International Trade Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Perhaps it's not always transparent—

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Sorry, the time is up.

[Ian McKay]

If a company just shows up—

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

It does happen. It does exist. I just hope that part of your planning will be to acknowledge that those things have happened in the past, and how to overcome those challenges in the future.

[Ian McKay]

Have done and will do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Ms. Ramsey.

We just have time for one more. This is going to finish the round. My understanding is that it's going to be split time.

Mr. Peterson, you go ahead.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to finish early so the parliamentary secretary can ask a question or two at the end.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. It's much appreciated.

You're new, you're a start-up. Have you done analysis? What's the low-hanging fruit? What are the easy wins that we're going to get?

When you look at FDI, do you even have the data of what drives FDI to Canada? What factors help people make the analysis, the decision, the investors? We have strong clusters in Canada. You look at agrifood, automotive, aerospace, these things jump out as great things that Canada has. We have a strong banking system, a creative entrepreneurial class, great labour, great skills, and health infrastructure. We have a lot of things going for us. The competitive tax rate is the one issue we have to maintain, and gauge to see if it remains a strong feature.

Is there a quick win, or low-hanging fruit that you are looking to target?

[Ian McKay]

I think some of it is growing the business from our current customers. That certainly exists in the traditional sectors that we've been successful at: aerospace, autos, advanced manufacturing. I think some of the real wins going forward, some of the strategic avenues, are going to come out of the supercluster initiative.

I've spoken to people already who were not aware that there is a bioprotein supercluster in the prairie provinces, where some global companies have significant operations already. Now that they know the federal government is doubling down in building Canada's capacity there, they will be moving very quickly.

That goes for the ocean science cluster in Atlantic Canada, the digital cluster in British Columbia, the advanced manufacturing in this part of the country. I think there are going to be some—I hate to say the word “early”, or easy—wins, but there's going to be some accelerated conversations because of those federal pieces that are now in place.

[Mitch Garber]

I might add one thing, which is slightly more aggressive. A number of countries' business communities are less comfortable investing with our neighbour to the south, but need a presence in North America. Taking advantage of that current situation would be a smart thing for us to do in the near term. Without, of course, criticizing our neighbour to the south, there's a reality to be addressed, and I think we should address it quickly.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'm going to follow up with this and then I'll pass it over. Are you going to have the tools to track how these decisions are made and get that data to continue? If you lose a deal, you want to know why, but you also want to know what's keeping your customers happy, to keep them coming back.

[Ian McKay]

Yes, and to Mr. Fonseca's question earlier, the multinationals have a business leader here in Canada, and they're the ones who are competing on the global stage to drive the investment here, so those are the conversations that we'll be having on what went wrong or what went right, and we'll be tracking that.

The current data set that we have resides partially at Stats Canada and partially at private sector data collection agencies. We need to consolidate and have a much more effective and robust data set to answer those questions, and we will.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That's great to hear.

I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

There are a few minutes left, so go ahead.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Really quickly, thank you so much.

I was at the Canadian Internet Marketing Conference a couple of weeks ago in Squamish. Globally recognized brands were there, like Disney and Shopify. I was hosting a panel of well-known Vancouver brands, and the consensus was that we, for our banking system, immigration, diversity, education, and even romantic notions of our brand, lag behind our brand. What steps will Invest in Canada take for us to realize our full potential in that regard?

[Ian McKay]

Consolidate everything that you've just described, because those who know us, know us well, but many more don't know us than do know us. Consolidate all those very positive attributes, get testimonials from the companies that are here, ask why they're here, and work aggressively to get that message out. It means being places. It means inviting people to Canada.

Canada's got a complex brand. One of the strengths of our brand is that not yet, “It's the best place in the world to do business”. We need to build that message and drive it, and drive it, and drive it.

[Mitch Garber]

Let's agree on one thing. I completely agree with you that we are not performing well, and this is where we may disagree. I believe this is the best time to create this agency. If we were performing off the charts, then we would be proving that we didn't need the agency. Yes, Canada's got this fantastic brand and all of these great benefits of living here and investing here and growing here, yet we're lagging. One of the ways we have been lagging is in being the only G7 country that doesn't have a centralized agency. Either we think the other six are doing it wrong, or we're behind, so we chose the latter and now we're hopefully going to get there.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We're really doing well on time here.

I've got a question that follows up on Ms. Ramsey's. Of course, as parliamentarians and Canadians, we want more investment in our country. That's good, but there is also a concern, and it was alluded to, about so-called investment that could maybe jeopardize our infrastructure, our security. I think it's been brought up that China is looking at making some investments, and there are some concerns in other countries about strategic investments that China has made. Does that come across your table?

I know we have a review process in this country. What is the percentage for a strategic asset or a security asset? I know it has to go through a review process, but does any of that come across your plate?

[Mitch Garber]

We will not be able to do a cybersecurity deal with a Chinese company without it having gone through the processes you've just alluded to. One of them is the billion-dollar process. That goes for any company. Any foreign direct investment in Canada is a billion dollars or more. On cybersecurity, if you look at the Qualcomm deal recently, there's been a bunch of controversial deals between the U.S. and China. That's more political, I believe, than cybersecurity.

Your point is extremely well taken, but I'm sure we're not in a position to facilitate a deal that could sneak through, one that has a cybersecurity opening to it, to allow the Chinese to come. We're not that powerful. Those deals will be scrutinized.

[Ian McKay]

Mr. Chair, with respect to Aecon or other deals coming from some countries—maybe it's China—we have a job to speak to the investment community in China and say, “Here are the sectors in our economy where we would welcome your investments with very few conditions, so let's focus on them. Also, respectfully, here are some sectors where there's going to be a lot of rigour to go through.” I don't think we've been having that discussion and being very prescriptive with certain investments across the globe, and saying to them, “We've got an enormous array of sectors you can invest in. We would really like to facilitate discussions for you to get into these spaces. I'm not sure what they are yet, but we're working at it. Quite frankly, it's going to be more difficult for you to deploy capital in those spaces.”

I don't think that's an inappropriate conversation to have with them, and I think it would avoid some of the concerns that Ms. Ramsey raised about certain sectors and companies. I don't think that's offside.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming. It was a very good session. I think if I can speak on behalf of the committee, we would like to see you back here again to give us an update. We would appreciate it. We hope you can find time to do it.

[Ian McKay]

Next Tuesday would be fine.

[Mitch Garber]

I would love to come back, Mr. Chairman. I think accountability is important, so as a chairman I would like to come back and be accountable for how we perform.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you very much. We had a very good meeting, folks. See you Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.