Thank you so much.
I had the opportunity to testify before the foreign affairs committee this morning and wanted to provide different testimony, so I have focused on regulatory issues. A lot of the border arguments and NAFTA arguments are in the earlier testimony, and I would refer you to those.
We talked about Buy American rules in particular. What the Canadian American Business Council feels is that when you look at Buy American rules, they should be “Buy American-Canadian” rules. In other words, if you were to consider Canada “domestic” for the purposes of U.S. procurement, that would solve a lot of things. That would solve Buy American rules. That would solve country of origin. It would solve border adjustability. It would really help.
There is a model for this, and the model is actually in the defence industry. Since the 1950s, Canada and the United States have had the defence industrial production agreement, in which it is required that Canadian defence suppliers be treated exactly the same as U.S. suppliers to the Pentagon. Our thought is to take a page from the defence sector and apply it across all sectors.
Just in case my friend Dan doesn't get a chance to speak, his shorthand for this is that when you say “Buy American”, you capitalize the C, so that it's “Buy AmeriCanadian”—if I can just steal your recap there, Dan. That's what we're advocating very strongly. We think it would solve a world of problems. We would recommend that to you.