Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to the officials who are here. Thank you for your hard work and your service. I know that every member of this committee is very grateful to you for your work.
I'll start by directing this question to Mr. Kennedy, but if any of the other panellists hear something they would like to respond to, I encourage them to follow up. I would appreciate it very much.
We heard in testimony at yesterday's committee meeting that acquiring raw materials from overseas isn't really the issue, but rather the issue is that China dominates the market for processing the minerals, the materials, and for the production of batteries. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about how Canada is developing its own processing and manufacturing capacity. Let's bring it back to the auto industry for a moment. Why is that important to our domestic auto industry?