Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation. I appreciate your taking the time from our October meeting and sharing this information. I look forward to the report on the cities as well. The sustainable, prosperous city is important for all Canadians.
Looking at specifics, I think some of the comments raised about income support and the human development index are important. My understanding is that people in the top 20 countries in that index all have similar life expectanies, to within maybe a few weeks, so there's not really not much discrepancy. Canada, the U.S., and Australia are included in that top 20.
We are facing other initiatives and challenges, as we discussed before the meeting. You just flew over B.C. and saw the devastation caused by the pine beetle, and you mentioned in your preamble that the forest sector is vital for British Columbia. Fortunately, in this committee we were able to come up with a softwood lumber agreement to provide the certainty and stability for the industry to deal with that devastation and to provide employment. Otherwise, we would have been in an even worse situation. We provided over $1.5 billion for agriculture. There's more to come, and we'll be dealing with the CAIS program, so we have challenges. We continue to move forward in working with industry and we appreciate your report.
Specifically on the U.S.-Canada situation, you mention that Canada will continue to be our main trading partner. In your preamble you talked a bit about some of the trade barriers. Did you have any particular trade barriers in mind that you see as unnecessary? Could you recommend anything to our committee to help foster a more competitive expansion of our trade?