Mr. Chair, may I respond to Monsieur Vincent's second question about counterfeit product and intellectual protection?
This is a major challenge. For Canadian companies, it means having adequate surveillance and security systems in place. For our security systems, it means we're ready to challenge any industrial espionage that's taking place. But it also means we need much more effective implementation of our trade rules at the border. In 2004, the United States customs agency made 65,000 seizures of counterfeit product coming into the United States; we made six coming into Canada.
The fact that we are not policing the border and effectively implementing the trade regulations that are there, not to protect Canadian industry but simply to provide the adequate IP protection that is necessary for any business to run—including Chinese businesses, by the way—has meant that Canada has been placed on the watch list of the U.S. Trade Representative's office as one of the major exporters of counterfeit product into the United States. We export more automotive castings to the United States marked “Made in Canada” than we manufacture in Canada, and that's raised some red flags in the U.S. trade administration.
If we don't get this right, we're not only.... And we are losing. It's a health and safety issue; it's a consumer protection issue; it's an issue for business. It's losing business to counterfeit product, but what's going to happen is that our major trading partner is going to close the border to certain products that they cannot trust coming in to the United States via Canada, because they think they're counterfeit product. That is a priority I think our trade and our customs administration has to respond to at the border.