International Trade committee  In general, they're not non-tariff barriers, but Japanese society and culture. The one thing I would say is that it's not that there is a specific barrier we need to overcome. And not just for our industry but for many industries, if you're going to make a serious effort to go in

International Trade committee  In general, no, I think anything they have signed recently might involve single transformations, so cut and sew. I would also say that at one stage Japan was subject to the quota system. They were a low-cost provider in the sixties and so on. They have been very open and committe

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  We have an 18-year agreement under NAFTA, and no one wants to change it. The world has passed NAFTA by in terms of a trade arrangement. A small provision allows you to access a certain quota of fabric that isn't from the trading region; it's called a TPL, tariff preference leve

International Trade committee  There's quite a debate in the States because the U.S. textile industry is dead set against it. Vietnam is on their brain, if you will; they just go crazy about Vietnam. So, absolutely, I don't see their having a lot of flexibility in the negotiations. They are captive to that ind

International Trade committee  Understood. You play the cards you're dealt sometimes. We didn't ask in 2003 for the Canadian government to eliminate duties on least developed countries. In fact we came to this committee and to those in the Senate and said, don't do that. But they did. You have to think about

International Trade committee  NAFTA was created when there were high or restrictive import quotas against countries like India and China. There was a goal, especially voiced by the U.S. textile industry, that they wanted to have the entire garment from North American raw materials. The fact of the matter is

International Trade committee  The reason I want to mention this is that we've used that as the template for our trade agreements with every other country we've signed an FTA with. In the first instance, we went to Costa Rica and said, “NAFTA rules: done”. Colombia, Peru.... We don't make fabric here. They don

International Trade committee  Yes. Look, with a country like Japan, you go to single transformation—cut and sew the garment, and then trade it. With some of the other developing countries, you might want to do a fabric-forward, because they will have a fabric capacity. India has tons of fabric capacity. They

International Trade committee  We have no opposition to being involved in TPP. Our only problem is that U.S. policy is still driven by, as the economists once called it, the world's oldest infant industry, that being the textile industry. Their rules are so absurd in this century that there's no basis for trad

International Trade committee  No, we haven't. We have had some missions previously to Japan. Just to echo the comment before, the duties are up to 13%, so you're talking about millions of dollars coming off in trade. But no, we haven't done a study. I think the key is that there are a lot of fairly high-en

International Trade committee  Tasmania is the launching point for our Antarctic research. We're going away from a commodity industry where you can say x amount will go. This just opens up another decent market by allowing us good access.

International Trade committee  We work very closely with Export Development Canada. And again, I would never come before this committee without praising EDC and saying how important it is to the exporting community. With it we did a survey of opportunities in BRIC countries, especially South America. The basic

International Trade committee  Mr. Chair, honourable members, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you regarding a Canada-Japan bilateral trade agreement. My name is Bob Kirke. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Apparel Federation. Our association is made up of several hundred firms

International Trade committee  I have no particular expertise in the structuring of labour provisions within a trade agreement. I actually have less confidence that it will be where you resolve those problems. Companies will solve those problems through multilateral organizations such as the ILO. So if this co