Well, to be fair....
Evidence of meeting #20 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 tractors.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #20 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 tractors.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Senior Researcher Officer, Research, Canadian Union of Public Employees
That's not done in Canada.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Just to be clear, all of the various European parliaments have given a negotiating committee the power to be able to do that negotiation.
12:35 p.m.
Senior Researcher Officer, Research, Canadian Union of Public Employees
That's the trade [Inaudible — Editor]
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Someone, and it might have been Mr. Vidler, said that...and certainly if not, I'll add this, that for the first time in history we've actually had negotiations including the provinces that have given us some very strong response in a positive way to that involvement and we anticipate full support amongst the provinces for that as well. FCM, amongst others, has said that as well.
Mr. Cox, are you aware that in this deal—and maybe you hadn't considered it, to be fair—that Canada can compete for European government procurement contracts?
12:35 p.m.
Senior Researcher Officer, Research, Canadian Union of Public Employees
Sure, but I think if you're talking about New Brunswick, I'm also from New Brunswick and using local procurement for developing local economies is very important for areas like that. When we're looking at limitations on local procurement, that affects the ability of our municipalities to use local procurement to develop local economies.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
That's fine. You can ask the question and he can answer. We can't control anything else.
March 4th, 2014 / 12:35 p.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
My question is for Mr. Vidler. I think you have great insight as to what we need to do to allow Canadian SMEs to capitalize on CETA opportunities. You mentioned this in your presentation as well. Could you expand on what we need to do to support these Canadian SMEs, what kind of infrastructure we could put into place?
12:35 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
I'd be happy to speak to that.
As a bit of background, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is developing a report right now with some of our membership and our international affairs committee that will be providing some fairly tangible recommendations on how we can improve the so-called ecosystem of trade promotion services and the way that our representatives abroad promote Canadian business. I look forward to sharing that with the committee.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Great. If you could table those recommendations, the committee would be interested.
12:35 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
They should be ready later this month or when the report's out next April.
I'll say quickly that our consultations so far, and this includes consultations with government, have found that most of the services that businesses need, things like market intelligence, relationship building in foreign markets, financing, risk mitigation, are being offered in some way, shape, or form by agencies of the federal government or provincial governments. The challenge is more to get those agencies to work together more closely.
12:40 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Coordination, reducing overlap, filling in gaps between what the service offering is, ensuring that information can be shared across them....
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Perhaps you could table those recommendations, because my time is limited and I'm sure you could fill more than five minutes with your comments.
I want to cite something I read in a press release by Perrin Beatty, the president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He said the hope is that the “momentum generated by signing this deal will help push forward Canada's other major trade talks, including with Japan, India, Korea, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries.”
It seems a bit bizarre to me that we're putting all of these trade talks on the same level and we're looking at these trade relationships as being equivalent to each other.
According to you, is there any such thing as a bad trade deal for Canada, and what would that trade deal look like?
12:40 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
I think a trade deal that did not open up real market access opportunities for Canadian companies with the trading partner would be one type of trade deal that we would not be very supportive of. That said, I think the range from good to perfect is quite large. It doesn't mean you need to be at the level of perfect to support a deal.
12:40 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
It's very clear, for instance, with India that it's not going to be as ambitious an agreement as what we're doing with the European Union right now, although I'd be happy to be surprised. Nonetheless, there will be some liberalization for certain products of a Canadian nature. As long as the negotiators are weighing that against what we're providing—typically if they're not providing a lot, then we're not going to provide a lot—there's still a potential for net benefits across all of those agreements that Mr. Beatty mentioned.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
On the same point, is there any such thing as a bad trading partner, for example, a country that doesn't have the same environmental or labour standards as Canada?
12:40 p.m.
Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Perhaps there could be more challenging countries to trade with in terms of the competition you might face in that market. That can be in terms of very high-performing companies in that market, or it could be because of poor institutional environment or perhaps the relationships between the state and companies in that market that work against Canadian companies.
The best solution for addressing bad trading partners is to sign a trade agreement with them, because you can use that agreement to get a treaty between the two countries, a legal framework, that allows you to challenge various unfair measures that disadvantage Canadian companies.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
My time is running out, so I want to move to Mr. Cox quickly.
Could you give us your evaluation of the public services that are most at risk with CETA? Have you done an evaluation of the number of public sector jobs that might be at risk due to CETA?
12:40 p.m.
Senior Researcher Officer, Research, Canadian Union of Public Employees
No, without the final text, I don't think that's an easy thing to do. Certainly, we haven't looked at that. Certainly the services in energy and waste-water management are things we're looking at as being threatened. We feel that any privatized service would be under threat of not being able to be brought back in-house.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative