Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses who are here today.
There's one thing that's come up in this, and I want to drill down a bit on it. It seems that Canada.... I know that in the automotive sector in terms of automotive development, we've always treated NAFTA as this principled rule of our relationship. It was the free market society of the United States that we competed against, and the fact of the matter is that their greenfield strategy for the securing of auto plants was basically cash at hand and building roads, infrastructure, housing and so forth, to win over those jobs at our expense. We would be the boy scouts, so to speak, and say, “Oh no, NAFTA is...”. Since that time, we haven't had a greenfield plant in the auto sector in I think about 15 years, and it goes back even further for other developments.
The reason I use that example is one of the things you've mentioned, Mr. Geist, which I do want to talk about and leave the last couple of minutes for. That is patent issues, and then some of the protection not being.... You mentioned the drug industry, where there was a commitment for 10%. That was the whole deal that was cut. The fact of the matter is that there can be non-tariff barriers for preventing Canadian innovation with regard to some of the patent trolling and the limitations. How does that affect Canadian ideas getting forward?