituency. Get away from that vocabulary and talk in terms of the job impacts and the economic impacts of the average person in Iowa, or the average person in South Carolina who doesn't think Canada is relevant to them at all, except what they hear in the media occasionally about how we somehow might be losing jobs because of NAFTA.
There again, too often Canada kind of gets sucked in with realities and prejudices in American opinion related to Mexico. NAFTA is NAFTA, and therefore everything is bad because it's NAFTA. Again, it has to be bilateral. You have to break the Canadian discussion away from being tied up to the different realities of Mexico and you have to engage American stakeholders.
I think what the Montreal Board of Trade wants to do is get out to places like Pittsburgh, for example, and engage with the Chamber of Commerce there to get greater awareness of the importance of Canada to a place like Pittsburgh, where right now the concern may be about selling American steel, and make them understand what the real balance of interest is. That's the pathway.