International Trade Committee on May 3rd, 2007

[Teresa Healy]

Thank you for that question.

I think what we see here is that not only have families lost ground but there has been a widening disparity of income and wealth. There are people who are benefiting. There are corporations that are benefiting. Profits have been very high in these years. But that doesn't mean that the interests of the profit-making corporations are directly translated into the experience of families across the country.

When we look at different segments of our society and at those who have been put in the most vulnerable positions, we can see even more clearly where this is headed. I think we need to have a wide-ranging discussion about the structure of our economy and the kind of economy we need for the future and the kind of economy that seems to be unfolding in front of us.

What's happening with manufacturing? What's happening with jobs in this country? There is a serious crisis going on. We're losing ground, and we're returning to becoming exporters once again of unprocessed raw materials. That is a strategy that is very short-sighted. Sure, it'll put a lot of money in the pockets of a small number of corporations, but what does that do for economic development across the country more generally?

I want to keep coming back to the implications and the way.... As a working-class organization, we see the effects on transportation workers, we see the racial profiling that is also a part of the story that Mr. Lennox has shared with us about problems with the border.

There are issues here for workers in general and also problems that immigrant workers are facing. Look at the ITAR story that we heard about a few weeks ago.

Maybe I'll let others....

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

Madame Burrows.

[Nancy Burrows]

When we talk about prosperity or social inequalities that have increased in recent years with liberalization, NAFTA, and now, NAFTA coupled with the SPP, it is important to consider their repercussions on women who, more often than not, are at the bottom of the wage scale with jobs that are increasingly unstable or atypical. You described how a large part of the population has become poor. However, it is important to point out that this population is composed primarily of women.

It is also important to emphasize the existence of discrimination based on ethno-cultural origin. Women who are members of visible minorities are at the bottom of the wage scale. After that come immigrant women and other women, men who are members of visible minorities, other immigrant men and all other men. It is important to consider social stratification and the current hierarchy within our society. Under the SPP, there will be a greater focus on liberalization and deregulation policies, with a view to ensuring greater alignment with the United States. I believe the situation will get worse.

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

Merci beaucoup.

I'd like to come back to the issue of a regulatory framework, which means basically protections for Canadian families. There is a strong push, and we've heard in testimony from government spokespeople, who always say that all the information is out there, which is false, as we know...and they also say there is no problem with harmonization. But we know that in the United States the regulatory process is flawed. We saw that with bovine growth hormone. We've seen that with a number of scandals in the pharmaceutical industry and on issues around food safety.

What would Canadian families be giving up in terms of those fundamental protections, knowing that protections for your food, your pharmaceutical products, those kinds of things, are in place? What do we give up if we, as with the softwood lumber agreement, simply concede everything to basically making sure those decisions are made in Washington rather than being made here in Canada by Canadians?

[Teresa Healy]

I think there are people who look at the regulatory question and say that what we need is regulatory diversity and that we don't need downward harmonization of regulations. We need the kind of regulatory perspective that deals with the needs of families, that deals with the needs of communities.

This kind of regulatory harmonization and a movement towards the bottom is something we have to fight back against, but we can't if we're not given the information about what kinds of regulations or about what the process is for engagement on this question.

If we only have employers and corporations who say, “We know all about these sectors, so we'll give the government advice”, well, there are other people involved in civil society and in the economy more generally who also have an experience of regulations. For example, port workers were very active on these discussions around security and regulatory reform in the ports. Had they not been there to respond to the issues, the regulatory reforms for port workers would have been even more onerous.

I think what we need to see is a broad-ranging kind of discussion about regulatory reform. It has to be democratized.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Excuse me. Your time is more than up, Mr. Julian. Thank you.

We now go to the five-minute round.

From the official opposition, we have Mr. Maloney. Go ahead, please.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hart, you indicated the border is one of the fundamental problems that we have to change. Certainly vis-à-vis the United States it is a security issue, I agree with you, but how do we change that mindset?

We heard from Mr. Lennox. He's the fellow who represents the people who are trying to cross that border.

You indicated that there were roughly 100 regulatory problems on the Canadian side and 400 on the U.S. side. I'm not sure the U.S. really wants to dance. They say they do, but from time to time these barriers go up. There was mention made of oranges or roast beef sandwiches--a trucker's lunch. Every time you turn around, there seem to be more security investigations that overlap.

How do we change the mindset in the United States? How do we impress upon them that Canada is the largest trading partner for many, many U.S. states?

[Prof. Michael Hart]

Well, you don't do it on the basis of an incremental approach that puts civil servants together to talk about the problems they're experiencing. That does some good, but it really isn't going to change the fundamentals. In order to change the fundamentals, you have to capture imagination in Washington. In order to capture imagination in Washington, you have to have a big initiative.

The nature of the U.S. decision-making process, where power is widely dispersed and there are a lot of people who have a role in it, is that you must think big. If you have a big initiative, you can get Americans excited about it and move the agenda forward. We did that with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement; the Mexicans did it with the NAFTA. There have been similar kinds of initiatives in earlier eras. NATO and the NORAD zone were major initiatives that captured imagination in the United States. They overcame the multitude of smaller interests in the United States that are always ready to point out, “If you do this, I will be affected.” So if you think big, you can overcome that.

Do I think if we do that we can overcome the many problems we have on the security front? No. But we have to start. We have to build a higher level of concern in Washington, at the highest levels, that the continued health and prosperity of the North American economy means we must deal with the border differently. That means a willingness on our part, for example, to strengthen the perimeter around North America in order to deal with security issues that are uppermost in Americans' minds, and that should also be of concern to us.

Similarly, we need to be prepared to sit down with the Americans and be a good partner. I think over the last 10 or so years we have not been as good a partner as we might have been. That has raised suspicion in Washington as to whether we continue to be the kind of partner they're looking for. In the end, these are political choices. You make the political choices and you reap the results.

We have made a political choice that we wanted a more deeply integrated North American economy. We have benefited greatly from that, despite what some of the witnesses are saying. We must now decide if we want to make that work, or do we want to put various kinds of obstacles in its way, including allowing the Americans to build up the security framework they're pursuing?

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Ms. Healy, we're concerned about jobs for the people you advocate for.

You've heard Mr. Hart respond to my questions. We need to open up our borders. But how do we reconcile your concern on sovereignty issues, about visa information sharing, situations like this, that may assist in appeasing the fears of the U.S. and our security?

[Teresa Healy]

To this point I don't think we've been successful in appeasing the United States' security concerns. These are ongoing issues, as we've heard, in the trucking industry and in the border. The whole security question is one that is being integrated with the economic question. We have to come up with a fundamentally different way.... We have to interject a new way of thinking about these relationships that does not build, ever increasingly, upon a climate of fear and distrust.

I think there are issues around human rights that need to be discussed in relation to this question of security. I'd like to know what mechanism there is for our having this discussion about human rights and the SPP. The more open and transparent and inclusive this discussion can be, the more likely it is we're going to find solutions to it.

There are these meetings we keep hearing about, this North American 2025 meeting or the famous/infamous Banff meeting. We hear from one of the press that the person who was in charge of keeping the press and public away from the meeting said no, these meetings are not secret, they're private. We want to know why we can't have the information about what MPs presented at these meetings or what MPs said at these meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Ms. Healy, I have to interrupt you at this point. Mr. Maloney's time has long passed--I should be careful of the way I word that.

We'll go to the Bloc Québécois, Monsieur André, for five minutes.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I will be sharing my time with Mr. Cardin.

I have a question for Mr. Hart. You teach trade policy. As you said, Canada is currently making a huge effort to try and satisfy the United States by beefing up security at the borders in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. We are complying with those requirements, and we are currently negotiating with the United States to find ways of improving security at our borders, and so on.

However, how far are we prepared to go to improve security? That is what concerns me. Even if we do improve security at our borders through every possible means, people will still be able to cross those borders after carrying out a terrorist act in the United States. The economic consequences of this are also of concern to me. Everything is still possible. I suppose this would also affect exports. Have you thought about that?

I must say that I am concerned to hear you say that Canada has not always been a good partner of the United States because, in my opinion, the new government has more of a tendency to support the Americans' military approach, by investing more in the military. As for our environmental policy, some corporate executives are trying to align themselves with the Americans so as to avoid having to abide by the Kyoto Protocol and be able to continue developing the tar sands.

In addition, during the softwood lumber crisis, we proved ourselves to be a relatively good partner by handing over $1 billion paid by our own industry, as a means of supporting the softwood lumber agreement.

I would be interested in hearing your views on these different points.

[Prof. Michael Hart]

It's a little difficult to figure out where you want me to start.

How far do we need to go? Canada and the United States have a very long history of working together to resolve problems, going back to the 1935 trade agreement, where we first agreed that we would treat each other as best partners rather than worst partners, which was the case before that, through NORAD, NATO, and a whole host of agreements. We have more than 350 bilateral treaties in place between Canada and the United States right now, indicating the extent of cooperation between us.

But given the nature of our interdependence, both on the economic and the security fronts, the job is never done. There is always a new frontier to cross, a new opportunity to seize, and a new way of looking at things. In order to do that, we have to be conscious of the fact that the United States is our most important partner, whether we want them to be or not. And I think that's a very Canadian way of putting it.

The Americans live next door. They are a global power. We are not a global power, but we do have a high level of economic and security interdependence with the United States. For instance, on the security front, the idea of ensuring our security on anything other than a bilateral basis is just not possible. Canada doesn't have the resources required to ensure our security. We must do it on a bilateral basis.

Since the 1939 agreement between the Roosevelt and King administrations, we have done it on a bilateral, cooperative basis. And we've both benefited from that. So the idea that we can go our own way is a ludicrous idea in the Canadian context. It's with that kind of perspective that we say to the Americans: “We want to be your partner. We want to be a reliable partner. You can count on us. And on that basis, let's solve a few problems that we have on the security front.” That's the only way we're going to be able to do that.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

You said that we have not been a good partner in recent years. I do not necessarily agree with that. Can you give us some examples?

[Prof. Michael Hart]

I don't want to get too political--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

A very short response, please. Monsieur André is out of time.

[Prof. Michael Hart]

Over the last 10 years, the relationship at the top between our two governments has not been as productive and as reliable as it could have been. There have been many times when I think the government moved in a direction that I thought was unhelpful to building a secure, reliable partnership.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

Merci, monsieur André.

Now to the government side, to Mr. Cannan, for five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses. I want to thank you all for your presentations.

Specifically, Ms. Healy, you started off and you asked, in your preamble, who the SPP is for. I look around the table—and we've been debating this issue for several meetings and have had several discussions over the last few months on where our international trade strategy should be—and I believe everyone around the table, especially when it comes to quality...and we all have access to opportunity to increase our quality of life and find ways to ensure opportunities for all Canadians. I think that's a goal we can all agree on, no matter what your political stripe.

I look at North American opportunities. As I said, we've had several witnesses who've said this is where we should be focusing our energies. Our biggest trading partner has over $2 billion of trade a day going across the border and 37,000 trucks. Approximately 80% of our population lives within 160 kilometres of the border. An average Canadian family relies on small businesses. My riding in the interior of British Columbia and all of us around the table need to ensure we streamline a seamless border crossing, as seamless as possible.

I would like to ask Mr. Lennox in a moment, but I just want to clarify one other statement that was made about where our Canadian families sit, in the past with NAFTA, and where we're heading in the future. Mr. Julian stated how poorly off Canadian families were, but the fact is Canadian families, on the whole, experienced two periods in which income fell, one in the early 1980s and one in the early 1990s, and in both cases the Canadian economy was in a recession. So you can go through the statistics and manipulate them however you want. If you use the benchmark of 1997 or 2004, I can massage and show you all kinds of numbers. Professor Hart can probably do it better than all of us around the table. But the fact is that when it comes to NAFTA, we're a lot better off as Canadians and North Americans, all three of the trading partners, because of the trade that's been generated and the business opportunities. I just need to clarify that and get it on the record.

Specifically, Mr. Lennox, my uncle has a trucking company, and I used to work for him in Alberta, bringing products from Mexico and California through western Canada. I know the importance of the delays at the border. Many times a trucker is calling it a day at the border, and it costs your members tens of thousands of dollars. Can you clarify or expand a little bit if you've had any opportunity to participate in the eManifest program and the pre-clearance and what it will do for helping clients and your moving of goods and services across the border?

[Ron Lennox]

Certainly.

In terms of the process itself, this eManifest process in the U.S. has been under way for quite some time. A government industry advisory group called the Trade Support Network was struck in the United States. Representatives from all modes of transportation, as well as brokers and shippers and so forth, were part of that process. I was personally part of that process and remain involved.

The idea was to ensure that the system to convey manifest data that the United States uses to make risk decisions on the carrier and on the driver and on the cargo is there in advance and that the risk screening is done before the truck gets to the border. In Canada, as I said, we're just embarking on that process. The first meeting was a government-industry consultative process. The first meeting of the ACI Group, I believe it's called, was held in Ottawa in January of this year. They are talking about doing a very similar process. In fact, the first meeting of the steering committee for that group is taking place this afternoon.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

I have another comment for Professor Hart.

There are some concerns about the open, transparent process. The previous government established the process, and our government is trying to make it as open as possible. One of the ways is by this meeting.

You referred to the NACC. This is the report here. It's a public document, and it's available on the web. If you'd like a copy, I'd be more than willing to provide it for you. There is a web page as well for the government, so it's a full process. It's open.

Maybe, Mr. Hart, you could elaborate a little more on your understanding of how, from your experience, the public can be involved in the process.

[Prof. Michael Hart]

As an official, I was part of the group of people who were charged with designing ways and means in which the government could be more open. I learned something from that process.

There are two ways in which you consult. One is that you consult in order to improve your technical base, the knowledge you need in order to move forward. These are consultations on “how”, and civil servants are very well equipped to do that.

There is another kind of consultation. It is based on whether you should do it, the “why”. Civil servants can't do that; only politicians can do that. It's a political question and it must be addressed by either the minister or by parliamentarians.

Sometimes civil society grows confused about the two kinds of consultations. The how and the why consultations are not the same, and the same people cannot pursue both of them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Professor, and thank you, Mr. Cannan.

As the final questioner in the five-minute round, we have Mr. Julian.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate your saying, Mr. Hart, that essentially the government has the responsibility to be consulting with the public. That is something that has certainly come out of these brief hearings. Hopefully government members will understand that they need to open up this process so that we can have debates over each and every one of these initiatives.

I'd like to come back to you, Dr. Healy, as well as you, Monsieur Pépin and Madam Burrows, on two elements that are fundamental to this.

One is the issue of what direction we as a country believe we should be going in and how this initiative has essentially been kept away from the public domain, so we can have these public discussions. What should the government be doing to ensure that we have those full public consultations, so that Canadians can be assured that if we head down this road, it is a road Canadians agree with?

We know that part of the strategy, because we've heard from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, is to keep it away from public debate, because they say there is no appetite for a big debate now. They are seizing on the fact that in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement debate that we had in 1988, aside from the electoral system going against this, essentially most Canadians voted against that agreement. The fact that most Canadian families have been poorer since, despite the government's protestations to the contrary, shows that Canadians were right to be concerned. NAFTA had a similar debate, and most Canadians voted against NAFTA because the Jean Chrétien government had promised to not put it into effect.

How do we get that democracy back, so that Canadians are actually being consulted on these issues?

[Teresa Healy]

First of all, the government should not hide behind a process of regulatory reform. Basically this should be a process in which full, open, democratic debate and discussion should occur, and it should happen in Parliament. Parliamentarians should take back their place in this process. I do not think it should be left to secret meetings or private consultations with the most powerful interests in the country. The representatives of every single community across this country should have the opportunity, and they do bear the responsibility for bringing this discussion even more into the open.

It is wonderful that we are here today at this committee. This process should be expanded and increased so that there is a full democratic debate in this country about what seems to be so innocuous as regulatory reform, but which in fact, as we have found out through our studies and through hearing from our members and our affiliates, is certainly not an innocuous process.