I think it's a very good question.
To rephrase what you're asking, it is: what is the deal that has been done for Canadian exporters, has it helped to improve the situation, and what are the ramifications of having such an agreement in place?
When you look at the impacts, the direct impact of the Buy American restrictions was that you had Canadian companies that couldn't bid on procurement contracts or stimulus projects in the United States. That was a direct impact, and we lost some business as a result of it. That's what we want to get fixed in the short term, but the impacts went much beyond that direct loss of sales or business contracts. You had Canadian suppliers who were no longer able to sell to their U.S. customers because their clients were not sure they could use Canadian-made inputs.
Some municipal governments were not tied by the Buy American restrictions. If they were using their own money, they could do whatever they wanted to do with it. Some of them decided they were just going to buy from American companies because they didn't want to carry two sets of inventories. So we have lost business as a result of that.
We have also lost business as a result of some Canadian companies that were supplying other companies doing business in the U.S. in procurement losing contracts and losing sales as well.
Finally, many companies were not directly impacted by Buy American restrictions, but we're saying they send the wrong signal. Many Canadian companies rely on foreign investment, and if the perception is that if you invest in Canada you might not be able to access the U.S. market, that sends the wrong signal. It makes a lot of investors afraid of putting their plants or their money in Canada.
The agreement partially solves some of those problems. The perception is that now Canada is exempted from the Buy American provisions. That's certainly a very good signal when it comes to attracting investment or even retaining our existing stock of investment in this country.
In terms of the short-term aspect of having access to procurement contracts funded by the recovery act in the U.S., we get a partial exemption. In other words, we're only exempted from seven programs, and most of the money in these programs has been spent already, so the benefits are limited. But are we better off with this agreement than with no agreement at all? We definitely are. In fact, we had discussions with the government throughout the negotiations, and I think they knew that if they had walked away from a bad deal, we would have supported them. The objective was not to get an agreement at all costs, but to get a deal that was going to improve things for Canadian companies. It's obviously not perfect, but I think we're better off with this than with no agreement at all.
Just to wrap up, you've asked whether this is tying our hands in the future or limiting what we can do in terms of using procurement in Canada. Provinces signed on to the WTO's agreement on government procurement, which provides American and only American companies with partial access to procurement contracts here in Canada. We have to say that these markets were by and large already quite open. But there is still a broad range of procurement that is not covered by this agreement. We hope both governments will be able to sit around the table and come to an agreement that would open up more markets.
As Mr. Sinclair indicated in his remarks, some markets remain closed to Canadian companies in the U.S. because of policies that have been there for quite some time. As was mentioned as well, municipalities in either the U.S. or Canada are not covered by the long-term portion of this agreement. So there is still a lot to negotiate. There is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of getting better access into markets in the U.S.
But our goal should always be to try to get better access into the U.S., rather than restricting our own markets here in Canada. There is so much more of a market in the United States for our goods and services. When you talk to Canadian companies, and I know you all do, their eyes are always first and foremost on the U.S. market. It should always be our goal to open as many opportunities and as many markets as possible for Canadian companies.