International Trade Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'm going to hold you there.

Mr. Hoback, the floor is yours.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, witnesses for being here this morning even though we had a nice rainy morning to start off the day, or this session anyway.

I've got some questions on how Burnaby operates and runs its municipality. What is the major industry in Burnaby? I'm from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan so you can give me a little bit of detail on what makes up Burnaby and what companies are actually your key industries.

[Derek Corrigan]

Burnaby is a high-tech city. It does a lot of work with the movie industry. We are home to 60% of the movie studio space in British Columbia so that's a big part of the business in our community.

Obviously we have major companies that do international work like Electronic Arts Canada. It's a company that was formed in Burnaby and has been extremely successful in the gaming industry. We're the home of Telus, which is a communications company that works all across Canada. We obviously historically have been a distribution centre because we are in the very centre of the Lower Mainland so movements in goods and services have gone out from our area. We're now becoming much more urban and developing town centres that are seeing a big increase in commercial and professional office space development.

Burnaby is very prosperous. We were named by Maclean's magazine a few years ago as the best run city in Canada. We've very proud of that accomplishment. We have no debt. We have over $600 million in reserves. We are one of the few cities that have been able to meet the public sector accounting rules. Now most cities are modelling their reserve system after ours. So we are very pleased. It is a very well run city.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Congratulations. Those are all strong feathers in your cap. I congratulate you on your performance for sure.

When you go through the tendering process—let's say on a water pipe process, and you talked about how you think it's important to have local participation in tenders such as that—how much of a range are you willing to sacrifice in the cost of the project to make sure it's local? Is it 20% higher, or 30% higher, or equal? When you look at that, how would you take that into consideration?

[Derek Corrigan]

We're very aggressive at finding ways to deliver back into our local economies. People can't pay our municipal taxes if they're not taking home a reasonable wage. So in fact we're one of the few cities right across—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

My question was how much you would you tolerate in that tendering process. Would you tolerate 20% over top of the lowest tender or 5% or equal?

[Derek Corrigan]

It depends on the evaluation of each and every project as to exactly what we think is the appropriate measure. Usually we work in terms of small margins—a 5% margin—in order to create an advantage for local industry in regard to our procurement.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

If it's a small tender—for me, $5 million is a huge number of dollars, but for you guys that's probably a small tender—then 5% on that is not a big deal. But what about a big tender? What if it's a waste water treatment facility that's $100 million? How much leniency are you going to give to local players versus a bigger player that would come in with the expertise?

[Derek Corrigan]

We may not look at any local advantage in regard to larger projects. We work on those generally through the Metro Vancouver government, the regional government. Generally there isn't any local procurement advantage.

In fact, this isn't something we typically do in each and every area. It's not a matter of policy that each procurement has a local advantage. It means that in certain areas of procurement, we may decide that it's necessary to stimulate industry in our city or to encourage the development of industry in our city to look at procurement policies.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

So how do you pick the winners and losers and in which areas? How do you go about doing that, and saying that this is a priority sector and this isn't? You may have local people in both those different sectors.

[Derek Corrigan]

Of course, and that's obviously one of the concerns all governments exercise—who picks the winners and the losers? And we know that—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

But you're not picking it based on price or value necessarily. You're picking it based on, first of all, whether they are local, and second, you're willing to tolerate paying more for local—and I can understand that—but you're saying that not all sectors get that privilege. So depending on what type of sector they're in, they may or may not have that privilege.

[Derek Corrigan]

That's right. It may very well not be that area.

For instance, for providing communications assistance, we may want to give preference to Telus, the biggest company that's in our city. There are 5,000 employers in our city. We may want to be able to look at implementing policies that will in fact encourage Telus to keep situating in our city, and that is an advantage.

But it's difficult at all times to figure out who the winners and losers are. Often when we make applications for federal grants, exactly that issue comes up for us: how does the federal government pick the winners and the losers? So far we've found it's based mostly on who is sitting as an MP in your area.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Really?

[Derek Corrigan]

Really.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I disagree with that, because if you look at our Building Canada fund and if you look at the distribution right across Canada, that would not be proven, but that's your privilege and you're willing to believe what you want. It may not be based on fact, but it is what it is.

I'm just going to quote something. This is from Jayson Myers, president and CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters—and, by the way, they're very happy with this agreement. I'm going to read to you what he said to us:

CETA will help Canadian manufacturers and exporters diversify into new export markets, increase their presence in the world’s largest market, and help improve Canada’s position as a destination for manufacturing investment. This agreement enables new business opportunities, sets the standard for 21st-century trade agreements, and stands to benefit Canadian businesses, their employees and communities across the country.

I heard you say in your testimony that these guys are going to be screwed over. He doesn't feel that, so why would you make the statement you've made when Jayson Myers is stating this?

I can take this a step further. If you want to hear some of the other testimony we've had from different people who have been in front of us, I'll quote what David Lindsay, president and CEO of Forest Products Association of Canada, said:

We welcome a Canada-EU trade agreement. It will see the elimination of a quota and tariff on Canadian plywood and will help the Canadian industry secure access to key EU markets for its other product lines. As part of its Vision 2020 initiative, the forest products industry has a goal to increase its revenues by $20 billion by 2020 through new markets and new innovations. The government’s focus on regions that can provide opportunity for the industry’s traditional and future products is important to achieving our goal and to supporting the more than 230,000 Canadians the industry directly employs cross the country.

If Telus wants customers, it needs to ensure that people have jobs. Is that correct? Now, I'm hearing from you.... You made a comment that the forestry sector—

[Derek Corrigan]

Do you have a question for me at all?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

No, I have a statement. I have the time to do what I want.

[Derek Corrigan]

Oh, okay. I'll relax.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I guess I do have a question for you.

Why are you contradicting what people in the industry are actually saying?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Your time has gone, Mr. Hoback.

Committee members, I will just remind you that when you're reading text, that's not a problem. The problem is that when you read it very quickly, the interpreters have a very difficult time catching up to it.

I know you're rather emotional about it, but nonetheless I will remind the entire committee.

Go ahead, Mr. Pacetti. The floor is yours.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming and seeing us today. I'm the only friendly one here, so I'm just giving you a heads-up.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I have a quick question for Mr. Redlin.

You said that you went to the European Parliament on a few occasions. Who did you meet with? Was it the Democrats, or is that...?

[Blair Redlin]

We met with people from all caucuses. They call them “groups” there. I'm thinking of the caucuses in Canada.

We met with the range of MPs, any MPs we could meet with. We also made presentations to committees of the Parliament, the intergroup on public services and others. Also, there are many civil society groups engaged with the Parliament, and we met with them, too.