Our trade policy is firmly rooted in the 1970s. Michelle Rempel asked the question of our trade leaders at committee: Have you done an analysis of the intangible effects? They said no, yet there are no tariffs to get rid of and 99% of the effect of these deals is on intangibles.
We have, then, no offensive strategy. We have no analytical strategy, and we don't have the expertise. We've been on this 15-year pub crawl of just signing things, when in fact these are instruments for regulatory remote control.
No, it sets us back profoundly. Our degrees of policy latitude to build a future are limited. We need capacity to negotiate these trade agreements for the contemporary realities, which the economic council should do. We should have budgets for doing it, and we should have strategic investments in a very contended world.