Evidence of meeting #4 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Welcome, guests and committee members. It's nice to see you.
Pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), main estimates 2006-2007, vote 25 under Canadian International Trade Tribunal, referred to the committee on Tuesday, April 25, 2006, I call vote 25.
I welcome our guests today, Messrs. Gosselin and Greig. I invite them to proceed with any introductory comments they might wish to make and then we'll follow with questions.
Who would like to proceed?
Monsieur Gosselin. Thank you, sir.
Pierre Gosselin Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to appear before this committee and to answer your questions.
My name is Pierre Gosselin, I am chair of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. I am accompanied today by Mr. Sandy Greig, Director General of the Research Branch.
Before answering your questions, I would like to give you a short overview of the tribunal's mandate and challenges. It is an administrative tribunal and is part of Canada's system of trade redress mechanisms. It is a quasi-judicial and arm's length organization which carries out its responsibilities in an impartial and autonomous fashion. The tribunal comes under the jurisdiction of Parliament, through the Minister of Finance.
The tribunal is currently comprised of seven members. Each member is appointed by order in council for an indeterminate period. The members of the tribunal are supported by a team of 87 employees. The tribunal's main officers are the Secretary, the Director General of Research, the General Counsel and the Director of Corporate Services.
We have a $10 million budget of which the lion's share is allocated to wages.
Our workload is entirely generated by complaints and cases filed with the tribunal or referred by the Governor in Council or the Minister of Finance. Most of the cases we deal with are subject to very tight legal timeframes.
Our mandate includes investigating complaints and providing our opinion on economic trade and tariff matters referred to the tribunal by the Governor in Council or the Minister of Finance. As part of our quasi-judicial role, we conduct investigations to determine whether domestic industry is suffering hardship due to dumping or the subsidizing of certain products. We hear appeals concerning the Canada Border Services Agency's decisions, the CBSA, pursuant to the Customs Act, and the National Revenue Minister's decisions under the Excise Tax Act.
We investigate complaints lodged by potential suppliers concerning federal procurement subject to NAFTA, the AIT, and the AGP. You know NAFTA. The AIT is the Agreement on International Trade and the AGP is the WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement. We conduct safeguard investigations to determine whether the rapid increase in imports, whether from all countries or specifically China, is hurting our domestic producers. The tribunal's decisions are binding in relation to complaints concerning hardship or appeals of CBSA's decisions and procurement. As far as China-specific or general safeguard investigations are concerned, the tribunal hands down a judicial determination of hardship and, upon request, may make recommendations concerning applicable redress, if need be.
The tribunal also plays an advisory role to government by conducting general investigations on economic matters and references, especially in the following cases: safeguard measure cases where the tribunal finds there is hardship or where the Governor in Council may ask for recommendations on measures to mitigate this hardship; general investigations on economic and tariff matters which are referred back by the government or finance minister and, lastly, in accordance with permanent references on tariffs, investigations on applications made by producers demanding tariff reductions for textiles they import in the course of their production activities.
The tribunal's workload is, for the most part, externally generated. Our main challenge is to allocate our limited resources in such a way as to ensure the statutory deadlines are always met, and that the quality of the tribunal's findings, determinations, and recommendations is not compromised. The tribunal has a single strategic outcome and two activities. The strategic outcome is the fair, timely, and effective disposition of international trade cases and government-mandated inquiries in various areas of the tribunal's jurisdiction.
The first activity is the adjudication of trade cases. The bulk of our budget is allocated to this activity--that is about $9.9 million out of a total of $10 million. The second activity is general economic inquiries, which include inquiries referred to it by the government, or tariff inquiries referred by the Minister of Finance.
Again, the tribunal strives to ensure that tribunal decisions are fair and impartial and published in a timely way.
I would like to give you a brief overview of the legislative provisions under our act which deal with confidential business information and the procedures implemented by the tribunal to protect this information while, to the greatest extent possible, ensuring the process remains open and accessible to all parties and their legal counsel.
Given the nature of the matters we deal with, parties must submit confidential commercial information. If such information were revealed to a competitor, there may be considerable adverse financial ramifications.
The Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act regulates the designation of confidential information and the necessary sanctions in case of disclosure. The tribunal has implemented a system by which only lawyers who table a deed of covenant before the tribunal may have access to this information. These lawyers must, among other things, undertake to not disclose the information they obtain from other parties to their clients and they must destroy all information at the conclusion of a case. Protecting confidential business information is the cornerstone of the commercial redress system. The tribunal ensures that all parties maintain their confidence in the system.
You've been provided with our annual report for 2004-05. The annual report for 2005-06 should be tabled in Parliament before June 30.
I've been asked to address our 2004-05 annual report, and I will add a brief overview of the last fiscal year.
Both 2004-05 and 2005-06 were busy years for the tribunal. In 2004 we had a record number of unfair trade cases, coupled with the receipt of three safeguard complaints. A safeguard complaint typically represents the equivalent of several unfair trade cases in terms of its size and complexity. The range of issues to address are broader, and cases are larger and also require substantial preliminary analysis prior to our making a decision to accept the case for inquiry, and once the safeguard case is accepted, both an injury analysis and a remedy analysis have to be undertaken within tight legislative timeframes.
We also received in 2004-05 two textile references from the Minister of Finance. We received 62 procurement complaints, as well as 149 appeals.
In 2005-06 we received somewhat fewer unfair trade cases, but we worked on two large textile references. We also continued our work on the two safeguard cases we had received the previous fiscal year and considered two new safeguard complaints received in the fiscal year. We received 58 procurement complaints and 96 appeals.
As a final point, I would like to mention some initiatives the tribunal is taking to improve accessibility and to reduce administrative burden to the public.
We publish and archive all our decisions--in fact, beginning in 1989--as well as our statements of reasons, on our website. The site is equipped with a search engine to allow people to search the precedents.
All notices are placed on our website, and subscribers are advised by a “what's new” type of e-mail. Our questionnaires, which are the main instrument we use for collecting information in a case, are available on our website, and parties will soon be able to use a secure electronic channel to complete those online. We will shortly also be making a public version of cases available to the parties involved. That file will also be searchable and constantly updated throughout the case.
Those are my opening remarks. I'm prepared to answer questions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Brian Pallister
Thank you for your presentation. The first member of the committee to speak will be Mr. Pacetti.
You have seven minutes.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Gosselin, Mr. Greig.
In your opening statement, did you say the Minister of Finance or the Department of Finance are the people who refer the cases to your department...or is it an agency?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
No, what I said was that the Minister of Finance can refer cases involving an inquiry on tariff matters, and all other safeguard types of inquiries come from the Governor in Council or can be filed directly by the interested parties. Also, inquiries of a general economic nature can be sent to us by the Governor in Council, not by the Minister of Finance.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
But third parties or associations can send files over to you. Is that correct?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
Well, let me be clear. We have to know which kind of case we're dealing with to determine who can do what. If we're dealing with private matters such as complaints of dumping, complaints of subsidy, or complaints under procurement, those are private, and the parties involved file the cases themselves. If it's a safeguard inquiry--and a safeguard inquiry is one where the industry complains that imports have increased at such a rapid rate that they can't compete--they either ask the government to file the case for them or they come directly to the tribunal.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Why would the government file on their behalf?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
First of all, the legislation provides for that. The government can support the domestic industry's complaint that imports are damaging and they therefore ask us to undertake an inquiry to determine whether there is injury.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
So in the example prior to that, you're saying if it's a procurement or if it's based on--
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
If it's a procurement, they come directly to us because that's a private matter, or in a dumping case, let's say a particular industry complains that imports from a particular country or group of countries are unfairly being sold in--
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Excuse me, but we only have seven minutes, and what you're saying leads me to another question, because I'm not sure I understand how the structure works. Who pays for the fees? How does the $9.9 million of budget get allocated, or how do you distribute it? If somebody from the private sector comes and makes a complaint, who picks up the cost? I don't see any of that breakdown anywhere.
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
First of all, the tribunal does not collect or charge fees for hearing a case. So the short answer to your question is that it's the government that picks up the tab for the costs of operating the tribunal.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Somebody has to defend it or prosecute the case.
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
The private parties will cover their own costs to come before the tribunal, yes. So both sides will be represented, just like in court, and we will adjudicate the case.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
So if it's an excise tax question regarding duties, you would have somebody from CCRA coming in to defend their...?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
Yes, normally represented by the Department of Justice.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
And that cost would not be picked up by your agency?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
Not by us.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Not by you. So the $9 million is just to conduct the hearings themselves.
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
That's right.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
You also spoke about statutory deadlines, that one of the objectives is to maintain statutory deadlines. What does that mean?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
It means that under most of the types of cases we handle, we have statutory deadlines that cannot be exceeded. To give you an example, in a dumping case we have 120 days in which to hear the case, arrive at a decision, and publish our statement of reasons; the same is true in a subsidy case. In a safeguard case, usually the request that comes to us from the Governor in Council will contain time limits, which can be maybe 150 days from beginning to end, but that really depends on the particular order in council.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Does that mean that from the time the case starts or once the case is terminated you have, whichever it is, 120 or 150 days?
Chair, Office of the Chairman, Canadian International Trade Tribunal
No, this is from beginning to end. This is from the day it's filed.