Evidence of meeting #37 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was exports.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
I have just a quick one. I know we have to wrap up here fairly quickly.
Mr. Stanford, one of the things you mentioned right at the end was that you should exclude the auto industry from any of the negotiations. Are you actually saying that the auto industry should be out because you can't compete, and that there should be pre-negotiations on a trade agreement?
12:50 p.m.
Economist, Canadian Auto Workers Union
That there should be what negotiations? I'm sorry, I missed the second part.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Are you saying that there should be pre-negotiations on what's in and what's out prior to discussions? Because that's really what I interpreted it as.
May 15th, 2012 / 12:50 p.m.
Economist, Canadian Auto Workers Union
As far pre-negotiations go, I don't know if it's something you pre-negotiate or if it's just something you say. You say to another country, “I may be interested in a free trade agreement with you, but not in the area of auto”. That's not necessarily something you have to negotiate. That's simply stating what you think your area of interest is.
In terms of the first part of your question on the auto industry, is it a question that the industry “can't compete”, that means that no auto industry in the world can compete with Japan, because Japan doesn't buy significant volumes of automotive products from anywhere in the world. I think viewing a trade imbalance solely as a result of a failure to compete is not very informative.
What you have in Japan is a whole structure and a history of policies aimed deliberately at promoting exports and limiting imports. That's why we have a trade imbalance with them, and that is not going to be solved by a free trade agreement.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
I want to go to Madam Dobson. You talked about the significance of a number of things, and you talked also about the 2012....
Thank you for the little bit of a background in which you took us back to 1986 and took us back up to 1999 on the strength of the Japan-Canada relationships.
At that time, if I understood it—and I just want to actually make sure I heard you right—it was said in some of those discussions that by 2010, because of what you've called sort of this natural working relationship or economies with Japan.... And now it's 2012, so we're two years late and we missed it by two years because actions weren't taken.
Can you help us understand why actions weren't taken ahead of now? I know we've tried to move forward, but has there been something political on the Japanese side that has held that up?
12:50 p.m.
Professor of International Business, Director, Institute for International Business, University of Toronto
Well, if you think about what's been going on in Japan for the last two decades, it's been stagnating economically and it's had a few prime ministers—
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Professor of International Business, Director, Institute for International Business, University of Toronto
—and now it's trying to recover from a triple whammy of indescribable proportions. It has had one or two prime ministers who've actually gotten some things done in terms of trying to restructure parts of the Japanese economy that are sources of considerable weakness and that have been protected in the past. But on the whole, political leadership in Japan has been, I would say, increasingly pre-occupied with points scoring rather than governance.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much for that.
I know we didn't have as much time as we would have liked with all the witnesses before the committee, and we reserve the right to maybe call you back at a future date if we want more opportunity to ask questions, because I think the committee found it very interesting.
Thank you to Mr. Trew, Ms. Dobson, and Mr. Stanford for your time here.
We have to suspend the committee and move in camera very quickly for a very short business session. So thank you very much for your time.
With that, we'll suspend.
[Proceedings continue in camera]