One of the things we think is important for the panel to understand is that right now there seems to be.... I was saying to the chair, in a chat before we got officially started, if you had asked me to make comments on TPP about 18 months ago, I think my comments from member feedback would be slightly different than they are this morning. There seems to be a high level of skepticism right now amongst our members that TPP, or in fact any of the major free trade agreements that are on the table, such as CETA, are likely going to come to fruition.
The P word, the protectionist word, seems to be on the air globally. Whether that's justified, I'll leave to others to decide, but it seems to be the feeling that's where we're heading.
I think a lot of it is based on what's happening in the U.S. primaries right now, and some of the things they are seeing and hearing on television, and I think it's leaving people with an impression.
The final comment I'll make is that normally we don't deal with interprovincial trade. We focus on imports and exports at the national border and international transactions. We're hearing things about the state of current trade interprovincially in Canada. The New Brunswick beer story is so widely known that it's striking how many people have focused on that. The thinking is if we can't get that right, bringing TPP, and layering TPP onto New Brunswick beer....
The final comment I'll make is that I've had some members surprisingly say to me, “I long for the good old days when the tariffs were high, non-tariff trade barriers were few, and trade was transparent. I paid a lot more in duty, but I knew exactly where I stood then. Non-tariff trade barriers, which are often opaque, are much harder for me to understand what I should be doing.”
With that, I thank you for your time, and I welcome your questions.