Thank you, Chair.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to attend your committee.
I would like to expand on what my colleague, Mr. Gasparro, said just now and on the importance of ensuring the confidentiality of commercial contracts.
However, I do want to say one thing before proceeding.
I'd just like to make one point really clear. I think we all, on both sides of this House, want what's best for Canada. We all want what's best for Canadian workers. Right from the start, we said that we would be helping Canadian companies, big and small, navigate through this very complex and difficult time that has been created by the United States, not by us. Let's get this clear: It's the United States government that has come up with these tariffs. They said very clearly—Mr. Lutnick said it not long ago—that their objective is to repatriate manufacturing production as much as possible to the United States. That's their objective. That's what we are facing. We are not helping them do that. We are fighting against that.
To achieve results, what is necessary, in our view, is that despite the provocations, which is what they are, we continue to talk to our counterparts in the United States. We have been able to obtain something that nobody else has obtained, which is a CUSMA carve-out. Goods that are compliant with CUSMA can cross the border tariff-free.
However, we do have a number of strategic sectors that are not covered by the CUSMA carve-outs—steel, aluminum, autos and softwood lumber. What the government is trying to accomplish with the negotiations is going along a two-track road, if you will. On the one hand, maintaining the CUSMA carve-outs—