International Trade committee  China produces just over half of the world's steel right now.

International Trade committee  That's a very good question. As Paul mentioned in his remarks, I think Canada's steel producers can be very competitive. In one sense, the steel markets are global, and steel is a very heavy commodity product to move around, so transporting it over large distances can become unec

International Trade committee  I believe that about 75% of our exports go to the United States.

International Trade committee  The Canadian steel market comprises three sectors: manufacturing, energy and infrastructure, or construction.

International Trade committee  That is really a global value chain issue. More and more, the trend is to manufactured products. We certainly have companies that process and use steel products.

International Trade committee  Certainly, we have had conversations with different departments about different policies that can be put in place or are possible. I believe the department for procurement services, PSPC, is looking into those issues as well as infrastructure.

International Trade committee  These are difficult questions that I know the two departments are looking at very closely.

International Trade committee  Steel mills definitely use electricity. The question is really where the source is and how much they pay. There are some business confidentiality issues around talking about it, so I don't think we can get into too many details, but certainly, the price of electricity is an impor

International Trade committee  I don't want to overstate the role of electricity prices. Obviously, it's important to them, but it's probably not the key factor that's going to make them more competitive or super-competitive versus other countries. Again, the arrangement they have is also quite unique. Differe

International Trade committee  I would say quite significantly, as energy represents about a third of the customer base for Canadian steel producers. We have seen a number of plant and mill closures, especially on the pipe-and-tube side. The other public closures are temporary closures and layoffs. It has defi

International Trade committee  If it's part of an automotive component, for instance, that would not be included in the statistics. One of the difficulties that we always have with regards to—

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  As I was mentioning, steel products are quite diverse. We have raw slabs of steel, and we have various forms of coils, hot rolled, cold rolled, and pipes and tubes. Those would be the products that are primarily within the steel export numbers. There are certainly a couple of oth

International Trade committee  Absolutely not, no.

International Trade committee  I should point out that at the last high-level meeting of the Global Forum on excess steel capacity, which was held in April, the associate deputy minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Kelly Gillis, represented Canada. That's where they had deputy ministers a