Thank you very much, Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses. I greatly appreciate your coming before committee to talk about this. I know that some of you, through your envoys, have come here in previous parliamentary sessions and have met with the committee to discuss EFTA.
We have the agreement before us. Really, we're not negotiating anything more; we're just asking questions. My first question has to do with the current agreement and the way it's been negotiated. Our number one concern, from day one, has been levelling the playing field. This will echo some of the comments made by the representation from Norway about shipbuilding.
In your opinion, the number of years granted to Canada for tariff reduction was extraordinarily long as compared with other tariff reduction schemes in the agreement. I believe the reason we were able to negotiate that, or the reason we were concerned about that and had the 15-year tariff reduction scheme in place, was the fact that we felt shipbuilders were heavily subsidized in Norway--this is something I would like clarification on--until 2005, I believe, until the WTO was notified that this was no longer the case.
I know that this was said in the past, but I would like clarification from the Norway envoy. Is there any type of subsidization, in any shape or form, for shipbuilders in that country presently?