International Trade committee  If I may, I think I'd suggest there are a lot of very practical issues that are already on the table and can be picked up fairly easily. I think the most essential thing right now is to focus on the process and deal with an issue that's been raised here: who's in charge? We've go

International Trade committee  Do you want me to--

International Trade committee  I'll try to give two quick answers. The SPP was deliberately designed to deal with the boring and the incremental, and the first year it concentrated on much more practical stuff because there was no appetite for big ideas. As time went on, the leaders--certainly the private sec

International Trade committee  I have to speak from the perspective of large enterprises, and in that context it's important to recognize the extent to which trade flows are linked to investments. Canadian companies on the large end have become very enthusiastic investors abroad. Canada as a country is a net i

International Trade committee  I think there's a philosophical element there. To what extent should governments be responsible for marketing companies' products? When you're talking about a budget, you're talking about the government budget. I suspect that Canadian enterprises selling into the United States ar

International Trade committee  Indeed, Mexico is an essential partner in the North American context. NAFTA has been around for a number of years. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives operates like a secretariat for the North American Competitiveness Council. These are business people from the three countri

International Trade committee  It flows from the asymmetry of their being more important to our strategy than we are in their big picture.

International Trade committee  If I think back to those days, they were obviously shocked by what had happened to them. They were reacting very strongly. The positive side of what happened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is that we did have very strong personal relationships develop at the top. I think tha

International Trade committee  I think they are a much bigger part of our external relationships than we are of theirs. That's an imbalance that is inevitable, given their impact on the global economy and the broader global security situation. We're never going to be as big an issue in Washington as the United

International Trade committee  I think what you're talking about in terms of the relationship between legislators is an important part of that. As a business community we've been very active with our counterparts in the United States, both in a bilateral and a trilateral context, but these days it's particul

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee again. I think the invitation in this case is particularly timely because just a week ago we had some 50 of our member chief executives meeting in Washington, D.C., for two days. We covered

Foreign Affairs committee  Perhaps I could comment on your last question first, concerning border congestion. I think Canadians are as ingenious as anyone else in dealing with problems that way. One of the reasons, for instance, that we have the opportunity to transform Vancouver into a North American gate

International Trade committee  We also have to recognize, when you talk about head-office activity or research activity, that when you're getting into higher-income individuals, the personal tax structure may have as much influence as the corporate tax structure. The other element that's important to mention

International Trade committee  If I may, that was the point I was making about the potential for Canada-EU discussions to be a bridge across the Atlantic, where Canada could play a key role.

International Trade committee  There's no question it will have some effect. I think what we have to recognize, again, is that there's more than one dimension to that--for example, the corporate tax side, in terms of the effective tax rate on investment, which gets affected by things like provincial sales taxe