Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll try to keep within the time restraints. It is getting late on Thursday. I'm never too good at that, and the opposite side obviously isn't either.
I would like to welcome our witnesses. On behalf of all Canadians, thank you for the hard work that you and your department have done on this file. This is not an easy file. Our closest neighbour and our largest trading partner is not always easy to do business with. There are a lot of little stumbling blocks along the way.
Just to review some of what my colleagues have said, and maybe to shine a slightly brighter light on it, we never got an agreement for a proposal from our provincial-municipal counterparts until almost the end of August. A month later, the department was able to sit down with the Americans in round one. Four and a half months after that, in the middle of February, we were able to sign an agreement. That is absolutely record time on any kind of bilateral international agreement, I'm certain, anywhere on the planet. We have firm commitments that include 37 states straight across the board. I do believe you deserve to be commended on that.
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 has hurt Canadian business and Canadian enterprises, without question. It's been asked a couple of times, what are the benefits? Frankly, one of the chief benefits, I think, is the fact that for the first time we were able to get provincial and municipal agreement to open up sub-national procurement. I'm going to ask a question on that, after I finish my opening comments, but that's certainly one of the greater benefits. For the first time in many of our agreements, our provinces and municipalities had a definite stake. I'd say our provinces had a place at the table where they could help negotiate their own terms in this agreement.
Again, getting back to the benefits, programs that we were not able to bid on under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 we are able to bid on, with the remaining funds available. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rural utilities services, water and waste disposal programs; rural housing under USDA; the conservation block grants under the Department of Energy; the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, state energy programs--suddenly all these programs, or what's left in them, because I realize the difficulty of finding that out, are open. Housing and urban development, environmental protection, clean water, drinking water--all are projects that were not available and were not open to a competitive bidding system prior to this agreement.
I realize that the carve-outs balance one another, but I think there's a section here that most Canadians are not as aware of, and that's the fact that much of this prior to the agreement was more one-sided. The Americans did have a competitive advantage in bidding on Canadian bids.
I'd like you to explain that a little more. Some municipalities had actually opened up their bidding to international bidders, to my understanding.