Evidence of meeting #55 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was billion.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for being here today. I find your testimony very helpful thus far.
Interestingly, Mr. Pyun, you made reference that reciprocity is necessary. In my experience, every free trade deal that we put in place is all about that, and there are not always equal scenarios. It gives inputs based on your strengths and, as you mentioned, defensive and offensive interests. I would agree. What you've said just strikes me as a logical thing, and I wouldn't imagine anyone around the table taking exception to that.
I just attended a Diwali ceremony in my own riding in London, Ontario. I don't know if you've ever been to my city. It's the 10th largest city in Canada. I share that with you, because we have so much to offer I think in terms of world opportunities. I was surprised that at this small ceremony we had over 500 people there. It was just a superb event.
I heard my colleague opposite talk about Canada being 15th out of 37th in R and D. I don't have that stat in front of me.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
It struck me as I looked at it—whether that's correct or not—that Canada represents something like one half of 1% of the world's population and 18% of the world's land mass, and it's obviously clear that we're rich in resources. We have the strongest economy in the G-7, and the OECD ranks Canada's economy number one in the world. So it's interesting that KPMG has said that Canada's research and development costs are some 13% less than those of the United States.
When we make this reference about Canada punching above its weight, I think it truly does in the world. Frankly, we're blessed with geography, but we're spoiled, because 90% of our population is within a couple of hours of the United States and 75% of our business is with the United States, because that's an easier geography. I'm challenged by whether we take that for granted.
Mr. Khurana, you talked about EDC and BDC not being so comfortable or supportive of emerging market opportunities, but I wonder whether Canadian businesses know how to embrace the opportunities. I don't mean large businesses like Bombardier, which I think is a phenomenal Canadian success story and has learned to embrace it well, though they have challenges when there are tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers.
But I don't know about the small and medium companies, particularly medium-sized companies, which frankly don't know how to do it. Mr. Sierra, I give you marks for your company taking that kind of initiative.
What's your sense—and I'm going to ask Mr. Sierra the same question—about Canadian trade commissioners in terms of how helpful they are to, say, medium-sized businesses going overseas—let's say to India—to do business. I think that becomes a fairly significant challenge because we have that easy geography with the United States. I'm nervous about the ease of that business. I don't want to decrease any business that we do with the United States; I want to grow that number. But I think we have an obligation, as a government, to create an atmosphere so businesses can do their jobs internationally.
Mr. Khurana, do you have any sense of that?
4:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Consulting Inc.
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity.
When we picked the sectors that were of interest to Canadians and Canadian interests, I think there was a great eye on Canadian innovation. Look at food processing. Only 6% of food in India is processed. The rest is either consumed the same day or wasted. We obviously have a number of food processing technologies. A success story is McCain in India. When they entered, they did not have a cold supply chain, so they venture-capital-funded some of their senior staff so they could set up cold storage and a cold supply chain.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Could I interrupt you, please?
Does this have anything to do with the humble potato from Prince Edward Island?
4:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Consulting Inc.
It does. Yes.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
We may come back to that, because someone needs to be a defender of the P.E.I. potato. I might come back to that.
4:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Consulting Inc.
Sure.
Look at ICT. We have health care technologies that are the envy of the world. The government has just funded a joint centre of excellence on India, which obviously will look at innovation-based opportunities. Look at energy and mining, and nuclear technology. We were the original suppliers of the CANDU technology to India, which has since been reworked and improved upon by some of the Indian innovations.
Look at infrastructure. Obviously, SNC-Lavalin is one of our great companies, and ACORN International is doing a fair amount.
Last but not least, in our education sector, the number of students who were recruited to Canadian universities has gone up from 1,200 during the Prime Minister's last visit to 24,000 during his current visit.
I would say that we've done fairly well.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
I appreciate it.
Mr. Sierra, do you have some thoughts on that? I particularly wanted to get your insight.
4:20 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, NOVO Plastics Inc.
Sure, Mr. Holder. I would just add that I think the resources are there with the trade commissioner's office of EDC. I agree with you in that I think the visibility of these resources has to be brought forward to Canadian companies that are looking at those markets.
We did some research and met with our EDC representative and trade commissioner. They helped us. We found them invaluable in terms of getting market intelligence in India and in introducing us to the right partner. India is such a large company for an SME to go to and get paired with the right partner. I think they played a crucial role.
As for how you raise visibility, as in whether there are more area-type representatives from these organizations going around to the various businesses, that's potentially one way. I think the issue is not that they are not helping SMEs; I think it's the visibility. If we raise that visibility, we should be fine.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
We're always concerned about tariff barriers, but we're particularly concerned about non-tariff barriers, the things you can't quite see. There might be a perception that we don't buy this product because it's not Indian, or it's not from wherever. Have you had any experience of that in India at this point?
4:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, NOVO Plastics Inc.
We haven't at this point—
4:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, NOVO Plastics Inc.
—but we have heard that they are there and there are issues to look at.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Mr. Pyun, would Bombardier have those kinds of issues in terms of non-tariff barriers?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Bombardier Inc.
I would just note that even for large companies like Bombardier we do work very closely with the Trade Commissioner Service and—
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Bombardier Inc.
It may be different types of services that we are requiring from our post in India. In the sectors in which we operate, governments tend to be very involved. The role of the government to engage in economic diplomacy, if only to level the playing field for us, I think is very important.
So interventions, or our high commissioner raising the visibility of Bombardier with key government interlocutors, would be the type of services from the high commissioner that we would benefit from, both from the high commissioner and from the Trade Commissioner Service.
Also, we had an issue with our investment in the state of Gujarat, a tax issue, and they advocated for us to get a tax reduction that made our site much more competitive. That's a success that we had this year thanks to the support of the high commissioner and the Trade Commissioner Service.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
I want to thank you, Mr. Khurana, Mr. Sierra, and Mr. Pyun. Thank you for coming in and sharing with our committee you views on what we hope will be a very fruitful engagement in an FTA with India.
With that, we'll suspend and have the next group of panellists come forward.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
We'll call the meeting back to order.
We want to thank our second panel for being here with us.
I would remind the committee that we have committee business. We'll break about 10 minutes prior to the end of the hour. We want to make certain that we leave enough time for questioning.
Mr. Davies, you had a question?
4:30 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry, but I'm going to register a little bit of a complaint.
In the first round—and we've talked about this before—you scheduled three witnesses who talked for 30 minutes, and you brought the gavel down with about four minutes left to go. The result of that first round was that the Conservatives had 14 minutes of time and we had seven and so did the Liberals. I've raised this before. We have 101 seats in the House of Commons, and the Liberals have 35; we have four members and they have one. It is completely unfair to have the opposition being limited to the same amount of time.
With the greatest of respect to Mr. Easter—this is certainly not his doing—I would ask that you don't schedule three witnesses, or if you do, that you cut down their initial speech from 10 minutes to eight minutes. Certainly, if the Conservatives were in our position, I would support the same thing. We want to make sure that we have proportionate time with the witnesses. That first round was a classic example of how we lost two-thirds of our time, and that's unfair.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Okay. Before we lose any more time in this panel, I'll just explain to you very quickly. This was before your time on the committee; it goes back to when we constituted the committee. A motion was made. I was following that motion, which leaves the first round at seven minutes for each, as was done. If we went into the second round, what I would have done is give you.... Let's say that there were five minutes left; I could have stretched it to two minutes for you and two minutes for the Conservatives to give balance in that second round.
That's the way I would have run it. That's the way I have run it ever since the beginning of the committee. I understand your point, but we can take that up at another time. I'm following the rules that were set out when the committee was constituted.