Foreign Affairs Committee on May 26th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Madame Laverdière, you have five minutes.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for their very interesting presentations.

We have talked a lot about maintaining links at the highest level and the way in which that influences the relationship as a whole.

Did the fact that the summit did not take place this spring as scheduled have any particular impact, any effect, in Mexico or the United States? My question goes to Mr. Robertson and Mr. Dade.

[Colin Robertson]

In my view, the impact was minor because we decided to hold a conference this winter. It is preferable to hold a conference. As you know, a few years ago, we cancelled the conference and that did have an impact. At the end of February, given the visa controversy and the Keystone XL project, the conditions for holding a conference and adopting good resolutions were not favourable. We feel that it is better to hold a conference that will end up producing good resolutions and positive results. With that in mind, we are here in order to better prepare for the conference that will take place in Canada next November or December.

[Carlo Dade]

In my opinion, there was no great impact. It is well known in each country's political circles that the Prime Minister of Canada had no other choice but to cancel the conference, given the political situation at the time in Canada, with the possibility of an election and everything else. It is not the first time that the summit has been cancelled. It was the third time. It was not a great surprise for the people around the President of the United States and the President of Mexico.

As for the management of the relationship, the relationship will work fine at a certain level,

On the technical level,

Every day the trilateral commission on environmental standards for widget production meets, so those things are not going to go away. What we've lost is the head,

the overall vision and the ability to move the relationship forward.

We're managing to tread water and stay in place.

At the same time, other integration groups, like the Pacific Alliance

are advancing quickly, because they have great leadership. In this case, staying in place actually means falling behind.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Or maybe it's like what Einstein, I think, said, that life is like riding a bicycle—if you're not moving, you're falling.

Thank you.

I was also struck by your comments about Mexico.

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Wilson.

[Michael Wilson]

Thank you very much.

I think the fact that this trilateral meeting was cancelled makes my point for me.

The agenda, in the eyes of everybody, was far too narrow and was focused just on the irritants among the three countries. I am proposing that we have a much broader agenda to discuss the positive issues as well as some of the irritants. We're always going to have irritants, but we have far more positive things happening among our three countries, and the more we can have a broad discussion of those and of how we can improve those to the benefit of all three of us, the better off we're going to be as three countries and as a broader NAFTA-North America region.

The other point I'd make very briefly, which I think Mr. Dade already made, is that I think it is really important to have that face-to-face discussion. The President of the United States has a huge agenda of matters that he has to deal with. The leaders of Mexico and Canada have narrower but still very broad agendas. It is very important to grab some time so that we have their attention on these NAFTA issues. Otherwise, they're going to be dealt with, as Mr. Dade said, by lower-level people. My point is let's use our leaders to raise our awareness and get activity on these things that can improve the three countries in a much more effective way.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

If I still have time, I have a short question.

Speaking of areas of potential cooperation, what more could the three countries do together to address the threats of climate change? Here again my question would be for the three of you, though I don't know if we'll have enough time.

[Colin Robertson]

I'll just briefly say that I think the work that the three ministers are doing and the fact that, coming out of yesterday's meeting in Mexico, they've agreed to create a kind of climate change group are very positive things.

With regard to setting standards in North America on fracking, we're the leaders in the technological advances we're making in terms of energy. It's not just the United States; it's Canada and it's Mexico. If we get that right then we set the standards for the rest of the world. We take those to Paris and those become the standards that the rest of the world will adopt.

As Carlo and Michael Wilson said, the danger if we don't move ahead is that we become standard takers. Here within North America we have an opportunity. We have a highly innovative culture, and pluralism is something that makes North America work extremely well to set the standards that basically set the international order for how we live.

That's the really important issue here: setting the broad standards in energy. As you say, that's an area in which we are the leaders and we can set these standards and take them to Paris.

[Carlo Dade]

I am going to swim against the current and state that we have to follow the lead of the premiers.

We're seeing leadership at the provincial level and I think also with the governors in the U.S., so follow the lead of the premiers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We'll finish off this round with Ms. Brown, please, for five minutes.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you so much for being here.

Carlo, it's very nice to see you again at this committee. It's been a long time, but welcome back.

I was really pleased to hear you say, Mr. Wilson, that we can find the positive things we've worked on and start building on those. We recently had our Minister of Transport in Washington making an announcement with the administration down there on issues related to railway safety. That's been a long time coming. It's taken some disasters in North America that have really pushed us to this point. I think we're seeing some very positive movement on that—no pun intended—and it's really great to see that we have some agreement going on. The minister came back really buoyed with a positive attitude about the things we can work on. I think those are the kinds of things we need to focus on to say, “Look, we got this done as a North American continent; what's the next project?”

I'll make a comment on your own comments, Mr. Robertson, and then I'll ask for Carlo's commentary. Perhaps the other gentlemen can jump in afterwards.

Mr. Robertson, you spoke about how the United States needs to know from a security perspective that “we've got their back”—I think that was the phrase you used. The United States is exceedingly cautious now, even nearly a decade and a half after 9/11. Even Canadians now need a passport to get into the United States, something that we never had to do. It was almost a free border.

Carlo, I wonder if you could comment on this. Are there areas of expertise that Canada has that we could work with the Mexicans on in terms of the issues relating to security, which would perhaps move the dial on removing the visa requirement? What are the things we do really well that would be of assistance there?

Perhaps, gentlemen, you could both comment afterwards.

[Carlo Dade]

Thank you, Ms. Brown. Thank you for the welcome back, too.

On the security issue, I would note that we have to delink security from the visa issue. As your colleague Mr. Trottier pointed out, it's tied to refugees and false refugee claimants or disputed refugee claimants. Mexico is a security challenge for the United States—it's not a security challenge for Canada—just as the United States is a security challenge for Canada. If you've been along the Detroit-Windsor border, the homicide rate is 44 per 100,000 in Detroit and zero per 100,000 in Windsor. You have visa-free travel and no going through an airport security line to get into Windsor. For us, that's the real issue tied to travel and entry to Canada around security.

What we can do to help Mexico with security, though, is an interesting question. I lectured at the navy war college in Mexico a few years ago. The issues that they were concerned about were management and organization. I don't know that there's much we can do on the security front. The Mexican military wants help from Canada in dealing with issues on counter-narcotics and dealing with drug gangs in Mexico, so the Canadian Armed Forces and DND send them to talk to the RCMP. We have a bit of an asymmetry

We also don't have the history of Plan Colombia and the counter-narcotics, counter-insurgency strategies that the Americans have. Our help in Mexico is on things that will require the presence of the Canadian International Development Agency, things like rule of law and justice strengthening. Our contribution to security in the Americas complements what the Americans do in the Caribbean and elsewhere by working on having CIDA fund rule of law programs and justice strengthening programs. We took CIDA out of Mexico. The U.S. left USAID in Mexico. They have the ability to help in what is, oddly enough, an area that would really be our specialization to help with in Mexico, to move them money and resources.

The last thing I would note on security is that, it's interesting; public opinion polling by Bob Pastor right before he passed showed greater support in Mexico for a common North American security perimeter than in the United States or in Canada. There are areas where being involved with Mexico could be helpful on that front, but in terms of contributions, we'd have to get CIDA back into Mexico.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That's interesting.

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Does anyone else have a comment on that? Either one?

[Carlo Dade]

I would note that I would actually agree with Mr. Wilson's agenda for a broader vision with the United States, but I would nuance this by saying that the agenda has to come out of a response to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Again, when we go from a table of three to a table of 13, it is going to have profound impacts on our access, our privileged and unique access that we've had for 20 years to the U.S. It's about to, for all intents and purposes, disappear. We really need to think about how to respond to this. I think that guides the agenda for sitting down with the United States. It gets their attention. It assures that they participate. It has us on the same page as Mexico. Mexico is worried about this and we are not yet, and that really has me concerned.

[Colin Robertson]

I would just say that I think that the current government shift with the integration of CIDA into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade was a very sound one. As we link our development objectives to our business objectives, keep in mind that Mexico is the third-largest trading partner, and there are things that we can do that would support our business objectives but also help the development in Mexico, principally along the lines that Carlo Dade has described, whether we're talking police training or judicial training. There are things that we're very good at and do around the rest of the world and have done with success in eastern Europe, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, and in parts of Africa. Haiti is a good example. There are things there that we could probably share with good effect if the Mexicans were interested.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

That's all the time we have.

We're going to start the next round with Mr. Wilks for five minutes.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here today.

Carrying on with that conversation, Mr. Dade, as a retired member of the RCMP, I'm always interested in and fascinated by shared intelligence, which you mentioned with regard to the trilateral agreements. I'm wondering where the weak link is, or whether there is a weak link with regard to shared intelligence. How much more can we improve upon that?

[Carlo Dade]

I would say that there are several weak links on the Mexican side. There are issues with security of information and personnel. We've had some success with the RCMP going down. Colin's actually in a better place to talk about military cooperation, assistance, and training.

Again, we also just don't have the experience with things like Plan Colombia in knowing how they work, but the crucial element is just having people down. We need the connections. We need to know whom we can trust. We need to know who's who on the ground, and you only get that by having people down.

We recently, I think, cut back our security money to Mexico. We're losing someone at the embassy who was working on security issues, and that's something that has to be—not has to be, but I would strongly suggest that it would be beneficial for us to look at reversing it and not cutting back on the money that goes for security in Mexico but increasing it.

But personal ties are the best way to get around the security leakage issues.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Robertson.

[Colin Robertson]

Just to say that, as you're aware, as Mr. Dade described, there are issues with the Mexican police that the Mexican authorities are well aware of about the cooperation that we would have between, say, the RCMP, the FBI, CSIS, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies in Canada and the United States that work seamlessly. That cooperation is not in the same state between Canada and Mexico, or between the United States and Mexico, but they are working on that.

On the military side, there has been some pick up. Remember, the Mexicans themselves didn't attend a number of the defence ministers of the Americas meetings for a number of years. That is changing of late, and I think that's a positive sign with the Peña Nieto administration, but they have still a long way to go in terms of structural reform. Their defence minister is a uniformed officer and that's different from us with civilian control in Canada and the United States, so there are still things that Mexico has to do before we can perhaps assist them the way we would like to.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Wilson, do you have anything to add?

[Michael Wilson]

I just want to pick up on a point Mr. Dade made, which was that if we're going to have a leaders meeting, we should be focusing on the TPP, and as I understood him to say, the TPP alone, because of the significance. I don't deny the significance of the TPP leading to a move away from NAFTA or the elimination of NAFTA.

My basic point here is that if we have that broader discussion with the United States, they don't just say, “Okay, this is Canada's day. It's KXL. This is Canada's day. They're worried about country-of-origin labelling”. If we have this broader discussion, then people will be able to see that if we start to weaken NAFTA, it will have negative impacts on other areas of the relationship and put the discussion of TPP in a much broader, more understandable context, in which people will understand that it could be very damaging to the broader relationship.

I had some comments on the security. I don't disagree with what Colin has just said. I'll just say this. If we're going to have these discussions—and I think we should have discussions on security with Mexico—we should identify those areas that are important for us to have the dialogue on, and through these discussions, understand more about the drug trade that unfortunately Mexico is drawn into because it's the only land access from South America into the United States, a great area of demand. It's going to weaken our capacity to deal with that issue, and you can be sure—I heard this when I was in Washington—that there are members of Congress who see that if they can get control of the flow of drugs from Mexico and further south into the United States, then they're going to be looking very carefully at what goes on along the northern border.

It's in our interests now to get a better understanding of that and of how we can work cooperatively among the three countries to deal with that as a potential issue.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We'll go to Mr. Dewar for five minutes.