Thank you.
Minister, thank you for all the hard work on this file. Mr. Verheul, to you and your team, I know there have been a lot of hours spent on this, and it's not an easy one.
I may respectfully disagree by saying that section 232 and NAFTA are linked, certainly from the President's point of view. As a matter of fact, 10 minutes before this committee started, Mr. Trump tweeted that Canada is not going to take advantage of the United States anymore.
We've seen these tweets before, and they continue to happen. It seems that everything he tweets ends up actually happening at some point in time.
When we chatted last week about tariffs, I was concerned about schedule I not going into force right away. You said you wanted to consult and try to get the right deal in place. I would say that more than ever, the industry needs certainty.
Today I want to talk about schedule II briefly. I've heard from a lot of companies: KingFisher boats, Whirlpool, JEM Strapping Systems, Okanagan Spring Brewery, Steelway Building Systems, GGS Structures, and the list goes on. They are really concerned about how schedule II will possibly affect them by making it more expensive and less competitive. I think any kind of protracted trade war is not going to go well for Canada, given the size of the United States.
We want a comment on schedule II this time. I asked you about schedule I last week. What are your thoughts around how you got to that list and whether you feel you balanced the businesses versus the trade aspect?