Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here.
I'd like to start today with Mr. McGuire. First of all, I want to thank you, sir, for all of your work and support in making sure that there is an agreement. We on this committee travelled down to the United States a few times, and it was really nice to see the support in the American business community for making sure that we got a deal done.
You made a couple of comments—I want to correct the record a bit—that there may be a delay in passing this. There was a bit of a whisper campaign in Washington that the Conservatives were trying to slow this down. If you're talking to any of your friends down there, just so you know, the Conservatives moved this through the House in six sitting days. That's compared with 16 days for the original implementation legislation, which was our Bill C-100. The Conservatives offered to do a prestudy back in the spring, but the Liberal government declined to do that before the election. We also offered to come back in early in December to deal with it, and the Liberal government declined that offer as well. I just want that to be clear. This will eventually pass, but it's not because of anybody on this side of the table slowing things down.
I want your comment on the buy American clause. Our former prime minister, Mr. Harper, was able to get a Canadian exemption from that. My understanding is that with this agreement, Mexico has an exemption and Canada doesn't.
What are your thoughts on that and what do your members think, given that many of them who buy your equipment build infrastructure, bid on infrastructure? Do you have comments on this buy American clause? We had an opportunity to negotiate it out—this is supposed to be a free trade agreement—but unfortunately we weren't successful.