International Trade Committee on May 17th, 2007

[William Dymond]

We set up our ITAC session system in 1984 based on the U.S. model. We adopted some but not all of it. It was a bit too complex for us. The U.S. model was embedded in the Trade Act of 1974, passed by the United States. The Americans tend to formalize things that we do not.

It existed alongside this mechanism of consultation, which you described, at the level of officials, at the level of members of Parliament, and at the level of ministers. The great advantage of formalizing it within a system is that it forced the sectors to think about things. You had to make sure you had the right participants. You could make mistakes, but you basically relied on the network of communication to make sure you had the right people. They had to come to meetings if they wanted to be a part of it. The government would give them a briefing and put questions in front of them. They could bring forward things. Nobody could ever say, “We never heard of this before. Where have you been?”

Even when there was something that was not very important on the agenda, and one of the inevitable problems with it—Remember, we went through an intensive period of negotiations in this country from the free trade negotiations to the NAFTA to the completion of the Uruguay Round in 1994. Then there was nothing, and business people and others who are involved in this won't come to nothing meetings. But I think it was important to keep it alive, to keep the mechanism well oiled so that when you needed it, you had it. You avoided the situation of people coming in and saying, “I've never heard of this before. What are you people doing?”

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Lemieux, you're out of time, sorry.

I'll go to Mr. Julian, for five minutes.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to come back to the elephant in the corner—and thank you for answering my questions on softwood. The elephant in the corner is the difference or the disconnect between the principles of our trading policy and the implementation of our trading policy, in terms of economic betterment.

We went through the Canada-U.S. free trade debate. We went through NAFTA. We're now going through the SPP debate—at least sometimes, when we actually hold committee meetings. In each of those cases, when we've had representatives of the ministry coming forward, they've always started with Canada's seeing unparalleled prosperity. Mr. Cannan referred to that now. In his part of the world everything's fine. He actually comes from the province that has the highest rate of child poverty in Canada.

We know that most jobs that are being created now and that have been created over the past few years are temporary and part-time in nature. Statistics Canada tells us—and another report came out last week—that most Canadian families are earning less in real terms than they were in 1989. It's the elephant in that corner. You don't see it in the business press. The National Post won't report on it. The Globe and Mail won't report on it. You don't see it on any of the television networks. But it's the reality. Most Canadians are poorer now than they were in 1989, and that has to be the bottom line if we're talking about implementation of trade policy. I think we would all agree that if most Canadian families are poorer, there's a serious problem.

My question is to both of you. If we're failing on that bottom line, if most Canadian families are earning less now than they were in 1989, do you not agree with me that we have to look at the basic fundamentals of our trading policy to see what we're doing wrong if we're reaching a situation where this huge prosperity gap—indeed, prosperity gulf--is actually engulfing most Canadian families?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Dymond, go ahead.

[William Dymond]

No, I do not agree.

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

That would be his response.

[William Dymond]

One of the dangers in dealing with trade policy or any other area of public policy is if you consider it to be the be-all and end-all. Trade and trade policy is not an objective in itself; what we're trying to achieve is economic performance. The IMF tells us that since we got the fiscal books right, the economy, cycle over cycle, is performing more or less at capacity.

In fact, I read The Globe and Mail, so I saw that report, so it's doing its job in reporting. It indicates that yes, there are some serious problems out there that the government might want to address, but they are not problems of trade policy. You don't solve child poverty or any of these things by flipping trade policy on its head and saying no more imports. You don't, on the other side of it, solve some trade problems that you may have by fixing your trade problems without addressing, for example, the social policy mix, the education mix, infrastructure, and the macroeconomic policy framework that you have.

Trade policy and trade is a necessary but not sufficient answer to the problems that Mr. Julian mentioned or that others may wish to bring up. But to pin the responsibility for increasing child poverty rates and the bad news on this upon trade policies that we have been conducting since 1948 is, I think, a complete distortion of history.

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

No, my question was...and I'll come back to you on that. I'll press you on this question: do we not have to look at the fundamentals? I'm not saying it's the entire explanation, but we have to look at trade policy in light of the fact that our economy is only performing for the wealthiest among us.

[William Dymond]

I'm familiar with that argument, and I've never understood it, because I don't know what I'd do with it, all right? One of the indicators that you might use—and perhaps you cited it or applied it—is a rising gap between rich and poor, rising indicators of inequality. One of the things that trade policy does—or free trade, rather, trade liberalization—is liberate. It liberates people to profit from a free market situation. It liberates owners of capital, owners of technical skill, owners of technology to earn the highest return from what they own. A trade policy that prevents that, restricts that and restricts the generation of wealth that occurs. If you say that because of that we must reimpose those restrictions that take the form of restrictions on the product market and the labour market, and fix our trade policy—

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

That's not my question.

[William Dymond]

Yes, it is, and the answer is no.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Julian, you're out of time.

I want to thank both of the witnesses very much, but I do have a couple of things to say to the committee too, so don't leave.

Thank you very much, Mr. Dymond and Mr. Grenier, for your presentations and for answering the questions.

The first thing I'd like to bring to the committee is this. I do want to say that from now on when motions are brought to the committee, before we debate them I will ensure that we know clearly what the motion is.

Today, what happened when Mr. Cannan brought his motion is that I heard the motion one way, and my thought was that it wasn't in order and would require a 48-hour notice. I discussed this with the clerk, who is very knowledgeable and I respect his opinion; he does a great job for us. But he'd heard the motion differently. So we were ruling on two different motions, in fact.

From now on, to avoid 15 minutes of unnecessary debate, I will insist on having the motions read clearly, or actually written and given to us, so that we can make sure we're all on the same page. It's a mistake of a chair, I think, not to do that. We will do that in the future to avoid confusion like this.

The other thing—and Mr. Cardin, I will give you a minute as we have a couple of minutes left—I do want to remind members that we will have our briefings on May 29 for the Middle East trip and May 31 for the South Asia trip. That's the week we get back. I encourage all members to come to both briefings. I think they'll be very beneficial.

Mr. Cardin, if you have something very quickly, we have about a minute left.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There seems to be some confusion. In the motions that were presented, it said the report would be tabled tomorrow. Is that correct?

At the same time, I also heard someone say it would not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I don't know what you've heard, Mr. Cardin, but if you would be willing to table your report tomorrow, I would be happy to allow you to do that. Are you here tomorrow?

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

I will be here tomorrow, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Then I would appreciate it if you would table that report yourself tomorrow. It will be ready, and I certainly offer that to you.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

It will be ready.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.