Thank you very much. I would particularly like to thank the workers who are here today, because your presence is extremely important.
We tend, I think, here in Ottawa to hear from corporate lawyers and economists. It's extremely important that ordinary working families be heard here in Ottawa. So thank you very much for coming here and sacrificing a day's pay to make your point.
I listened attentively, Mr. Lifson, and generally your objections seem to be more theoretical than anything else, though certainly people can't eat theories; they can't put a roof over their heads with theories, and since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was signed, we've seen that 80% of Canadian families have actually seen their real income go down, not up. The only people who have profited are the top 20% of Canadian income earners. So as for that theoretical base that somehow free trade, with no measures to protect Canadian jobs, is going to work, it hasn't worked. It's failed on the bottom line.
But you did raise one point that I think is a practical matter, and I would like to put that point to Ms. Aristeo. You were saying that you didn't believe the measures would be effective because essentially the Chinese portion of imports would be taken up by imports from other countries. I did want to come back to Ms. Aristeo on that and ask her whether she felt this was a legitimate argument or whether she did not think it was.