I'll try to get through this as quickly as I can.
Minister, I think we're all in agreement. You mentioned that there's a certain amount of risk and uncertainty as time passes. I just want to be clear that from this side we're going to do the best we can, use all the tools we can, to make sure we do this efficiently. However, you did promise that we'd be moving in lockstep with the Americans and the Mexicans, and we do have a constitutional obligation to review the agreement.
We're hearing from families, businesses and sectors that may be negatively affected, and we want to go through our obligation to do this study and give witnesses an opportunity to get their comments on the record.
Mr. Hoback was.... We didn't quite finish with that, the American process, but if we actually look at the timeline and the process in the U.S., we see that in April of 2019, the Americans were open and transparent. They gave an economic impact study to their legislators and lawmakers ahead of time so they could actually review it. As you quite rightly said, there were some amendments made, and I think around the table here we could say the amendments made the agreement better all around.
My concern is that, here on the Canadian side, we weren't given the same courtesy, and perhaps we could have made the agreement a little better, if it were considered by all parties.
We've been asking you in the House, over and over again, about economic impact studies. I'm hearing from people saying, “Well, what does she have to hide?” Basically, I'd like to give you the opportunity. Why has the government been so unco-operative? It is so frustrating that it hasn't given us any of the information about the economic impacts of the study, as we move forward on designing some supports for these families and businesses and sectors that are negatively impacted, yet that knowledge is out there.