International Trade Committee on Feb. 13th, 2014

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

That was going to be my next question. How are you going to organize that?

[John Jung]

At a local level, we will have focus groups and—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Is it all with the intent of exporting more goods, or being able to get ready to export more goods, or producing more goods, or...?

[John Jung]

You're asking at a very early stage.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay, thank you.

I have one more question. You also referenced that there are barriers to entry, and you specifically said it was in terms of citizenship. Is that a problem right now in terms of getting labour into the country or out of the country?

[John Jung]

In some industries it is.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

In or out?

[John Jung]

In. When I've travelled to India, China, and other places like that, some of the companies....

This not just for the Waterloo region. I used to be the head of Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, and that issue was raised a number of times by companies that have branch operations and want to send in some of their people to help out.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Lewis-Manning, what’s the Canadian route that is the busiest corridor, or whatever the expression is? For trains it's the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. What would be the Canadian shipping equivalent?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

The busiest trade, or the most cargo volume, would be out of Duluth-Superior to Quebec City. It's significant, but there are new trades developing outside of the Great Lakes that are going to offer significant promise. I'm thinking out of Sept-Îles, for example, or some of the resources projects that are anticipated both in the Arctic and the east coast.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

My understanding is that the big cargo ships will not be able to get past Halifax into the Great Lakes. Is that correct?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

It is correct insomuch as the largest Panamax-size container vessels will not be able to fit within the St. Lawrence Seaway, yes.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Do you not expect CETA to bring in extra volume, and for your business to grow?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

The potential is there. Some of the details are unsure for us at the moment. I think the part that we are most aware about is being able to maintain both our capabilities and our labour force, which we invest in significantly to keep at a level to operate safely.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I'm not sure I understand that. Your capabilities, how would they be threatened? As for your labour force, is it because you're going to have to pay them more?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

No, that's not the issue. It's really having the access to trade that makes the industry sustainable. If there were a potential loss of some limited markets, it would have an impact.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I'm not sure where the loss would come from. If you're doing internal shipping, wouldn't your volume just increase? I don't see how the volume can go any lower.

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

Not necessarily. Our concern is what we don't know about the implementation, and it's the real details of the implementation.

The fact of the matter is that a European vessel could apply for a coasting trade licence now. There's nothing restricting it from that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Holder, for seven minutes.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I'd like to thank our guests today. I find your testimony to be very compelling. I appreciate it.

'll start with Mr. Jung and then go to Mr. Lewis-Manning.

You talk about Canada's technology triangle. There is a bit of a debate going on in the House of Commons that I typically lead. I know you represent the region of Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge. How many mayors are there in those three cities?

[John Jung]

There are three cities and three mayors. There's one per city.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Perfect.

Good for you. I wanted that on record because London is actually the 10th largest city in Canada. There is sometimes some confusion about that, where Kitchener-Waterloo sometimes combine for competitive advantage, like you've done with the triangle. In fact, I think if you added London to your technology triangle, it might be the greatest trapezoid or rectangle in it all. It could be square.

[John Jung]

Are you from London?

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I am actually from London, Ontario, sir, so I have a sense of your region.

I appreciate your interest in commercial agri industries too, because my city of London, notwithstanding the tough news about Kellogg's recently, is a leader in commercial agri. I know your region has some great organizations, so I respect your interest in it.

I know my colleague asked about your interest in cheese. I want to give you some confidence and comfort. Right now 4% of the cheese in Canada, in terms of the current quotas, comes internationally, or certainly from Europe. That will expand another 4% from Europe, so it will be 8%. Interestingly, it's unfettered the other way and all of Canadian cheese, if we decided not to eat any, could go over to Europe, if we chose. Frankly, that was admittedly a good strong preservation, I think, of the cheese industry. I wanted to give you some comfort about that.

You talked about your organization, how large it is, what it means not just to your region but across Canada. One of the things we've talked about as a committee is that here we have large companies that know how to market internationally, or usually they do. Whether they do it really well or not is a fair question. Most of our trade, as you rightly pointed out in your testimony, is with the United States because that's the logical north-south.... Certainly some 75% of trade goes to the United States. Interestingly though, volume has gone up but percentage has gone down with the United States, and that's very good. What this means is we are trading more in the United States but we are less dependent on them as a function of our overall trade.

Where I get concerned and I think members of the committee do, is how we communicate to the small and medium enterprises about their opportunities. While we'll have trade commissioners and chambers of commerce that will try to do their part, what would you imagine your role would be within your region to educate SMEs about the opportunities of dealing with the European Union? Have you given some thought to that?

[John Jung]

Absolutely, and as I mentioned, we already had a meeting with what we call our ambassadors, our local ambassadors, who are mostly SMEs.

We have a target in Germany; we have other regions of Europe we work with. With this committee, a structure of ambassadors, we've taken this notion that the Canada-EU CETA is so important that we need to develop a strategy of how to go forward with them. We have just done a foods strategy, a go-to-market food strategy, for instance. This agreement fits perfectly within that two- or three-year strategy that we want to move forward with.

By the way, just as an aside, we just brought London in—the number 12 city—as part of the CCCA, so we see them as a partner. Once we get everybody to take notice of Canada, we'll all compete based on our merits, but we need to go abroad, bringing our SMEs with us, into those markets.