Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for your excellent and very informative presentations.
I want to start with an example of a smart, efficient, and friendly border. I represent the riding of New Brunswick Southwest. We have five international border crossings. The friendly example is that we have mutual aid with our American friends. In the case of structural fires, there is pre-clearance for the emergency vehicles to cross the border to attend to the fires, and vice versa. The challenge usually is that when the firefighters are returning to their own country they've forgotten their identification.
My first question is for Mr. Ujczo. You mentioned public consultation. We spent all or quite a bit of last year, 2016, working on public consultation regarding the TPP. I'm wondering if you could explain a bit of your process, but I'll give you the context for it.
As we look at NAFTA, what we often hear is the rhetoric on the news about how damaging and bad it is. When you're listening to the comments through these consultations, I'm wondering how scholars and policy-makers will separate NAFTA's direct effects on trade and investment from other factors, including rapid improvements in technology; expanded trade with other countries, such as China; unrelated domestic developments in America, Canada, and Mexico; and, other variables such as economic growth, inflation, and currency fluctuations and manipulations. There's a big question for you.