Yes. Thank you for that.
Yes, I do see some parallels. Unfortunately, this agreement is only the second-worst agreement that Canada has ever signed. The first one was the softwood lumber agreement. My testimony four years ago before this committee is still available, I suppose. I said what I had to say on that one.
This one is a bit different, even though you can see some parallels. Again, Canada approached the United States, basically telling them, “We need a deal at any cost”. If you say that to anyone, you'll get one. We did get one, and that cost is high. It will be seen in the future. I'm not talking about this very temporary deal that will evaporate next year with the end of the recovery act funding. I'm talking about the permanent part of the deal, whereby we committed the procurement of our provinces and cities permanently to U.S. suppliers. That's where we failed the last time.
There was a good reason why we failed. It was because basically more than 20% of procurement was reserved by the U.S. for small business and minority-owned businesses, and that's exactly the very core of what our small businesses and medium-sized businesses were aiming at. We had an advantage over the Europeans and the Asians because we're next door neighbours. We can service these markets by land. That's why we didn't agree in 1995; and this time around, I don't know why we agreed to this one. That fundamental fact has not changed.
I come at this from a free-trader perspective. I spent most of my professional life negotiating, first with the federal government and then as a representative of the Province of Quebec, basically in negotiating market-opening agreements. So I agree that this is what we need, but unfortunately in this instance the U.S. protected its stake and we didn't. And that's a permanent thing, unfortunately.