Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your presentations.
This has been a dialogue day for us. It is a pleasure to listen to the various points of view and to what our political opponents and the people around the table have to say.
There is a lot of crowing about infrastructure, and I'd like to say a few words about that before I ask my questions.
When I was mayor, from 2000 to 2007, there was no federal program. The program was an idea put forward by Mr. Martin, which was implemented by our government. We brought in the excise tax on gasoline and made it permanent through legislation. We doubled that tax, and indexed it.
We always respected provincial jurisdiction in the areas of public transit, social housing, health and post-secondary education. These are all areas of provincial jurisdiction.
From 2007 to 2014 and from 2014 to today, we implemented the biggest infrastructure projects in history. We had to sign an agreement on the gas excise tax with the provinces and territories. And so an agreement was signed with all of the provinces and territories on that. The agreement with Quebec was signed in Roberval, on June 25, 2014, in the city where I had the honour to serve as mayor. After that, Quebec did not submit any projects to the federal government. Since I am no longer familiar with the files, I will not speak on behalf of the Quebec government as to why this was not done. Some projects must have been submitted in the past few months.
A lot of boasting goes on about infrastructure, but the government that actually delivered on that count in this country, to date, was the previous government.
All that said, Ms. Gendreau, I found what you had to say about intellectual property very interesting. I am going to ask you to do a brief analysis. We hear what the American electoral candidates have to say, and we can see that protectionism is making a comeback. We signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. With the TPP, the Americans tried to impose certain things on us and wanted to fine-tune that agreement somewhat. In your opinion, what was conceded in terms of intellectual property between NAFTA and the TPP? Where are we headed? What is your advice on what needs to be done?