International Trade Committee on June 5th, 2013

[Peter Clark]

You mean, at the end of the movie?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm thinking of the knife—

[Peter Clark]

If we try to stay in a cocoon it will, but no.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You say, “The TPP’s new, so-called '21st century issues' were introduced by Washington and are geared to U.S. interests.”

You also refer to this as being a hijacking by the Americans of the original P4. Can you tell us about that?

[Peter Clark]

The P4 was a deal with Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand, and Chile. It was open for admission to any member of APEC that wanted to join. The Americans stuck up their hand and said they'd like to join, and then they proceeded to move it from something simple into basically a much broader, much more detailed, agreement. They took over.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You say the TPP is owned and operated by the U.S.A. as a hub-and-spoke deal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Time has gone, Don.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Do you stand by that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Yes or no.

[Peter Clark]

Yes, I stand by anything that's written in that paper.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Keddy, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to share my time with Ms. Glover, so that means you will have to stop me. You can cut me off at three or four minutes, whichever comes first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay.

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

First of all, welcome to our witnesses.

I would like to say, for the record, as Mr. Easter knows and I thought everyone knew—except Mr. Davies—that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid escaped to Argentina and then spent their retirement years on the Champs-Élysées. I'm pretty certain that's correct. You can find that out, but I'm pretty certain.

[An hon. member]

That's not what the movie said.

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

It's all good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

It must be the reference to the long game.

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

I think it is a reference to the long game, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Clark, thank you for your comments. Many of them here, quite frankly, I agree with, and I do think it's the long game. You can look at your comments and you can say that the glass is half empty, or as I would prefer, look at it and say that the glass is half full.

I appreciate your comments earlier about TPP, and about the importance of being at the table. I'm not about to suggest that it's a perfect set of circumstances, or that the Americans are simply there for the good of all of the other countries involved. I think they're there to protect their self-interest.

My first question is on the challenge. I expect that Japan will be ratified and be a full member. The challenge will be to keep the Americans focused—I think they have been making most of the snowball so far, without question—and to make this broader than it is at this time.

I don't disagree with your statement that this is a long game and it's going to take some time.

Do you agree with that? Is there the possibility that we can actually turn this into something that's workable?

[Peter Clark]

I believe there is a possibility that it can work.

My function is usually to try to stir up discussion and try to point to problems. The problem I see with the United States is that they've sold a big package, and Congress really hasn't had a look at it yet. When they go to get trade promotion authority, I think Congress could make it a bit of a Christmas tree—they have a habit of doing that—and it could make it somewhat harder to do.

My view of the TPP is that it's something we need to do to start our bridge across the Pacific, because the Pacific partners that we have in the TPP are not the ones we want. We want Thailand. We want Indonesia. We want the Philippines. We want those bigger countries that have the capacity to take a lot of our agricultural goods and to take our manufactured goods, especially in the high-tech area.

I look at trade agreements that we're getting involved in now in two ways. One way is that they're defensive, because if you're not in there you're going to lose markets you have. The other way you really have to look at it is as a bridge, and the bigger part of the bridge across the Pacific is the Pacific Alliance, and that's something that you should....

I know the Prime Minister said that we're not ready to jump on board full-time, but when I was in Chile last year they were quite happy that Canada had observer status and that Canada was showing interest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Very good. We'll go to Ms. Glover now.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you for allowing me to take part in this committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Any time somebody from the finance committee comes, we're willing to yield you the floor.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

As the chair says, I'm from the finance committee, so I took great interest, Mr. Clark, in hearing what you had to say in response to Mr. Davies. I know that you got cut off every once in a while.

I know we're talking about westerns, so let's talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

If we did not buy into this, if we did not pursue this with the vigour that we are pursuing it, if we cocooned, like you said, or turtled, as the NDP would have us do on all trade agreements, what would be the ugly of this?