Thank you, Chair.
I actually meant to bring this up when my friend Mr. Easter was speaking. I say “my friend” thoughtfully, because when he was asking some questions of our officials, I thought that the tone and the attack was very inappropriate. Maybe you spank your cattle in P.E.I. to get their attention, but I have to tell you that in terms of dealing with our officials, I think there's a more thoughtful way to do it.
I think we're now at the point where what we're trying to say is.... We can lay blame, but I think the issue here is where do we go from here. That's the intent of this question.
You've indicated, Mr. Allen, some of the rationale. I think we know that as well. President Obama has.... They have a pretty tough economy, and we want the U.S. to have a good economy. We know he's facing re-election; you've already articulated all of that, I think, relatively well.
I'd like to leave us with a sense of some comfort here, if you could provide this to us in terms of what I would like to call a “Team Canada“ approach to this very serious issue. It's one thing to reach out to members of the House and the Senate, as you indicated. I think one of our colleagues here—perhaps it was Mr. Ravignat--was making the comment about our approach in terms of utilizing every resource we have. What do we have? Obviously we have our officials talking to officials. We have our embassy staff in the United States presumably doing what they do. We have our provinces and territories, which have no small impact. We've talked about the number of states in the United States where we're the leading trade market for them. We have our own members of Parliament. We have senators with influence. We have associations and industries.
I guess what I would like to be left with is a sense of whether there is a comprehensive Team Canada response to this. I believe it's that serious. Can I ask who's coordinating that, and how does it look, if you were to put that on paper and say “Here's who we have here and there and in different places tackling all these folks and we're coming together and reporting with each other on some organized basis”? Can you give us some confidence that something like that is in place? Can you just give us a sense of what that looks like a little more formally?