International Trade committee  Yes. Actually, we didn't get a direct answer to our exemption request, but when the government put out the “Relief for Canadian Businesses from Countermeasures on Certain U.S. Imports” document around October 11, and we read the HS codes that covered the different products, we sa

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  This being a trucking equipment industry, just before all of this was happening, a lot of people stocked up on the inventory of tubing, in our case, or steel plate for people who build dump bodies or garbage trucks or snow removal equipment. Naturally once everybody has gone thr

International Trade committee  We're about fifty-fifty in Canada and the U.S. It's the same thing. Our big thing is that our competitors are from overseas or from the U.S., so we're at a disadvantage in the Canadian market and the U.S. market because they don't have to do any price increases. We lose all over

International Trade committee  Yes, definitely. We had applied to explain our situation, which was not good. It was costing us over $150,000 in retaliatory duties per month, so obviously we couldn't keep on at that rate forever. As I mentioned before, there is no Canadian source for the tubing we use, so we ha

International Trade committee  At the beginning, there was a process where you could ask for an exemption. We went through that and did some representations afterwards to explain our situation. We had no other option in Canada, and there are actually only two or three mills in the U.S. that supply that type of

International Trade committee  We use steel tubing that's supplied by mills. We don't buy through distributors. We get it directly from the steel mill that manufactures it. That supply is fairly limited around the world. There are some suppliers in India, Asia and South America. But once again, when you're loo

International Trade committee  First of all, thank you for giving us the opportunity to explain the situation we're in and the outcome of the retaliatory tariffs in our situation. My name is Stephen Vezina. I'm the vice-president of sales for the company. Mailhot is a Canadian-owned company that manufactures