Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With respect to the structured financing facility, many of you will be aware that this policy was renewed in June 2007 for a three-year period, with a funding level of $50 million, so that is part of the government's approach to the shipbuilding industry at this time.
The question of combining capital cost allowance with the other element of the structured financing facility has been raised on different occasions by various groups or individuals. To the extent that it involves tax measures, this would fall within the purview of the Department of Finance. So between the Department of Industry and the Department of Finance, we as officials from DFAIT would not be directly involved, but certainly they would be well aware of the interest in doing that.
Also back in 2007 the government announced more than $8 billion in procurement initiatives of ships that will be built in Canada by Canadian shipyards. Certainly the agreement under discussion here this morning, the Canada-EFTA FTA, does not affect in any way the government's ability to pursue its procurement program.
As David mentioned, and you may have already touched on some of these, the agreement itself provides unprecedented provisions in terms of the shipbuilding industry, or the ship industry in terms of the phase-out period for tariffs. As was mentioned, these were negotiated after extremely close and extensive consultations with the industry involving other government departments as well.
Just to be a bit more specific, never in our previous FTA history have we obtained a phase-out period of 15 years for a Canadian industrial product. The longest we had ever obtained in terms of a Canadian phase-out period would have been 10 years. So for the most sensitive products, there's a 15-year phase-out with a three-year bridge period, and for all other sensitive products related to the ship industry, a 10-year phase-out period with a three-year bridge period.