Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Jennings, as they say, a person can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The same applies to the auto industry, and we know that this industry is cyclical. We need only think back a few years to our bidding war with the Americans, who wanted to heavily subsidize their auto industry to attract investments, like the Stellantis investment, over to their side.
I've always been a critic of this kind of one-upmanship approach. What we need instead is to develop an industry, an entire supply chain, based on regional resources, particularly for electric batteries. We need to extract and process lithium, nickel and other minerals close to the resource. Every step is included, from crushing to manufacturing anodes and cathodes. Abitibi-Témiscamingue has sulphuric acid, lithium and more. All of these steps would equip us to produce what could be the greenest battery in the world using a production cell that respects the work, that doesn't impose forced labour, and that meets the highest environmental standards. Quebec's laws are extremely strict in this area. Institutional knowledge can also be leveraged. If we did all that, I think that industries would flock here to Quebec and Canada to build their cars. We would be producing the greenest product with the best traceability in the world. That's what will bring companies to invest here.
Because of the free trade agreement with the United States, the strategy used four or five years ago ultimately consisted of giving money away to attract these companies. It was relatively easy. All of a sudden, however, we realized that we hadn't developed a mining value chain for critical and strategic minerals. Donald Trump's arrival stalled the business momentum and Stellantis ultimately decided to move its Jeep Compass production activity elsewhere. This is problematic, and puts Canada in a very difficult situation.
My first question concerns a number of issues. Stellantis, Honda and Volkswagen were there. We're talking about agreements worth tens of billions of dollars. Quebec didn't need to feel too left out because there was a potential investment in Northvolt. Naturally, as Quebeckers, we know that the small and medium-sized enterprise ecosystem and jobs revolving around the auto industry are exclusively in Ontario. However, Quebec leads in all things related to innovation in the electrification of transportation. Still, we feel robbed.
As far as the Stellantis, Honda and Volkswagen strategy goes, are the contracts similar? Is the Stellantis contract specific to Stellantis? Is each of these contracts developed along these lines?