International Trade committee  Thanks very much.

International Trade committee  I appreciate the question, and I think there is an ideological bit to this, too. If Canada said tomorrow that it would institute a Buy Canadian policy for rolling stock, for example, similar to, or even to the letter of, the current Buy American policy for rolling stock, there mi

International Trade committee  Yes, the Canadian Auto Workers did support that.

International Trade committee  Sure. That's no problem. When we're talking about establishing a Buy Canadian policy similar to policies in other jurisdictions, we're specifically talking about public procurement. We appreciate that a tremendous amount of private investment goes back and forth across borders; w

International Trade committee  Each trade agreement that is struck needs to be validated and needs to be understood on its own merits. I don't think it's a shock to many people on the committee that not only the CAW but the progressive trade unions in Canada have raised an eyebrow at some of the trade agreemen

International Trade committee  Workers did support that.

International Trade committee  I think there are probably a number of reasons that the Canadian government has been reluctant to establish domestic content policies that are in line with other jurisdictions we trade with. In some cases, to us it feels as though we keep this mantle of being the Boy Scout on int

International Trade committee  Yes, very briefly. I don't want to take up too much time since there are two of us here answering this one question. Specifically on the issue of balancing trade, when all of this stimulus funding from the United States has come and gone and has dried up, at the end of the day t

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  In terms of the value added, the production of these units, no, we are not.

International Trade committee  There was a notice about the particular up-fits that were going to be conducted in terms of putting decals on the cars and things of that nature. We have yet to get any confirmation that this work will be produced in Canada either.

International Trade committee  I'm sorry, but I don't.... Oh, I'm sorry. You were talking to....

International Trade committee  I guess you raise a good question. In our opinion, there really is no good reason. That's not to say that some particular vehicle models to satisfy a public procurement like this are not better than others in terms of the specifications of the public procurement requirements; the

International Trade committee  That's correct.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting my colleague Jenny and me to speak with you today. On behalf of CAW national president Ken Lewenza, we extend our appreciation to the committee for allowing us the space to offer our perspective in regard to the mu