Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and to all our guests who are here.
We could have each of you individually for the full two hours, so I apologize that my pale five minutes is not going to get to everybody.
Let me get back on my soapbox in terms of competitiveness. I still say fundamentally that on trade deals, I think as a country we've done a decent job, our government and the Liberals. We will give them credit where credit's due. That's where it's going to stop, though.
Sorry, guys. You're not going to get any more credit than that. Take what you can get. I have to tell you from a competitiveness point of view though—and all of you touched on it—we're getting our butts kicked around the world.
I look at what we decided to do yesterday, with some half measures in an economic update, and I'm afraid I'm not nearly as optimistic as maybe some of my colleagues on the opposite side here are.
We still have issues with regulations. That was mentioned as well as access to capital, skills training, cost of energy and infrastructure spending. We haven't spent any money on infrastructure in the last three years because we're setting up a bank.
That doesn't even talk about your point, Mr. Dekker, about critical trade infrastructure, which is separate from the infrastructure we need in our communities. National debt continues to go...and then there's personal taxation. I don't know in what world or on what planet over 50% for personal taxation is actually an okay thing, where the more you work and the harder you work, the more gets drawn back.
Jocelyn, you talked about some of these competitiveness issues. By the way, I haven't even talked about tariffs yet, which is obviously right there. Why would we ever even think about signing the deal without removing tariffs?
Talk to me about the reality of some of the members on the ground. I know for a fact that businesses are moving to the States as we speak, yet this government is clueless in terms of actually realizing that this is going on.
Talk to me about real world examples of what is going on right now.