International Trade committee  —and I think that is another concrete step that we can take, and that is justifiable as good domestic policy as well.

International Trade committee  I think any advocacy that can be done in the United States to continue advancing the principle of open and mutually beneficial trade between Canada and the United States is time well spent. I think there are a lot of good points there. I'd also say, and this speaks a little bit more to the tariffs, that I do know that this committee was in Washington recently and met with the AISI and heard unequivocally from its leadership that they were not willing to talk about us as an industry to get an exemption for Canada.

International Trade committee  Just to use a generalized round number, normally domestic steel consumption in Canada is about one-third for automotive, one-third for infrastructure, and one-third for energy, meaning oil field use. That would be a good guidepost. In automotive it is probably slightly over one-third.

International Trade committee  This is something that Secretary Ross raised in the Senate hearing last week. We have welcomed things like steps to strengthen trade remedy modernization, and we welcome the additional resourcing at CBSA, and the changes to the stencilling regime. I think the Government of Canada continues to look at things like government-initiated safeguard action.

International Trade committee  Yes. I need two seconds. This is unacceptable. Canada's steel producers already feel the impacts of these unacceptable U.S. tariffs imposed under the absurd pretext of national security; we recognize that our customers do as well. We are willing to work co-operatively to ensure that sufficient steel supply is available in Canada to support vital industrial building and manufacturing applications.

International Trade committee  The CSPA is, of course, the national voice of Canada's $15 billion primary steel production industry. As I mentioned previously, direct employment from steel is approximately 23,000 Canadians supporting another 100,000 indirect jobs. On June 1, 2018, the United States imposed punitive tariffs on the imports of certain steel and aluminum products from Canada, at rates of 25% and 10% respectively.

International Trade committee  Good morning and thank you to the honourable members of the committee for the opportunity to present as this committee undertakes its study on the impacts of the Government of Canada's countermeasure actions against the United States in response to tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum products.

International Trade committee  I will answer in English. I learned French in Saskatchewan. Specific to Mercosur, I don't know that we necessarily have recent examples of currency manipulation out of those jurisdictions. I'd need to go back and take a look at how long ago that was. I think we've mentioned that there has been some instability in that region.

International Trade committee  I'll take a shot at it. Gerdau's a great example. I believe Gerdau is the largest volume recycler in Canada, turning scrap steel and used automobiles into new product that is specifically used for infrastructure. I mentioned the benefit that would be associated with that. Gerdau, I should also mention, operates in Selkirk, Manitoba, and Cambridge.

International Trade committee  Yes, it's in the ballpark.

International Trade committee  Yes, certainly.

International Trade committee  Diversifying a market is extraordinarily difficult in the context of the global overcapacity challenge. Frankly, the export markets are flooded, and the further away you travel from the market, you lose the advantages you have. That said, we have enormously innovative and efficient producers here in Canada, making extraordinarily high-tech, high-grade, quality product.

International Trade committee  I mentioned that there were some orders in place specifically with Brazilian steel, carbon sheet, hot rolled. It's a range of products. Decisions have been in place for a while now. I believe they were put in place and have since been reviewed, and they continue to be appropriate.

International Trade committee  Let's say there's steel facility A in Hamilton and steel facility B outside of Rio. Let's just make the assumption that those are apples-to-apples steel facilities. The Canadian steel, if it's used in Canada, is still going to be far better from the GHG perspective because we have much readier access to the fundamental inputs associated with steel.

International Trade committee  We do have an exemption on May 1. I am not aware of any discussions presently between the Government of Canada and the U.S. administration on what a final arrangement would look like, so I guess we're hoping for an extension of the exemption. Potentially of interest, as it relates to this committee's study, is that the U.S. 232 investigations initially identified 12 nations they specifically wanted to restrict.