Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee. It's great to be back to address the committee on behalf of the Canadian Steel Producers Association. As mentioned, I'm joined by François Desmarais, our director of trade.

As you all know, CSPA is the voice of the Canadian steel sector and our pipe and tube industry. We have 13 members across the country from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and, now, Newfoundland and Labrador. We represent pretty much 100% of the steel production in the country, and we have 123,000 direct and indirect jobs that are part of our industry.

Our steel ends up in a wide range of products. When you look around, steel is everywhere, and our main customers are in the integrated North American automotive, construction and energy sectors, to name some—there are many others. About half of our production, roughly six million tonnes, is shipped to the United States—around $8.5 billion U.S. annually.

These stats help the members of this committee appreciate how crucial it is for the steel industry to maintain access to the United States market and, frankly, the gains that we've made in the previous CUSMA. You will also appreciate that global steel trade plays a strong role in the Canada-U.S. trade relationship; hence, we are here today to reiterate some of our most interesting and important proposals in our hope to see a smooth and successful review of CUSMA in 2026.

First, we believe it's crucial that we keep pace with the United States, our largest trading partner, with a modernized and aligned trade remedy system. We strongly believe this will ensure a better position for Canada as we start discussions on a CUSMA review. An important development is that, in 2019, as part of the section 232 bilateral agreement, Canada committed to implementing a monitoring system of “melt and pour” for the steel industry. I am pleased to say that this past February Minister of International Trade Mary Ng announced that system, and it will be put fully in place for all steel imports into Canada by this coming November.

Canadian and American steel industries strongly welcome this development. We cannot stress enough that further delay will be unacceptable to full implementation, so we need to get that done.

The prospect of steel transshipment remains a very significant concern to the USTR, the United States trade representative. Transshipment is part of a larger phenomenon called “circumvention”. Canada has anti-circumvention laws to address this issue but, unfortunately, to date, no case has been taken either by the industry or the Canada Border Services Agency. This is an issue that the Americans care about deeply, and really, so does the Canadian steel industry. We feel it's very important that we rank anti-circumvention legislation updates and enhancements highly on our list of things to be done as we proceed into the CUSMA discussions.

Furthermore, the U.S. recently announced trade remedy improvements around very important trade policy, retroactive duties and how one goes about assessing unfair trade policies on state-owned enterprises. We need to keep pace and adopt the same approach. Frankly, these are things that, for many years, the Canadian steel industry has been asking for, and we'd like to see them brought forward. We think that it will be very helpful in putting our best foot forward as we enter those CUSMA discussions. Improving our trade system is how we protect the integrity of the North American market.

Last but not least, Canada has to adjust urgently to the evolving international steel trade order. In addition, in the face of intense challenges with international trade bodies, we need to consider adopting new tools to address industrial excess capacity. The U.S. administration did just that a couple of weeks ago. On May 14, the White House announced the imposition of a broad range of tariffs, under section 301, aimed at Chinese overcapacity, including the imposition of a 25% tariff on all Chinese steel entering the U.S. market. The CSPA believes Canada should and must follow suit.

As our major trading partners move to block or restrict excess high-carbon steel from entering their national markets, we believe Canada remains vulnerable to more Chinese steel. Although Canada currently has 18 tariffs on Chinese steel, China remains the third-largest exporter of steel into Canada. In addition to our domestic market concerns, we also believe the U.S. will be looking for specific leadership from Canada on how to address excess steel capacity from China.

Members of the committee, I'm happy to engage with you on these topics.