Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Topp, you said exactly what is quite obvious, but nobody wants to acknowledge that we are too dependent on the U.S.
I come from a business background. In business the fundamental thing is that we have to survive to grow, and we have to grow to survive.
The noise that we heard during the negotiations was from the sectors that just want to survive with this market alone, the automotive sector, the steel sector, the aluminum sector.
Let's take aluminum. Our friends are from the aluminum industry. No new additional capacity has been set up. No new smelters have been set up in Canada for the last 15 years. If my numbers are correct, 90% of aluminum exports go to just North American markets.
I spoke to the Aluminum Association when they were here as witnesses. I don't see any one of them even contemplating using the strength of the North American market, which is basically a captive market for them, as a centre to export to other parts of the world. That I did not hear.
In the steel sector 20 years back, the production was around 16 million or 17 million tonnes. Today it's around 15 million or 16 million tonnes.
Let's go beyond the aluminum and steel sectors. The trade between Canada and the U.S. during the last, say, seven years, is basically the same at around $320 billion of exports. Even today it is around the same, maybe $322 billion. The imports from the U.S. are still around the same, around $290 billion.
The market is there. It is a big market by any standards, but this market is not growing, and our industry is not even surviving. If you ask me, it is contracting. I did ask the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters president if the manufacturing sector is a sunset industry here. Obviously he said no.
With your background, the political background and the background in administration, and you have been involved with this, and you know different sectors, I want to know if there is any sector in the Canadian economy that you can see that can increase investment and increase capacity to take on other markets in the world using this argument as the strength.