International Trade Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2014

[Blair Redlin]

I don't have that number in my head.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

That's not fair because I do. That number was a little over $80 billion of Canadian exports. Do you have any rough guess of where it is for 2012, or this past year?

[Blair Redlin]

No.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I can help you with that too. You'd be pleased to know that we're actually at about a 400% increase, some $262 billion. I'm not talking about trade the other way, which by the way, did you know that Canada is the number one trading country for 35 of the 50 united states? It's fairly compelling. That relationship between Canada and the United States is an important one.

[Blair Redlin]

I clarified in my presentation that we're in favour of increasing trade. We don't think this is the way to do it.

Also, many of the predictions about the Canada-U.S. trade agreement and NAFTA have actually been borne out. For example, we're a much more resource-dependent country, and our exports are much more...the export of raw resources, like oil and gas, and minerals. Our manufacturing sector took a big hit in response to NAFTA with the transfer of many manufacturing jobs to China and Vietnam.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

So aren't we glad in an economy where there are ebbs and flows....I come from a business background, only more lately into politics, unlike Mayor Corrigan whose commitment to public service has been like forever, and I salute you for that, but not me. I'm more recently into community service. As I see that, I still look at a 400% increase in exports as quite valuable.

You made the comment about pharmaceuticals so I'd like to bring it up, about the impact. You won't be surprised that in our nation's capital we had representatives from Rx&D, basically the name brand pharmaceuticals, and the senior representatives of the generics. The net effect of their testimony was they both thought it was pretty balanced.

By the way, I must tell you we did have someone in from the Canadian Health Coalition, I believe it was. They actually thought the generics were too high too. That was their perspective. We're not here for you to defend that.

But wouldn't you imagine if you have both sides that are seemingly contrary to each other, both coming back and saying it's a balanced agreement, that CUPE might take a more modified perspective on that?

[Blair Redlin]

The perspective of the Canadian generic pharmaceutical manufacturers association is to represent their members, whereas I think I'm talking about the broader impact on the health system and on the pocketbooks of regular Canadians. So if....

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Pardon me, but I would have thought the pharmaceutical companies were there to protect...certainly their corporate interests, but if they are not also in the interests of Canadians, and the generics are a great example of that because we all know that those are dramatically less expensive, but those were the ones that also came back and called that a balanced agreement.

Before I run out of time, Mayor Corrigan and Councillor Dhaliwal, thank you. Interesting perspective. I come from the tenth-largest city in Canada, London, Ontario. We call ourselves an urban oasis in a sea of agriculture. You talked about the things that are important to your industry. You talked about Telus and high tech and all, and of course British Columbia and how important it is.

It was interesting that the vice president of lumber sales and marketing from Western Forest Products, Bruce St. John, said, “A trade agreement with the EU will further diversify markets and strengthen relationships for coastal B.C.'s forest industry. Market diversity and strong global relationships promote business stability, which means secure jobs and reliable economic contributions from the forest sector.” I share that with you because you made a couple of statements that I just want to challenge, and I'm going to do this quickly. You thought this deal was a threat to democracy. That's huge. It felt somewhat isolationist and protectionist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Very quickly.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Chair, if I try to ask a question that goes beyond this, I just want to make the point that in terms of construction services for procurement, I want to make reference....

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, there's going to be no time. This has been a marked attempt to prevent the witnesses from answering. If he wants to ask a question, give the witnesses a chance to....

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

You don't have the floor, Mr. Davies.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

My only point, sir, just to make you feel more comfortable, $7.8 million....

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

And Mr. Holder, neither do you.

We're going to allow a quick question from Madam Liu, and then a quick follow-up question from Mr. Hiebert, just very short. You have about one and a half minutes.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I just had a quick question for Mr. Corrigan. You mentioned when you were answering Mr. Davies' question that CETA might add a burden on municipalities, and you mentioned the need to hire lawyers when going out for a procurement process.

We know from a CETA legal opinion commissioned by the Columbia Institute, actually some other deal would add more to the administrative burden of the municipalities and open the door to legal challenges from European corporations if corporations were to disagree with local purchasing decisions, as you know. The increased administrative burden for local governments would include revised tendering procedures, accounting, and successful suppliers for local government decisions, and also provide federal government with additional procurement information and statistics. As you can see, this is a great burden.

Is this a concern for you, and what do you estimate the costs will be for this? Moreover, where do you think the funds will come from to pay for these additional costs?

[Derek Corrigan]

First of all, it's not surprising to pay $400 or $500 an hour for a lawyer now in order to give opinions, particularly on an area that is as confined as the trade agreement. What we're finding is oftentimes our staff will have enough information to be able to say, “This might impinge or this might have an effect”. As a result, you go out looking for a legal opinion that often is vague in and of itself because there is so little understanding or settled law in regard to the trade agreements. In fact, we've seen as a result of many of these disputes that it's difficult to understand the base for the dispute, never mind the legal arguments that are applied to it. Often those arguments are done in secret before tribunals where municipalities like us aren't allowed to participate. So it does have a chilling effect.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you. Now that I know I have my full five minutes of questioning, I would like to add that it's a particular pleasure to be here.

Speaking of procurement, I know that TransLink and B.C. Transit actually purchased buses from my riding, from Nova Bus, so my constituents are certainly very happy to have the jobs associated with local procurement.

My next question would go to Mr. Redlin.

In the agreement in principle, we discovered that the dispute resolution mechanism that would apply to the trade and environment chapter would be based on a consultative and cooperative approach. This would be a review by a panel of experts who would then issue a non-binding report with no penalties or trade sanctions in cases of non-compliance. Of course, this is a concern to me.

As an alternative to this approach, do you see any advantages associated with actually having an approach where international penalties would be applied in cases where a party is deemed not to be in compliance with the panel's report as it relates to the trade and environment chapter?

[Blair Redlin]

I'm actually not sure I would be in favour of that, because I think it should be the elected governments of Canada that should be able to make decisions about the environment.

Under NAFTA we've lost a lot of environment-related disputes, such as the S.D. Myers dispute, where we attempted to prohibit the export of PCBs and that was overruled by NAFTA. I think that the NAFTA environmental commission process has not been particularly useful.

I think it would be helpful in the kind of process that's talked about there, where there is an international review and a consultative process and a report. That is all helpful, but I don't think that international tribunals should be able to assess fines against Canadian governments for alleged violations of environmental rules.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Corrigan, you spoke about examples that your city has used to stimulate the local economy through procurement. You mentioned the example of Telus. Could you elaborate on other examples in which procurement has been used to stimulate the local economy?

[Derek Corrigan]

I think in our city we do something that is unusual in the sense that we have a fixed wage, a fair wage, that is imposed in regard to all of our construction projects. We set unionized wage scales in order to ensure that we are utilizing public funds to stimulate high-quality, high-paying jobs as a result of the work that has been done. It has been extremely successful. Our projects have been on budget. They've been on time throughout almost all of the projects over the course of at least the 25 years that we've been implementing that policy. We're worried that a policy like that may be challenged in the future as a result of these agreements.

I am unabashedly a nationalist. I am very much like the Liberals were 20 years ago. I am looking at protectionism as a way in which we protect our economy. The idea of globalization and the idea that we lose our national identity to this amorphous global entity seems to me to be entirely inappropriate. I think that being Canadian, buying Canadian, ensuring we support Canadian industry, that we support Canadian business and Canadian high-quality jobs is very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We did start the session a little bit later, so I'm going to give the last five minutes to Mr. Hiebert, who will close it off.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our witnesses for being with us today.

Mr. Corrigan, you talked a lot about how well run the City of Burnaby is. Do you have any idea roughly how many businesses exist in the city of Burnaby?

[Derek Corrigan]

First of all, I don't talk a lot about, but there's an independent study that was conducted by Maclean's magazine—

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I just have a limited—

[Derek Corrigan]

It was a study done across Canada.