Understood.
You play the cards you're dealt sometimes. We didn't ask in 2003 for the Canadian government to eliminate duties on least developed countries. In fact we came to this committee and to those in the Senate and said, don't do that. But they did. You have to think about what was prevailing in 2003: We had high and quite restrictive import quotas on many countries, and we had at that time an 18% duty on those garments.
So it was done pretty much overnight. I'm the guy who got the call from a DG in Industry who literally said that everything was going ahead on December 22, 2002, and that effective nine days later the duties were going to zero and there would be no quotas.
So my first comment is that government policy directs the industry. All of our major retail customers in Canada were following just as closely as we were, and so they would say to their suppliers, “Well, it's done. Go to Bangladesh. We have a factory for you. Go do the product there”.
That's certainly not what I would consider reasonable industrial policy, but that's exactly what happened in 2003. And yes, we are well aware that there are different sets of circumstances there, and again, the companies that remain in Canada don't directly compete with that product. That's gone forever. They produce better goods at higher prices.
I would also say that those companies are aware of what's going on there and they are trying to deal with that. Bangladesh has recently had some very serious problems and we're working with the Retail Council of Canada, the National Retail Federation in the States, and various industry associations in Europe to try to bring more standards to that.