Evidence of meeting #46 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aluminum.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Do they have public reports of your buy Canadian content?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
To my knowledge, they have reports on every investment they make for every client they have in Canada.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Do they have reports on Canadian content issues?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
Yes, they do on Canadian content and any of the other metrics where they are tracking part of their investment.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
What percentage of the supported work occurred in Canada?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
Could you repeat the question?
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
What percentage of the work that was supported by EDC occurred in Canada?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
I don't have the answer to that specifically.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
How about what percentage occurred outside of Canada?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
I don't have the answer to that either. You're very specific in your questions. I'm happy to come back to the committee—
Conservative
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
—with the response.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Please do. Thank you.
If a project receives EDC support, is there a minimum Canadian content requirement?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
There are metrics that Alstom needs to track and report to EDC. They could be of all sorts, and they include growth and jobs created in Canada.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Right, but is there a Canadian content requirement? This is a buy Canada study.
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
The EDC agreement is not directly related to the buy Canada act. It's not related. EDC is for export markets. Buy Canada is about building in Canada. Those are two different things.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Yes, I understand that, but you're using Canadian money, and we're asking right here at a buy Canada study what kind of Canadian content we have.
How do Canadians track what they get out of buy Canadian content? Should Parliament be able to measure the Canadian economic return generated by this partnership?
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
I think you do. I don't know if it's through this committee, but in other committees, EDC comes and reports on their activities.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
What due diligence does Alstom conduct to ensure that workers in its global supply chain are not being exploited or working illegally? I understand that you're very heavily involved in China. I think you have 11 projects there.
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
We're in 60 countries all around the world. We have strong ethics—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
I'm specifically asking what your due diligence requirements are.
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
We have due diligence, and it is public.
Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications, Alstom
We have a policy.