International Trade Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Would it be possible to make them available to the committee?

[Carol Osmond]

I will have to check into that. I will definitely check into it and get back to you, yes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We will pursue that, Mr. Julian.

Thank you very much, Ms. Osmond, for coming today, again, on such short notice. It's a tough gig in Mexico, especially when it's minus 40 degrees out in Calgary and Edmonton today.

[Carol Osmond]

Actually, one of the reasons I moved back from Mexico was that I decided it was getting too hot.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much. We do appreciate it.

We're going to go right into the next part of our meeting. You can just leave as you will. Thanks very much, again.

Let's go now, before we get to Mr. Julian's motions, to the study plan. If you go to page 2 of the document prepared by researchers called “Study Plan Prepared for the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade”, there is a timeframe. Could you just go ahead and kind of look through that?

This is what the subcommittee decided to bring to the full committee here. From now until Christmas we have the meetings laid out. There are only, I believe, four or five left. Today's meeting, of course, is complete. Next Tuesday we propose to have these four groups, and three have agreed to come. CAFTA, the last one, the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, we haven't been able to contact yet, but we're hoping to have all four at the table for the two hours. We know there's a lot of interest in agriculture trade here.

On Thursday, December 7, and on December 12--those of you who haven't been involved in the discussion may not know what we're proposing here--there is a two-day seminar, which just happened to correspond to our committee times, starting at eight o'clock and going to ten on each of these two days. It's here on the Hill, right in Centre Block, I believe. It is sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and FIPA, the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas. The topic of these meetings is trade knowledge networks for parliamentarians.

We thought it would be good if the full committee tapped into these meetings. What we're proposing is that from ten to eleven, which completes our normal committee time, we have one-hour sessions, the first one dealing with the order in council appointment of Daniel Ross, a director of the Canadian Commercial Corporation.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Will we get a chance to talk about this after you read the whole thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We will discuss it. That's right. Yes.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I want to lay out what the proposal from the steering committee is first.

Then the second hour, the hour from ten to eleven on the twelfth, we're proposing to have the Conference Board of Canada. They haven't unveiled their study yet. We're not sure whether they would be willing to come and discuss that in any detail yet.

Another possibility would be to have the Conference Board after Christmas for maybe more than one meeting, possibly a couple of meetings, because they've done a very major study, as we heard before this committee about a month ago. It could be quite interesting. That leads to the second part after Christmas, from January 30 to March 29. What the subcommittee proposed is that we do a study on Canada-U.S. here--it should really be NAFTA, I would think, NAFTA trade. Possibly we could have the Conference Board of Canada, who have done a major study on NAFTA, to one or more meetings in that timeframe.

And then from April 17 to the end of June, should we not have an election before that time, we could go to stage two of the long-term study, which would expand beyond NAFTA. We can define that more later on.

That's just a rough guideline. Could we go to discussion on that now? There's a bit more information on stage one on page one of the study plan, which is Canada-U.S. trade, but again, I think we should probably refer to it as NAFTA trade and include Mexico, certainly. I would consider this to be a continuation of the study. We've had several witnesses on this already, and it would probably be more accurate to reflect this as a continuation.

Ms. Guergis, would you like to discuss this proposal?

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

I just want to comment on having this Daniel Ross come before committee. My understanding is that we have never really just had a board member. Usually that's left for presidents or CEOs to come before us. He is a civil servant. It is my understanding that he is an ADM. They don't get paid, and the reason why most ADMs or public servants sit on boards is just to have an open line of communication between the two. That's always been my experience, even before I came to work here as a member of Parliament, as political staff in the past.

I'm not sure why we would have Daniel Ross come before us. I think it would be actually unprecedented. I don't think it's something we've ever had, just a normal board member come before, so I'm a little bit curious as to why we have that on here. If it were a political appointment or a paid appointment or something like that, I could understand why we would do that, but this is just a normal board member and a public servant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes, thank you, Ms. Guergis.

Actually that is something the clerk had just pointed out to me now as well.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

That it's not normal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I wasn't aware that was the case, that that was what the appointment was. I don't think anybody probably at the steering committee was aware of that, so we might want to reconsider that, certainly.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Most definitely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

It makes good sense. We can discuss that.

Is there anyone else on that and on the proposal generally--the two-stage study and also the meetings leading up to the end of this session? Is there any other discussion?

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to mention that there's a bit of an omission. When we talked about the January 30 to March 29, certainly it reflects that we would spend most of our time on the study itself of NAFTA, not just the challenges and obstacles, but what the results have been as well. But we had mentioned specifically during the meeting of the steering committee that we may hold additional meetings on Chile, on the European free trade agreement, and also on the WTO because of the negotiations starting there. So I want to flag that, because that wasn't something that appears to have been brought forward, but I think it was explicitly acknowledged that we might come back to that issue during February and March.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

That's a good point, and on page 3 actually that is mentioned, Mr. Julian, I believe, or at least most of it is--certainly having Chile and other South American countries at a meeting is, and also February 6, a meeting on the European free trade agreement—

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

It's the WTO that's missing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

The WTO, yes, we had agreed to that too.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

That's what I'm mentioning is the omission. We mentioned three things, and two of them are here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We'll add the WTO. That should have been in here as well.

You're right, we did agree to that, and we will then have that as part of the proposal.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

That's point three, then.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

On the last page. These are meetings to fit in with our study.

With the European free trade agreement, was that not an informal meeting? Were they going to be before the committee as a formal—?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Normand Radford]

We have to work out the arrangements, but there will be a luncheon involved as well.