Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you so much for being here.

Carlo, it's very nice to see you again at this committee. It's been a long time, but welcome back.

I was really pleased to hear you say, Mr. Wilson, that we can find the positive things we've worked on and start building on those. We recently had our Minister of Transport in Washington making an announcement with the administration down there on issues related to railway safety. That's been a long time coming. It's taken some disasters in North America that have really pushed us to this point. I think we're seeing some very positive movement on that—no pun intended—and it's really great to see that we have some agreement going on. The minister came back really buoyed with a positive attitude about the things we can work on. I think those are the kinds of things we need to focus on to say, “Look, we got this done as a North American continent; what's the next project?”

I'll make a comment on your own comments, Mr. Robertson, and then I'll ask for Carlo's commentary. Perhaps the other gentlemen can jump in afterwards.

Mr. Robertson, you spoke about how the United States needs to know from a security perspective that “we've got their back”—I think that was the phrase you used. The United States is exceedingly cautious now, even nearly a decade and a half after 9/11. Even Canadians now need a passport to get into the United States, something that we never had to do. It was almost a free border.

Carlo, I wonder if you could comment on this. Are there areas of expertise that Canada has that we could work with the Mexicans on in terms of the issues relating to security, which would perhaps move the dial on removing the visa requirement? What are the things we do really well that would be of assistance there?

Perhaps, gentlemen, you could both comment afterwards.

Lois Brown

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