Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We've been talking a lot about the very serious impact of tariffs, and to me it has always been the catalyst in the automotive and manufacturing industry.
I come from the steel service industry. I worked there for over 20 years. What I've been seeing over the last 10 to 15 years or so has been a lot of job flight and capital flight out of the manufacturing industry, out of the auto industry, into places like Monterrey, Mexico, and into the broader United States.
For instance, over the 10-year period between 2014 and 2024, our vehicle production in Canada went down by about a million vehicles per year. We have very costly policies still in place, like the emissions cap for example, and the fact that it takes 18 years to approve a mine.
We were talking about the importance and the need for critical mineral development in this country so we can facilitate production of EV batteries and things where China has a monopoly on a lot of this right now.
Mr. Kingston, I'll direct this to you.
I'm wondering how significant policy misalignment is with the U.S. We've been talking about EV mandates, for example, but what about more broadly with respect to regulations and taxation and some of these other key factors that are impeding our opportunity to increase our growth in our sector? How significant is that in influencing where automakers are making the choice to invest capital dollars?