Initially the provinces had to be there; otherwise, the Europeans would not have been interested, largely because of the public procurements market, the services sector, which is largely regulated by the provinces.
The provinces found their interest in access to the European market, but also in the interest of opening up the public markets. Why? It's because that's good for competition, and ultimately competition is good for the taxpayers we all are. We had a royal commission recently on things that were not competitive in construction, and realized we that maybe we'd paid a few billion dollars in the past 20 years that we should not have paid as taxpayers because competition was inadequate.
Second, the provinces really worked well together. There were more than 220 meetings or conference calls between the provinces and federal officials or among the provinces themselves with the Europeans. Each chief negotiator of the different provinces was able to speak with the European negotiators to explain how, for instance, we have a monopoly for distributing alcohol in all provinces except Alberta, which is somewhat of a mystery to many Europeans, especially in the country where I am now, France. We had an occasion to explain how provincial legislation worked, and that was very useful in the conduct of negotiation.
At the end, we were insistent that in terms of circulation of goods, this should not be only about tariffs, but it also should be clear on rules of origin to be sure that more Canadian products would qualify, and better qualify with certainty, and finally that we should have certification for our goods. Certification means that if you want to go on the market with an iPhone, you have to demonstrate the iPhone won't be detrimental to health, to security, or to the environment, and we have the possibility not to harmonize our rules between Europe and Canada, but to be able to give to a manufacturer the possibility to go to a laboratory in Canada and get EU certification according to their cahier des charges, and the same for Europeans, who will be able to apply for Canadian certification in European laboratories. Especially for smaller companies, that should should ease the burden—