International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the Standing Committee on International Trade concerning the negotiation of a Canada-India comprehensive economic partnership agreement. The Canadian governmen

International Trade committee  Thank you. The issue of foreign direct investment is something that can be looked at from two perspectives. One is that where there is value and mutual business interests, significant investments will occur. So I would echo the testimony of Professor Zhan about the relatively lo

International Trade committee  It's a very negative situation.

International Trade committee  The one-line answer is absolutely. The slightly longer answer would be that the Indian market is very complex, as is our own with both our federal and provincial jurisdictions, with our agreement on internal trade and federal law—which of course help to facilitate a common market

International Trade committee  Merchandise trade is of course vital. Those statistics are very interesting. The OECD, however, has recently come out with a very interesting set of statistics that I would encourage this committee to look at, both for this particular study that you're conducting and on an ongoin

International Trade committee  Thanks. Again, I would just underscore some of the macro data about Canada's relative successes, of course, coming out of the global recession. As an economist, I would urge the committee to look not so much simply at the trade deficit situation but at our employment numbers, o

International Trade committee  Absolutely. We've partnered with the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario, and we are producing a report that we hope will come out in the late fall of 2013. I'd certainly be happy to keep this committee posted on that study.

International Trade committee  We represent 135.

International Trade committee  You'll forgive me for not having provided a better introduction to the CCCE. Our CEO and president is the Honourable John Manley. As I said, we represent approximately 135 of the largest firms in Canada. We are generally large firms, although we do have some entrepreneur member

International Trade committee  Certainly our members are large firms. Many of them do have global presence. They are teams that have done work entering foreign markets and learn lessons and apply those to India. Let me make it clear, though—and I hope in further appearances before this committee on other topi

International Trade committee  We can do some things at a very high level. Some generally applicable things include the excellent work of Export Development Canada, the export financing component of that being critical; the trade commissioner service; our diplomatic representation; and the ongoing relationship

International Trade committee  I think that's a great question.

International Trade committee  We view tariffs, if you will, as the issue that we could deal with almost on day one of a trade negotiation, in the sense that we don't think this is the real barrier or focus for a CEPA or any other trade negotiation. We would like to see Canada move to 0% tariffs, because we do

International Trade committee  I agree.

Industry committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee concerning amendments to the Investment Canada Act in Bill C-60. Before I begin my comments, let me briefly introduce my organization, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.