Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses this morning.
I know that all of my colleagues have questions, so I will try to share my time with Mr. Allison in my first round.
I want to delve a little deeper into some of the transboundary issues we've talked about here this morning. The whole issue of non-tariff trade barriers at the border is probably best placed to Mr. Rooney. In particular are compliance checks, which seem to be the bane of our existence on the east coast of Canada, at Calais, Maine. I'll give you an example. We have one trucking firm that trucks fish. They take six to eight trips every week across the border into Boston, primarily, but into New York as well. They have been stopped 22 times this year for compliance. That's outrageous. It may sound a little fishy, I know--before someone else says it, right?
The issue here is quite simple. You know, you're stopped at the border. You're required to unload your load. Every industry faces it, but usually not to that extent. It costs about $400 to unload a load of produce, regardless of what it is. It can be more, in the case of Christmas trees. Then everything is checked to make sure that you're in compliance. This particular shipper has always been in compliance. He's never been out of compliance. Then you have to put everything back onto the truck and continue on your way.
Is there anything we can do with the border for a shared vision of perimeter security to have a better level of economic competitiveness that avoids this type of action by the Americans? I'm a huge supporter of continued talks with our American customers, because they are our American customers, about anything we can do to make it easier to cross the border, whether it's for trade or simply for people.
I would like a comment on how we can avoid that particular problem, if there's a joint border group we can actually go to, and follow up on it.