International Trade Committee on April 28th, 2008

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

You talked about manufacturing as well in your opening comments, but one area that is key is the service sector. Canada has excellent oil and gas and mining, but also environmental services. When we talk about trying to have a sustainable environment, not only in Canada but helping others around the world, how will this agreement be able to provide a competitive trading agreement in terms of access for our service sectors, specifically in environmental services? Does this free trade agreement enhance that opportunity for those specific service sectors?

[Cameron MacKay]

Certainly that's one of our aims. That's one of the service sectors that Canada is particularly competitive in internationally. We're also looking at mining services, engineering, architecture, a broad range of professional services. Our objective in any FTA negotiation is to take WTO commitments that have already been made by that trading partner and try to improve on them.

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

What about opportunities for high-tech or the information technology sector? Do you see some good opportunities there?

[Cameron MacKay]

Certainly they would all be on the table in the negotiations.

[Dean Beyea]

If I could add to that, Colombia has a long-term competitive plan that includes major investments in public and private infrastructure—roads, airports, bridges, tunnels, energy, telecom, and the modernization of a number of key industries—which are going to create opportunities for Canada in many of those industries, particularly services. The increasing number of new oil, gas, and mining exploration concessions issued by the Colombian government continue to create opportunities for Canadian companies to provide exploration, drilling services, financial and engineering services, to name a few.

Certainly with the economy moving forward they're investing in infrastructure. There are big investments planned. We have a great group at the embassy that looks at the long-term investments being planned by Colombia, and there are great market access opportunities, both publicly and through private expansion in Colombia.

[Cameron MacKay]

Just one final word on that would be in terms of services. Again, we're aiming to have a services chapter, a chapter on temporary entry, for example, for professionals who need to follow the service providers; a telecommunications chapter, I think you mentioned that sector; financial services, etc; along with our standard investment chapter. So we're looking at a comprehensive FTA that would help all these sectors in the Colombian market ideally.

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

As far as the movement of goods and services is concerned, one of the challenges right now with our friends to the south is the thickening of the border, and we're looking at broadening our export markets. What are the challenges of exporting into Colombia right now? Is there a pretty good prescreening program in place? Or has that been established to a limited scale, so we can have security of movement of goods and services two ways, without having to be bogged down within just-in-time manufacturing, for example?

[Dean Beyea]

One of our objectives in this agreement is to negotiate a customs procedures chapter, a customs cooperation chapter. We've had our customs guys down there. They negotiate procedures, proceedings, and means to identify origin and to recognize origin in each other's market. You're absolutely right that it goes part and parcel with clearing up what we need to clear up to make sure goods of Canadian origin can get in quickly and there's a means to address concerns we might have that they're not. That's part of the customs cooperation chapter in general. We're certainly pursuing those objectives in the agreement.

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

That's excellent, because companies are trying to do business, and there are phone calls that they're looking for parts and they're stuck at the border missing pieces. So I appreciate what you've done to date and look forward to our trip there next month. Hopefully we'll learn first-hand the positive benefits of the potential agreement we're looking to put in place.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Cannan and other members of the committee, for your questions today.

With that, I'm going to thank our witnesses for appearing. There are sometimes difficult questions in the circumstances, but we very much appreciate your coming.

We are going to suspend for about two minutes while we go in camera. There will be about a two-minute break.

[Proceedings continue in camera]