International Trade Committee on Feb. 4th, 2014

[Stan Van Keulen]

No.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Do you know that they get any?

[Stan Van Keulen]

I don't know.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Okay.

Without that information it's hard to say, but assuming that they don't get any, or even if they did get a bit, it baffles me that they are so eager to come to the Canadian market, despite the costs associated with transportation, and that your industry is afraid that Australian or New Zealand farmers might actually bring product to Canadians.

[Stan Van Keulen]

There are more cows in New Zealand than I think there are people.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I know there are more sheep there. I'm not sure about cows.

[Stan Van Keulen]

They're an exporting nation. Their business is exporting. They will export to wherever they go. That industry is based and founded on that particular way of doing business. To put a container on a boat and move it, for them, I don't think costs that much money. They want it at our door.

We give them access to our market already.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Woo, you've raised a number of really interesting points and I'll have to move through them quickly as I only have a few minutes. You made the comment that we should be teaching, like Australia, our students an Asian language. But I'm also told that Asian countries, in particular China, are teaching their students English at a staggering rate. I don't know if this is true but I've heard that there are more English speakers in China than there are in Canada. If that's the case, if they're moving so close to this international language of commerce, is it that imperative that we teach Mandarin or other Asian languages?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

There are more people learning English in China than there are people in England.

Let me ask you something. It's very simple. If you're competing with someone abroad and that person knows your language fluently and you don't know that person's language who has the advantage? To me it's dead simple.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

If you had to choose a language, would you choose Mandarin?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

Yes, I would, and let me be clear. I'm not saying that Mandarin should be mandatory. We already have official bilingualism. French is a very important language for Canadians to master, perhaps even before they master a third language, but the option should be presented. When you think about Vancouver, just Vancouver alone, which is of course the most Asian city outside of Asia, we only have one French immersion high school, only one for all of Vancouver, which is ridiculous.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Which one are you referring to, because we have one in South Surrey as well.

[Yuen Pau Woo]

Sir, I'm talking about the Vancouver school district. It's at Oak and 57th.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Okay, I'm going to move the topic along.

You made the suggestion that we need to focus on services because the commodity supercycle is over. Now, does that not make the assumption that the commodities that are needed to continue the manufacturing of goods, which even the Chinese will want, are no longer needed?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

No, there will continue to be demand for coal, copper, zinc, and iron.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Steel?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

And steel. All of that, but China, as we all know, is moving from 12% growth to 7% growth. A lot of that reduction would be because there would be less investment in fiscal infrastructure, partly because they are overbuilt and because of exorbitant property prices. So that 7% growth is going to come increasingly from domestic demand, basically the consumption—

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Of non-commodity-based products....

[Yuen Pau Woo]

—of non-commodity-based products. Exactly.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I know I'm almost out of time. We often speak of Asia, but that's really code for China.

Are there other Asian countries that we should be looking at, beyond China, that offer as great an opportunity to Canadian exports?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

Yes, Japan is still very important, the largest economy in the world. We're negotiating a free trade agreement with them and we should try to conclude that as quickly as possible. India, of course, is on the radar as well. They're going through an election now and they will have to come up with some fresh reforms if they want to compete with China. The one we haven't talked about very much is Indonesia. I would recommend that this committee perhaps pay some special attention to changes in Indonesia and why it's a very important market for us.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

In terms of the, what is it, 200 million?

[Yuen Pau Woo]

Yes, size, political weight, it's one of the G-20 countries. It has a very large domestic economy that insulates it from global downturns. So it's one of the targeted economies in the current taper crisis. Indonesia has the ability to grow even when the world is slowing because it has such a large domestic constituency and so much pent-up demand.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

It may be countercyclical to the rest of the world.

[Yuen Pau Woo]

Not fully countercyclical, but it has buffers that other economies do not have.