Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm going to follow up with Mr. Balsillie.
This is with regard to your experience with the U.S. Business Council and the Business Council of Canada. I'm vice-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group. Some members here have been part of the delegations where we lobby the U.S. Congress and Senate. It's a bipartisan thing for Canada. In fact, it involves members of our Parliament and our Senate. It's been effective in many respects.
One of the things that I don't think we quite grasp over here is that there's always a sense of free trade, as you mentioned, or a free market economy. I've never seen that in my years of being elected. All we have right now is buy American, but the buy American act before that, the Jones Act, is a whole series of trade agreements that favour the United States.
Is this something that, as well as the Economic Council of Canada would give advice on how to deal with some of these things? We just finished our lobby to Congress and Senate a few weeks back. Even the strong supporters there—being American, they are elected officials—who have a lot of empathy don't seem to have any traction whatsoever on giving Canada an exemption from buy American, which we've had in the past.
What's your sense of these elements? Does this tie into what you're proposing as well?