Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, folks. Thank you for the presentations.
Mr. Laurin, you talked about an area that I think is extremely worrisome in this country as a whole: the deficit on the manufacturing side and the surplus on the natural resources and commodities side.
In this country, it's great to see the oil, natural gas, and commodities industries doing well, but that masks to a great extent what's happening in the rest of the economy. The economy's here because of how well the oil industry is doing. The manufacturing sector is extremely important to wealth generation and jobs.
You mentioned that barriers to trade and investment are structural in nature. How do you see this potential agreement overcoming that, and what needs to be done to overcome it in a way that will benefit the manufacturing sector?