Thank you.
I'd like to thank our guests.
I had two questions, but in the interests of the time we have, perhaps I could ask Ms. Watson if you could undertake to provide a written response back on this basis if this is appropriate.
You talked about the 20 offices in the United States where we have representation and how our Canadian consuls general make a couple of trips to Washington a year annually. I think your quote was “I hope we've been a little bit more creative”. My sense is you probably have.
Perhaps I could ask you to undertake how you would measure, or how we as this committee could measure, the effectiveness of consuls general and if I might even say broadly the sense of how we are doing as trade team, if you will, in the United States. Because I think we have a pretty exciting ambassador, and I wish him every success. But I don't know how we measure this from an effectiveness standpoint. So I'd like to get some indication from you as to what your KPIs are or how you measure that from an effectiveness standpoint?
Briefly, Mr. Stephenson, if I could ask you, please, border thickening is an issue Ms. Hall Findlay brought up. From an economic standpoint, we all know the reduction of that makes practical sense. We call it border thickening, but it's just the challenges of doing business and getting through the borders from a commercial standpoint. I think there are some very significant problems there.
Canada gets it. I think Canada is really clear that we want the border reduced. I'm not as confident that the Americans do and whether it's for commercial purposes under that guise of security or what have you. I don't know that.
We watched a move here the other day, and it was interesting. It was a Maclean's-CPAC special on American-Canadian relations. You may well have seen it. And this is third-hand, but Ms. Napolitano, when challenged, effectively said when asked about the border thickening, “What's wrong with that?” She saw that, I thought--again third-hand--as a positive, which is contrary to where we're trying to take it with what the Prime Minister announced last week in terms of the declaration.
So my quick question, and hopefully it's a quick answer, is how do you feel the declaration on a shared vision for perimeter security and economic competitiveness will be a game changer?