Industry committee  I will answer together with Mr. Coles, the Union President. An example that comes to mind is that of Vale Inco. Vale had acquired Inco, and certain conditions were involved in the purchase. Those conditions were related to employment and were not complied with, as we later learn

Industry committee  I will make this short. Telecommunications is an interesting case. You know very well that Minister Clement announced his intention to open this industry up soon to foreign investment. We also know that the three large companies that are currently sharing the market are not very

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Garneau. We understand that there are concerns among the companies, investors, actuaries and pension plan managers, and a proposal that we submitted last year could address those concerns. In fact, in the middle of the crisis last year, 70% of our members were wo

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, committee members, for agreeing to hear us. You will not be surprised to hear that we support Bill C-501. We think the present system really works to the detriment of workers, as demonstrated by a number of examples from the great r

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—

International Trade committee  Oh, sorry about that.

International Trade committee  Once again, we are talking about what the United States is going to want eventually. In the last 20 or 25 years, the United States has shown that it wants none of it. There are exemptions that they refuse to let go. The agreement that we have here will not allow us to go that rou

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  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  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  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