International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, and members of the Standing Committee on International Trade, thank you for inviting me to appear before you. Our secretary-treasurer, Mr. Gaétan Ménard, was originally supposed to make a presentation to you, but he has unfortunately been detained in Montreal on ma

International Trade committee  Matching it is actually the second option. The first option is to convince the White House or Congress to change their mind. That's the first option, definitely. I'd like to be confident that Mr. Baucus and Congress will actually reverse that loophole. I'm not that optimistic. R

International Trade committee  Thank you for your question. You've given a good summary of the industry's position. I would point out that we have done a lot of work with the industry on this issue. We attended various internal meetings in an attempt to develop a common position. We've agreed on a lot of issue

International Trade committee  I don't have the exact figures here. Perhaps I should have brought them, but I don't have them. With regard to Edmundston, you have to understand that the situation is particularly difficult. In Maine, on the other side of the border, Senator Olympia Snowe is in favour of mainta

International Trade committee  Perhaps I will reduce the intensity of what I've been saying. I rather agree that there is a strong chance it will be allowed to die, because it was actually on Mr. Obama's list of eventual tax cuts released a week ago, I think. That makes it a stronger possibility. But we should

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Standing Committee on International Trade. My name is Guy Caron and I am the national representative for Special Projects at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, CEP. CEP represents 150,000 members concentrated in the

International Trade committee  Very quickly, in terms of being a worse agreement or a less worse agreement and so on, I won't necessarily get into this. In the end, the union I represent actually backed the softwood lumber agreement. We knew it was a bad deal, but with the state of the forestry industry at the

International Trade committee  I personally can speak from the forestry perspective, because I'm speaking on behalf of the workers themselves. So we don't see a direct link, or that direct a link, with the forest industry, except as an ancillary industry, but we've seen so many exemptions coming out of the s

International Trade committee  It doesn't make sense to me, because our local procurement in the future will actually allow access to American vehicles and eliminate local preference for Canadians. In the U.S., vehicles will be excluded at the state level, so that doesn't make sense.

International Trade committee  Total, yes. That's it, all the provinces.

International Trade committee  Now in the U.S.—

International Trade committee  That's correct, but once again, there were no shackles on local governments to actually do that process. If they wanted to use procurement for local development, they actually could do it. Now, the problem with the 37 states—

International Trade committee  If you're asking me what I would recommend to Americans, it is very obvious. I think you will recognize that Americans are doing it their own way during negotiations, right? They are very tough negotiators, and this is why we're in this situation right now. I think it's a good p

International Trade committee  Honestly, it is difficult for me to say anything else than what Mr. Shrybman said. We have seen the same thing in the past. The exemptions provided for presently are not something that the United States will let go. Last week, Mr. Grenier traced the history of trade negotiations

International Trade committee  Yes. Very quickly, the problem is that—