Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to you and your team for your hard work.
I'm part of an interparliamentary association of Canada and the U.S. that involves Parliament and also the Senate. We go down to Washington twice a year and across the U.S. and have co-meetings with Senate and Congress and so forth. We know that both capitals can be logic-free zones at times.
We saw some of the things that emerged over the years. I want to go to the point of the environment and labour. In our meetings with Congress and Senate over the years, and those included Republicans and Democrats, I don't think I can remember—and this is a bipartisan group; we go as team Canada—when labour and the environment weren't raised by members of Congress and the Senate, even in particular with regard to Mexico, as factors against workers being competitive here in our country. Why wasn't that part of the original deal? That really led to the exceptionally longer period of time because it had to go back to Congress.
Can I have your comments about why we weren't pushing that from the beginning?