Thank you for that question, MP Epp, and it's good to see you again. Thank you so much for all your support for our industry.
Getting back to free trade with the U.S. is the most important thing that we can have as an industry. That's where we do all of our export work. Very little goes overseas. It's very difficult for us to see us doing any work overseas, given some of the protections that other countries have, including the European Union, which does a really good job of keeping foreign steel out of their projects, even if we have a free trade agreement. For us, we want to get back to doing that.
Steel is also very heavy, and that's the other aspect of not really being able to work in markets other than the U.S., so we want to get back to that. That's why I say it's really important.
However, there are more jobs to be gained if we protect our own domestic industry and we are able to ensure, especially on taxpayer-funded projects, that we are using Canadian steel and Canadian-fabricated steel. That's the most important aspect—that the value-added work be done here. If you're using Canadian steel, you're probably guaranteeing that all the value-added work will be done here in Canada as well. That's really important to us. There are a lot of opportunities to be gained by having our own market.
The private sector is also seeing a lot of jobs going overseas. We're seeing that happening primarily with the big projects, a lot of the resource projects and then a lot of the taxpayer-funded large projects here in Canada as well, such as bridge projects. When you're using a multinational engineering or general contracting company, that's where all the leakage is going in terms of jobs and work going overseas. It's really important for us, especially on taxpayer-funded projects, but it's also important for the private sector. We should be applying pressure to the private sector to be using Canadian steel and Canadian value-added work here.