Well, I think this is one of the issues we're struggling with: what does the U.S. need for a win?
I think we can certainly bring a lot of creativity to the table in developing outcomes that we think could certainly be characterized as a U.S. win or as a North American win. We could do that in sectors like the automotive sector. I think we could come up with other proposals on what they're trying to get at with the sunset clause and dispute settlement. We have made proposals, and I think we could address a lot of those issues.
Our concern is that what the U.S. has described as their overriding objective—this has come from some members of the administration—is that they want to take benefits enjoyed by Canada and by Mexico, reduce those, and draw those back to the U.S. so that the U.S benefits more and Canada and Mexico benefit less. We feel that the only way this negotiation will succeed is if it's a win-win-win negotiation, so that all three parties benefit and we make North America a more competitive market.
Going in the direction of drawing back benefits to the U.S. and weakening the benefits for the other partners is a recipe for making North America less competitive. We certainly won't accept outcomes like that for Canada.
On your second question, with respect to contingency plans, we are starting to do quite a bit of thinking about what would happen under different scenarios. If the U.S. does initiate the process for withdrawing from NAFTA, it triggers a six-month period before they can actually formally withdraw, so it's a question of whether they take that first step of the six-month notice. I think we'll see a rather strong reaction from U.S. industry and from others in the U.S. to try to convince the U.S. not to take the final step after six months. We would be working very closely with U.S. stakeholders and U.S. representatives to try to prevent that second step from being taken.
If the worst-case outcome does arise and the U.S. does formally withdraw from NAFTA, we would have a number of contingency plans in place to make sure that the impact is as modest as it can possibly be. We do have a number of ideas in that regard, but I would point out that there would also be a significant impact on the U.S. and, again, a significant impact on North American competitiveness.