That's great, and I'll be brief, Mr. Chair.
Just in terms of Mr. Cannan's question, there are a couple of questions there. He made an opening comment about skills, and maybe I'll just come back to that at the end.
I have just a quick remark on the importance of the North American relationship. As I mentioned at the top of my remarks today, call it first among equals, call it whatever you like, it's the pre-eminent relationship, and from our membership's standpoint, it's where you have to maintain focus.
There were two comments I was going to make. One was in the area of regulation, and you've heard lots about that already so I won't get into any more detail. The only comment I would add there is that if we say you need to be strategic about this whole process, whether it's dealing with the United States, dealing with our full NAFTA partners, or thinking about how we should do multilateral trade negotiations, being strategic is the right way to go.
If you're going to do that, I think we have something here in terms of the SPP, the security and prosperity partnership that has been launched amongst the three NAFTA partners. We're very hopeful that in bringing together a lot of these initiatives...and I know there are some 300 initiatives in the SPP, which makes it a little daunting. But when the leaders of the three countries got together earlier this year they came up with five priority areas, and regulation is in that list. I'm happy to see that.
So is the border. Jay has already mentioned the border, and that was the second point I wanted to mention. I don't think you can spend enough time on this as a subject of importance for us.
What is the context of that discussion today? There are two very different ones. One is ours, which is very much interested, from a commerce standpoint, in building on security. But we're dealing with our partner south of the border, which is fundamentally focused on security issues. That's where it starts for them. It doesn't end there, but we're the ones pushing uphill on that issue with America in terms of getting the movement of people and goods as part of the discussion and into a security agenda. So we need to support the security agenda and we need to keep battling away on the...and I think the SPP will help us in that regard.
Those were two comments I wanted to make, and if there's time later I'll come back on skills, Mr. Chairman.