Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank all of you for taking the time to come. It's important for us to get out of Ottawa and listen to people in the field, as they say, not just to talk about the agreement, but also to talk about how the country and our key sectors can prepare for it as we bring it through to conclusion.
My friend Mr. Davies bemoans with regularity that there are only sector by sector marketing materials, as he describes them. But I'd invite him to actually read them, because then, Mrs. Janega, he'd see that machinery and equipment manufacturers face between a 2% and 8% tariff rate with Europe; electrical parts and equipment, between 3% and 14%; scientific and precision instruments, between 3% and 7%; rail products, between 2% and 4%; and plastics and moulds and pipe fittings, in the 6% to 8% range. As each industry and as manufacturers dive down, they're going to realize that their goods will be most cost-competitive in Europe right away.
But that prelude leads me to a question from your actual testimony, which is that you have a key statistic that 24% of the workforce in Nova Scotia is employed with your members, within the manufacturing sector. But then later you said only 500 could be categorized as true exporters. How do you think we can get more of those critical manufacturing jobs to look at markets beyond Canada?