Foreign Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2015

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

My second question has to do with customs operations.

Mr. Miller, I think it was you who mentioned the importance of crossing the border more quickly by being preauthorized. You also talked about the NEXUS program.

Isn't there a danger associated with what we might call the bar code? We can use bar codes on material items such as canned goods, but humans are another thing. We're talking about fingerprints and iris photographs. I agree that we need to provide security, but we also need to respect rights and be able to move more freely. People don't necessarily want to be filed in order to move more freely. Is there not a problem with that?

[Eric Miller]

With respect to privacy, it is each individual's choice as to whether or not they want to participate in the NEXUS program. There is no obligation. Canada is one of the few countries where citizens entering the United States do not have the obligation to provide fingerprints or an iris scan. If you want to participate in the NEXUS program, or in other words, if you want to—

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I'll stop you there.

When I crossed the border in 2004, some people ahead of me had to have their irises photographed and provide their fingerprints. They were chosen randomly. Since they were just transiting through, they had to do it quickly. There was no general obligation, but there were still actions taken in that sense.

[Eric Miller]

Third country nationals who are transiting through Canada into the United States are obliged to do that, but Canadian citizens are not. Partly it's a question of volume.

But with respect to the case of individual freedom, we have a certain trade-off. If you provide information and you make known who you are, you get through the border more quickly. As people, we make decisions all the time. If you have a card at Shoppers Drug Mart, you get discounts on things in exchange for data. You've made that decision. You're not obligated to have one, but you've made that decision.

To me, I think most people who are crossing the border want to get across more quickly, so they will make those trade-offs. It is also important to note, however, that when the beyond the border negotiations took place, there was, included in the core of the agreement, a privacy framework that did involve the Privacy Commissioner. At the time, she looked very closely at this and found that the framework was fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Ms. Day. That's all the time we have.

We're going to finish up with Mr. Goldring.

You have five minutes, sir.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a very interesting discussion. I'd like to pursue the standards aspect of it. Being a manufacturer of electrical systems myself for many years, I know what difficulties arise there. For me to get Underwriters Laboratories approval on some of my equipment costs several thousand dollars, even on the simplest thing, and it could run into the tens of thousands of dollars depending on what equipment it was.

Conversely, in the safety systems area, I could not import United States material that was approved by Underwriters Laboratories Incorporated. It was not permissible to market that ULI-approved material in Canada, even though that was the American standard for fire protection, as well as Factory Mutual's, which was another one.

We have this myriad of different standards and approvals. In keeping with what Ms. Dawson mentioned earlier, I have a question. I would think that it would be an easier component or function to do within NAFTA, at least, for the three countries to come together on some kind of commonality on some of these approval bases. But is that a function of NAFTA? If so, has anything ever specifically been worked towards that?

Who would like to give that one a try?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Dawson.

[Laura Dawson]

The challenges you mention are significant, and they cost importers and exporters a lot of money. Once someone has control of a regulatory function—“we own this and you own that”—they're very reluctant to give it up. Regulators are also charged with defending the safety of their domestic consumers, not promoting international trade. It's tough to unmake that.

The NAFTA does contain a number of “best efforts” provisions to encourage harmonization of standards and working groups on technical barriers, but what the NAFTA lacked was high-level political attention to actually rooting out some of these barriers. The regulatory cooperation council, the RCC initiative that was launched in 2011, has been much more effective in getting regulators and businesses at the table, with a mandate to make things happen.

I was speaking to a woman who is involved in both the RCC and in the NAFTA with her particular product. She says that she's had much better results through the RCC because of that political attention, and she only wishes that we could have the same process with Mexico on a trilateral level, because the NAFTA process never worked out as intended.

We need that intention and that political leadership trilateralized, I think, to work better.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I'll just use as an example here a battery item. I'm looking at the approvals on the reverse of it, and it's only for use in the United States and Canada. If I was in Mexico and I was a supplier of parts to the government or whoever for procurement and I had a competitor using this, I would use that as a way of protecting my market and making it known to have that disallowed so I would only have provision of material that had Mexican approval on it. Ambassador, is this a problem in Mexico? It certainly is here. I see protectionism in this.

[Francisco Suarez Davila]

One of my surprises in coming to Canada was—which was not the case 20 years ago—it turns out that Canada was probably the most active free trader of the three countries. Many of the issues.... I didn't know what supply management was. What is this? We don't have that in Mexico.

I would comment this: NAFTA is alive and kicking. It allows a great deal of procedures and breathing space to improve within NAFTA itself. There are many things that are permissive in nature and you would not have to touch the treaty to make them work. What I would say is that NAFTA is there. It allows for a lot of breathing space to change things within NAFTA.

Now what we're doing, TPP will be on top of NAFTA, not a substitute for NAFTA. It will improve things that NAFTA could not do because 20 years ago they weren't there. But within NAFTA you have lots of breathing space. Government procurement in 1994, we had 1,200 public sector companies. Now we probably have something like 50. Government procurement is not a problem in Mexico nor is supply management. We have lots of paperwork problems, lots of administrative problems that we have to work on, but that's not NAFTA; it's the government and the bureaucrats getting together to do a number of the common-sense things that they have to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

To our witnesses today, thank you very much for the time that you've spent discussing the subject. We need to go in camera just for a second to talk about drafting instructions. I'll give our witnesses a chance to step back from the table and clear the room a bit, and we can go from there.

Once again, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

[Proceedings continue in camera]