No. Sorry, I apologize that you don't have my remarks.
Evidence of meeting #16 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 tpp.
Evidence of meeting #16 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 tpp.
9:40 a.m.
President, Vancouver Head Office, Canada Wood Group
No. Sorry, I apologize that you don't have my remarks.
9:40 a.m.
President, Vancouver Head Office, Canada Wood Group
I think what I may have said is that some TPP nations don't look to us at this stage like they have tremendous potential, for different reasons. They may have their own wood product industries, they may not use wood a lot, etc. But I think our sectors, broadly, would see benefit in a trade agreement.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
In terms of process...maybe this question is more geared towards Mr. Slaco, but I'm not sure.
You have two countries that start negotiating in 2005, then there are additional countries that join in 2008, then other ones in 2010, and Canada finally joins in 2012. When Canada joins, have they already made the commitment that they will agree to a certain amount of the negotiations that have already been undertaken from 2005 to 2012? At what point do we start negotiating?
Does anybody know?
9:40 a.m.
Vice-President and Chief Forester, Interfor
My understanding is that they start negotiating right away, in terms of any issues that have been established early on. Then in terms of ultimately accepting an agreement you'd have to catch up on what was discussed, but it's really only a discussion. It's when the document actually—
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Nothing has been agreed to that is going to affect your industries, or maybe, Mr. Boon, it affects you as well? I can't believe that nothing was agreed to from the beginning of negotiations in 2005 until 2012.
9:40 a.m.
Vice-President and Chief Forester, Interfor
I imagine a certain amount of this is process that's involved. Certainly from our perspective, while issues may have come up, each country would have—
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
9:40 a.m.
Vice-President and Chief Forester, Interfor
No. From our perspective one of the most important issues was the trade agreement we have with the U.S.
Certainly we didn't want TPP to be infringing upon—
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
9:40 a.m.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
Negotiations have proceeded, but there are no agreements that I am aware of yet.
February 4th, 2014 / 9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for being here and providing their specific insights as it relates to their industry.
Mr. Boon, if I may start with you. There are just a few questions that I have as it relates to the cow.
I live in London, Ontario, which I like to describe as an urban oasis in a sea of agriculture. While we're called the forest city, that's as far as trees come to our city. We don't cut them down for commercial purposes but we appreciate the chlorophyll and other things they do, but that's probably the extent of London's contribution to the Canadian environment. Sorry, that was for Mr. Newman.
Mr. Boon, you talked about how opening up the markets in the TPP would expand the opportunities to use the fuller parts of the cow. There are some aspects that you don't market into certain countries. What I'm trying to understand is what would you.... You said that 900 pounds represents the amount of product that would be available from a processed animal. I'm trying to get a sense what the benefit of TPP is over, let's say, CETA and the United States and other things, in terms of the parts of the carcass that you can use there or sell there that you couldn't otherwise in Europe or in the United States.
9:45 a.m.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
Basically if we have just a domestic market—let's take all of our trade out of it—we would probably only utilize about 85% of that carcass. The other 15% becomes waste and it's not so much waste as it is underutilized product. It might go into pet food.
9:45 a.m.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
Hot dogs are actually quite good now. They got a bad wrap over the years.
The ability for us to utilize those comes because some of these countries utilize them. A real simple one is our livers and our tongues. We use very little of that here in Canada. A real good example is that one of the first countries to open to us after BSE was Cuba, and it was for liver. That in itself gave us an extra $12 per head of animal.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
My question though as it relates to TPP is this. Is there any part of the carcass that you would use at a higher level through the countries that would be in play that you're not utilizing now at the high level?
9:45 a.m.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
At the high level definitely Japan and Korea are going to utilize a lot of the things like the external what we call offal, and at a very high level. You'll notice too here in Canada short ribs. If you go out to buy a short rib, it's extremely hard to buy now because that is one of the products they are taking off of us, and at a high enough level that we can't afford to buy it in our country. By expanding that amount it actually cuts all of our costs in that whole total production, but it's giving it to certain areas that normally we would probably pay to get rid of.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
You made a comment that as this deal comes through you would imagine there would be more processing at home as opposed to processing now done in the states. I think there's always been a lot of talk as to why there isn't more processing being done in Canada.
How does the TPP deal allow us to do more processing in Canada?
9:45 a.m.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
We know right now with the issues that we're having with the U.S. and around COOL, country of origin labelling, and the protectionism that goes...by signing a multilateral agreement such as this we live under the same rules and regulations of both processing and of how we tariff in the market. So when it comes to things like our SRM and our regulations about what we have to remove, we get put on the same basis as the U.S. Right now they're at about a $35 advantage to us in a lot of these countries for things they don't have to remove to get there. If we can get to that same level then that adds more and it allows us to do it here at home as well.
The other one is labour. Labour is huge to us...their cost advantage. So if we can get more value out of that animal we're able to equalize.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you for that.
Mr. Newman and Mr. Slaco, thank you for your comments on behalf of the Canada Wood Group, and certainly the Forest Products Association of Canada has been very supported of CETA in the past, so your comments on TPP are helpful.
You clearly know that with TPP the arrangements will include what we have with the United States with our North American Free Trade Agreement. Are there things that you imagined your industry would get from a standard standpoint through TPP that you might not otherwise currently have with NAFTA? Do you have any thoughts, hopes, expectations?
9:45 a.m.
Vice-President and Chief Forester, Interfor
Nothing that I'm aware of.... There's certainly, as I mentioned, a consideration that TPP, while it may not provide any new benefits per se in North America because we have an existing agreement that's in effect that's working well.... It was just to ensure that TPP in fact is not going to have any effect on that agreement. Our understanding to date is that this is the case.
