Evidence of meeting #13 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ceta.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
I think that's a potential risk. There certainly is a desire in the health industry to be trading and selling in services. There certainly is a serious international industry. That's why we think we need a general carve-out, and not to be....
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Would that be beneficial because we would be able to get more specialists or attract them, or would we be the losers in this free trade in the health care sector?
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
Our position, which I think is reflected by a lot of health professionals, is we don't think there should be free trade in health professionals, because what we would be doing would be robbing from the third world. We would be taking scarce human health resources from other regions. We just don't think it's a healthy way to build your health care system. It's just like in the north, where we're trying to train local professionals.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Your position is a complete carve-out of all types of health services.
Who do you represent? Do you represent any of the provinces?
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
We do have provincial affiliates in most provinces and one territorial affiliate, but our task is really focused on the responsibilities of the federal government in health care.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
One question would be, would Canada be able to get together with the European countries and buy in bulk all these pharmaceutical products that are needed? Would that help reduce some of the prices? Instead of competing against each other, perhaps they could buy in bulk, as I was saying.
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
I'd start with Canada doing that as a federation.
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
It's very complicated to try to do that with the European Union because there are all kinds of different interests over there. I think we're.... A member referred to the provinces already starting that. I think that's the direction.
Liberal
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
Bulk purchase is the way to go.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Yes. Push them to move a little bit faster and move a little bit quicker.
Thank you, Mr. McBane.
Mr. Trew, I have two quick questions for you.
In terms of local procurement, is that really a threat? Are companies from Europe going to come here and bid on local procurement projects? I'm thinking more of sidewalks and construction type of infrastructure projects that are going to be up for submissions where equipment is going to be needed. Is equipment going to be imported and sent over from Europe? Is that the threat, or is it on the bigger, huge projects?
Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians
There will still be thresholds for the projects that will be covered. I think the European Union and its corporations that were pushing hard for these procurement rules in the deal would argue that this will be beneficial for them. In fact, in the summaries of the deal that's been achieved in principle, we see the European Union kind of gloating about this, that this was a very good package for them.
Again, our concerns are that we lose the ability at the city level and the provincial level to maximize these economic benefits, to get the maximum bang for your buck, if you will. As they frequently do in places like the United States, cities in the United States will retain the ability to require offsets for small and medium-sized businesses, or to include, for example, a 25% local content requirement on a hydro project or a big transit project.
I know there are some carve-outs in CETA, from the look of the technical briefing. For some, we don't know exactly where they will be, but on the whole we'll lose that right to apply those public procurement rules, which are actually quite beneficial.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
But do you feel that will be a threat? Even if a European consortium were to win a contract, wouldn't they still hire locally? Wouldn't there still be the local benefits?
I'm looking at some of the big engineering companies out of Montreal. Their claim to fame now is doing all these projects outside Canada. They're obviously benefiting from international markets and not necessarily the Canadian market.
Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians
We're not concerned so much about this kind of ability to compete. I think Canadian companies do have that ability to compete. I think when you take away all these options from cities, though, on big projects, they have been successful at creating jobs. I think the defence procurement strategy shows that. Taking away that option forever doesn't seem like the best deal for Canada in this circumstance.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
I'm sorry, I have to go to Mr. Cannan now.
The floor is yours, sir.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Trew, welcome back to the committee, and Mr. McBane, welcome to the committee. It's great to have you here. We appreciate your valuable input.
Maybe just as a recap for you, if you aren't aware of the background of this, it was about May 2009 when Canadian and European leaders started to embark on this comprehensive economic and trade agreement. It's not something that just happened overnight.
There has been a historic amount of consultation as far as a trade agreement goes. I've been on the trade committee just over eight years now. We've been out to the Maritimes, and we're going to Vancouver next week to hear from Canadians. Basically from all parts of Canada we've heard from various stakeholders, including from you, Mr. Trew and Mr. McBane. You had an opportunity to meet with the minister at the time. We've also consulted with the provinces and territories. All along they've signed off. This includes the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
I represent the riding of Kelowna—Lake Country. I served nine years as a city councillor. The Minister of International Trade, Minister Fast, also was a city councillor for nine years in Abbotsford, so he understands working closely with local government.
Going back to 2012, the FCM president of the day said:
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities applauds today's commitment by International Trade Minister Ed Fast to protect municipal interests in a CETA deal and in future trade agreements.
FCM has been strongly advocating for concrete assurance that cities and communities will be protected in any trade agreement. Today, by promising to ensure FCM's 7 principles on international trade are respected, Minister Fast was unequivocal.
Later that year, the new president said that while in fact the majority of our membership has not asked for exemptions, and the minister has delivered a public commitment to the seven principles that FCM endorsed, those seven principles are the basis for negotiations that are occurring in regard to the local government sector. She went on to say that the seven principles are reasonable procurement thresholds, streamlined administration, progressive enforcement, dispute resolution mechanisms, consultation, and communications. She said that their line of communication with the minister's office and chief negotiator are extremely open, and that whenever they have questions, they are answered. She said that they are firm believers that the minister understands the position of local government and has put that forward at the negotiations table of CETA.
When the agreement was released last fall, we heard again from the FCM. They put a statement out on October 18, 2013:
This morning's announcement shows that the voice of Canada's local governments has been heard and respected in trade negotiations with Europe, and opens the door to a much stronger economic partnership between the federal government and Canada's cities and communities.
It goes on from there.
I reiterate this because this is a historic agreement. It's something that is of concern not only today, but it's also a great opportunity for Canadians for generations. If I look back 20 years from today, we were celebrating NAFTA and its success. That's created opportunities.
In the wine region that I represent, in 1989-90 the sky was falling. The world was coming to an end. Grape growers were going to rip out all their grape vines. They replanted, and now we have a wine province and country, in many cases winning international awards.
We see a lot of opportunities in British Columbia for CETA. I'm just wondering if you see any benefits to Canadians from the comprehensive economic and trade agreement that's been proposed. That's for either of you, Mr. Trew or Mr. McBane.
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
Well, I do what I can to support the wine industry.
January 28th, 2014 / 11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you. I appreciate it. Cheers.
I have my colleague from the Niagara region subbing in today.
Executive Director, Canadian Health Coalition
We're not here to make a technical judgment on all aspects of the CETA. Of course there are some good aspects. Our job is to protect the health care system.
I was asked earlier about patents and intellectual property. There isn't a worse place to deal with patents and intellectual property than in trade negotiations. What we've been told by everybody close to the negotiations is that there's horse-trading, and we end up with bad patent policy because it was horse-traded for something in agriculture or something somewhere else. That's why we're saying that health care is too important to be a target for horse-trading for other sectors.
Those are the dynamics of international trade negotiations. It's not that there aren't some good parts to this. We're just saying that this is a flaw and we can fix it. We should fix it.
Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians
I have comments on a couple of things you mentioned.
First, on the municipal side of things, I agree. I've seen those FCM statements. But I would argue that the verdict is still out on whether all of the conditions have been met, specifically that fourth condition around the space to apply domestic preferences on strategic sectors, for example, like transit and hydro. It would be great if those have been carved out. We just don't know yet because we don't have that final agreement. I think the verdict is still out.
Certainly, cities like Toronto remain concerned. Just a few weeks ago, and I think it was unanimous, they said they would like a consultation from the province on what's been agreed to. They want some kind of vote or some kind of say on whether they are going to be bound by the deal.
In B.C., the UBCM, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, takes a very different position from what the FCM does. The UBCM has decided that it would like to be carved out of these procurement rules entirely. I think that's partly based on the experience they've had under the agreement with Alberta, the TILMA, where municipalities have had some issues that are quite similar around the procurement rules in that agreement.
On the scope and size of the deal, I'm just repeating what Mr. McBane was saying about how of course we don't oppose every aspect of this. In fact, if we were able to wrangle a great trade deal out of the European Union on tariffs for our fisheries and for our agricultural export sectors, I think that would be great. It's the inability of this committee or Parliament to pull out those parts that are found, after consideration, to be not in the best interests of Canadians that we're worried about. That's what we're opposed to. We think we should be able to say yes to some parts of it and no to others. It absolutely involves a lot more public discussion than is possible in the current way that negotiations are concluded.
Finally, on the extent and scope of the deal, I don't think it's actually as big a deal as we've been told. In terms of the benefits, they're potentially going to be significant for some export sectors. Of course, we hear about beef and pork; we don't know yet what kind of cuts are going to be let into the European Union.
Apart from that, we're not looking here at a massive boost to trade from this deal, even by the government's own numbers, and subsequent studies have said that those numbers are actually quite exaggerated. There are a lot of concessions we seem to be making for very few gains here, I would argue.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you.
I think the folks in Toronto have some other issues that they're dealing with as well.