Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
To our witnesses, thank you. Mr. Verheul and Minister, thank you for your hard work on this file. I know you've spent many nights and weekends working on it, and you're probably wondering where your home is now, whether it's Ottawa or Washington, so thank you for that.
Last Thursday, Canadian steel producers stopped shipping orders to the United States. I had a chance to meet with the Canadian Steel Producers Association on Monday, as I'm sure you did, Minister, or certainly your boss did. I know the Prime Minister had a meeting with them.
They've indicated to us that unless this is resolved—and I know it's very complicated, and it's not going to be resolved overnight—they will probably be reducing production and laying people off if a deal is not done. I get the fact that this is probably going to take some time.
My question would be, with respect to table 1, why did we not immediately impose tariffs on the steel? I realize in table 2, there are going to be some things we want to discuss. Given the fact we knew this was may be coming, I'm wondering why we didn't do some of that consultation ahead of time. More importantly, why are we not issuing tariffs on steel and aluminum immediately?