Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for coming.
Mr. Rebeck, we're here in Manitoba, and we've heard, as was mentioned previously, about the pulses, the grains, and everything. You mentioned the auto industry, and that's my neck of the woods so I want to talk about that briefly.
When I was first elected, back in 2006, the auto industry told us, “This is what we need, we need harmonization, and we need that bridge”. I remember we went on an industry tour when we were talking about these things. The late Jean Lapierre, who was the transport minister, talked about that and he said, “You will never build that bridge”.
Well, we're building that bridge and we've harmonized. Not only have we done that, but the auto industry in 2009 was finished, crippled, on its knees, and we bailed them out for something to the tune of $9 billion. I take a bit of offence when you say the Harper government wasn't active in doing what they could to save the auto industry and to help it to grow. We've had centres of excellence that we've continued to pour money into. In essence, we've done everything the auto industry has done and more, much more.
I want to add to that, there's opportunities now, too. The Ford plant in Brantford has a new international platform. Once this EU agreement takes place, they'll be able to transport those cars to Europe, and so will the Honda plant in Cambridge.
What could we have done that we didn't do to help the auto industry? You opened it up, so I'm going to give you that opportunity. What could we have done?