Mr. Chair, and members thank you once again for the opportunity to meet with the committee.
Scotty, we should really stop meeting like this at committee as well.
Since my last appearance, the Canadian Chamber launched our Canada-U.S. relations initiative that covers five critical areas in the relationship: the border, environment and natural resources, regulatory co-operation, buy American, and defence and security supply chain issues.
We look forward to engaging with committee members on all the above, but really it's the latter two that are the most germane to my appearance with the committee for the next couple of minutes.
I don't need to belabour the point to this committee that the Canadian business community's concern with procurement practices in the United States is an ongoing area of concern, as they risk our being shut out of the American market.
What I instead want to spend the next few minutes talking about are six actual forward-looking ideas to ensure our integration into American supply chains and access to U.S. procurement markets. We hope that the committee will be able to highlight these in their report to the government in the coming weeks.
First, we should look comprehensively at the importance of goods and services. There's a risk that we myopically focus on goods and forget the importance of high-value services. Just last week the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company, for example, was awarded a joint venture contract worth up to $2 billion for design and services related to work for the United States Air Force. This demonstrates the value of services, particularly if you're talking about support contracts that can last years instead of a one-and-done deal that comes with the delivery of a physical product.
Second, we need to know what we're bringing to the table as Canada. In 2008-09 when we had the bilateral negotiation with the Americans, we had gone through a fairly bruising process, and I don't think anyone wants to go through that type of arrangement again, given we that have just gone through the USMCA discussions. We need to think about how we can be a serious partner. This includes CUSMA implementation, supporting North American supply chain resiliency, leveraging critical minerals, and perhaps even our own procurement practices to think about buy North American suggestions, particularly, for example, in the defence and security industry.
There is tremendous potential to partner and work with U.S. firms, and also to provide world-class expertise in the clean energy sector. This includes, for example, partnerships on hydroelectricity facilities, or on small modular reactors.
Third, we need to recognize the unique nature of our defence and security industrial base. The DPSA and other arrangements are critical tools for Canada to maintain access to the American market, and we would encourage the committee to explore in its recommendations how these arrangements could be codified to provide further certainty for Canadian companies. The continental industrial base is critical to continental defence and cannot be separated.
Fourth is the importance of engaging on emerging buy clean initiatives. The recently introduced CLEAN Future Act would establish a buy clean program that would set performance targets for projects that receive federal funding. It was introduced with a very explicit goal to bolster U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, and we need to ensure that the standards used in its implementation do not shut out Canadian companies from the market.
Our approach is to seek to address climate challenges while also generating economic opportunities in environmentally sustainable technologies, goods and services. This also means positioning Canada by positively leveraging our low-carbon footprint products.
Fifth, industry and government collaboration is critical. The Canadian Chamber and our members worked closely with the government during the CUSMA negotiations. Another example is when the government and chamber members collaborated last year on the U.S.'s 2021 defence appropriations legislation, which did not pass with provisions that would have been detrimental to Canadian exporters in the defence and security industry.
The Biden administration's supply chain executive order thankfully recognized the importance of consultation with allies, and we're calling on the government to engage in those reviews and collaborate with industry to ensure that a Canadian view is well represented in those processes.
Sixth, and last but not least, is that we need better data. Buy American and buy America, its cousin, are hideously complex when combined with the WTO GPA commitments, waivers and various subnational programs, and this comes from someone who has spent over a decade working in trade policy. There is not really solid data in the public domain about Canadian access to U.S. procurement markets. Canadian businesses, and I personally, would like to get a better handle on the true scope of the problem, and companies likewise want to know where they should invest their business development efforts most effectively.
As I said in a recent media interview, there are few who wake up in the morning in Washington thinking about how to do Canadian businesses a favour. Maybe Scotty is perhaps an exception to that. There are a multiplicity of interests inside Washington, and our embassy is ably led by Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, who does a fantastic job on behalf of Canada, but we are at a critical moment in the relationship, and we need to drive home the point of why it is in America's self-interest to work with us.
The Canadian Chamber looks forward to continuing to work with this committee. I would be glad to answer any questions.