Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, the industry transformation that is required for the global energy and global green transition is comparable to the Industrial Revolution. With the talk of friend-shoring and onshoring and with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act combined with the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, basically the U.S. has laid out its plans for becoming a powerhouse in manufacturing going forward.
I have a question for Ms. Elizabeth Kwan.
Ms. Kwan, you mentioned the problems for the Canadian steel industry. What we've seen in the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, and what the U.S. sees, is that the U.S. is promoting a lot of new manufacturing and new production capacity in their country. Their steel production, like aluminum here, has been stagnant for the last 20 years. Canadian steel production has actually come down from about 17 million tonnes in 2000 to about 12.5 million tonnes last year, in 2021, if I am not wrong, and there has been no increase in installed capacity during the last 20 years.
Ninety-four per cent of the exports of steel are to the U.S. We have signed free trade agreements with the European Union, the Asia-Pacific countries and about 50 or 60 countries around the world, but our steel producers are not exporting beyond the United States, and they're also not increasing the production capacity to make use of the national resources available here to add value and to bring value in relation to the Canadian economy.
If there is a small problem with their exports to the U.S., they come with a huge lobby asking the Government of Canada for funds to protect them, but I don't see their commitment. Maybe it is because almost all of them are foreign owned, with no Canadian ownership, so they may consider Canada as just one of the branch offices for their exports to the United States and for the domestic Canadian market and have no interest in exporting to the European Union or the Asia-Pacific countries. What do you say about that?