International Trade Committee on Oct. 18th, 2010

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

For the trade balance--

[Tim Waters]

The benefit was for the producers in Jordan to have duty-free access into the U.S. market. But I think what we're saying is that.... Of course, we want the Canadian worker to do well, too; we have 356,000 members here. But for your time, your opportunity, and the opportunity to change what's going on over there, regardless of who should have done it first or who might have known about it when, your best chance to do that is right now, because there's a reason they're at the table here. They're at the table here because they want the same duty-free access to the Canadian marketplace that they have to the U.S. marketplace.

So my response is that I don't know if you can make changes later. I don't know. That's the future. Once the trade deal is in place, the deal is in place. But--

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I'd finally end up on this, Mr. Chairman, by saying that I appreciate our American friends coming to share their thoughts with us. I think in the standards that we've established, based on what the ILO is all about and what that means for our Canadian worker, our ability to influence is that much greater.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Holder.

I'm sure the committee enjoyed that; it's unanimous. Thank you very much. It was very useful. We have some thoughts on the table today that we haven't heard before. I appreciate that.

We're going to wrap up this section now. I thank our witnesses for joining us. We'll take a two-minute break whilst we go in camera. We'll say farewell to our witnesses today.

[Proceedings continue in camera]