International Trade committee  Madam Chair and committee, thank you very much for having me in attendance today. I'll make a brief opening statement. I'm an owner of a company. We've not quite made it to a year yet. I and a few partners made the decision to take this great leap in October of last year. Up unt

International Trade committee  Pardon me?

International Trade committee  Yes. Thank you very much.

International Trade committee  Yes. Would you like me to elaborate?

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, James. I'd like to break it down into thirds. I'll repeat that about 80% of our customer base—and I think that's probably pretty factual for most of the automotive tooling industry in Windsor and Essex county—is from the U.S. For about a third of my custome

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I'd only want to speak specifically to a group of individuals who are interested in awarding contracts to Canadian businesses and have the option to go elsewhere. They don't have to come to us. Without easing all the steps along the way, like applications and interaction with bor

International Trade committee  Yes, there were a few times when we were on the phone helping people fill it out, working as the IT consultant for our U.S. customer base and trying to help them get across the border, and the fact that it wasn't synced up was definitely an issue. I'll mention one more thing re

International Trade committee  I can certainly speak to my own situation. There were several million dollars' worth of contracts that we were not considered for, given the situation we found ourselves in. We were a new business and had the door open, and these customers wanted to come and see the facility, vis

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely. It's across multiple industries across multiple regions throughout Canada. It's anybody dealing with a U.S. customer base.

International Trade committee  Could you clarify the question for me?

International Trade committee  I would agree that it is not exclusively liable. However, in our situation, it presents the majority of the issues for business.

International Trade committee  Thank you. I appreciate the question. We're going to do it through hard work. We're going to heavily engage with our customer base in the U.S. We are going to have to do a little campaigning. Of course, I'd love to see the government step up to do some campaigning throughout our

International Trade committee  I don't know the legality of who was making the—

International Trade committee  Specifically, in my notes that I forwarded to the committee, I pulled off that threatening language from a Canadian government travel—