Evidence of meeting #12 for International Trade in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was saskatchewan.
Manager, Corporate Services, Canpotex
Yes. I believe they would experience the same tariff-free regulatory environment that we would.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Just so that I understand the answer, do we import potash at all in Canada?
Manager, Corporate Services, Canpotex
I'm not sure, but I don't believe so.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Okay.
How many people are employed in the industry?
Manager, Corporate Services, Canpotex
Canpotex employs just over a hundred people. We have about a hundred who are located in Saskatchewan, as well as about twenty others in our Vancouver office.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
For all potash.... Maybe Brad would know that answer, or Richard.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
There are 4,500 employed. Okay.
If there was potential ratification of the TPP, what would you see in terms of job increases? What are you looking at? We're trying to quantify the impact of this in terms of dollars and people—jobs.
Manager, Corporate Services, Canpotex
I understand.
As I mentioned, we're in the fortunate position of having a tariff-free environment and generally an open market in the TPP, so it's difficult to quantify the increase in exports or a dollar value that we can point to.
However, there are some long-term benefits to the TPP in being a predictable and clear route forward that offers some stability and assurances in fairly complex markets. As well, it offers a path forward should there be problems that arise in these markets.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you, Ms. Stinka.
Mr. Michnik, in the letter you wrote to Minister Freeland, your organization provided 100% endorsement of the TPP agreement. I believe within the letter was that this agreement is paramount to the success of Saskatchewan.
Can you please provide some insight into the TPP? With 100% endorsement, do you have any concerns with—
Liberal
Senior Vice-President, Trade Development, Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership
The endorsement came from our board, which is elected by our membership.
There were no concerns expressed. Even when we did the round table with Mr. Lametti, there wasn't one voice of dissension from 25 people on the issues. Now, that's strictly talk from a trade and export perspective. They've had the first-hand experience of a NAFTA agreement, for example, that has been quite desirable and quite successful for Canada and Saskatchewan, so that can be used as a kind of template here. Everybody is very supportive of it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you for that answer.
Thank you, Mr. Fonseca.
That wraps up the Liberals' time, so now we're going to go over to the NDP with Ms. Ramsey for five minutes.
Go ahead please.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your presentations today.
I want to say first that I think it's a false argument to say that the agreement impacts people or workers versus businesses. You work hand in hand, and I'm sure that you care deeply about the people you represent who work for you and are part of communities too. It's not one over the other. It's just that, on balance, we're trying to look at the impact to everyone in Canada.
I think it's been well expressed today that this deal is about more than just trade, in the sense of removing tariff and non-tariff barriers. Trade is vital to our country, and we understand your position on being able to access those markets. We have no economic impact study from the current government, or from Global Affairs. It's been something we've discussed in this committee. It's difficult for us to study a deal without having an idea of the scope of the impact that will be felt by Canadians and businesses.
There are two studies that exist. One is from Tufts University in the States. It says we'll lose 58,000 jobs in Canada and see a net benefit of 0.2% to our GDP over the next 14 years. The other, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, also in the States, actually shows worse numbers. It shows 0% growth for us as a country.
Following your presentations today, I'm wondering whether any of you have done your own economic impact studies for your organizations.
Adviser, Viterra
I'll try to answer some of that.
In working with our various associations—and I would agree that we may have to do additional work to hone the numbers—we do have a pretty good sense of it, given past agreements and such.
Adviser, Viterra
For wheat, we're looking at an increase of about 1.2 million tonnes. For barley, we're looking at about a half a million tonne increase. For canola we're looking at a net economic benefit of some $780 million plus, approaching $1 billion. This is a substitution effect. Rather than shipping raw canola to Japan, what we're hoping for with this deal is to process it here. Those are the types of figures we're looking at.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
Would it be fair to ask you to provide to the committee the work you've done around those figures so that we can have it for part of our analysis?
Senior Vice-President, Trade Development, Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership
I think that many of our anecdotes are one-offs, even using the canola industry. One of the biggest challenges that we have here in the province of Saskatchewan—and we do very well on the agriculture and resource base—is that sometimes the tariffs in place in other countries to protect industries hamper our ability to develop value-added industries.
The game-changer in Saskatchewan in the last five or six years has been the crush of canola in the province. In Japan, as an example, there's a tariff on oil but not on seed. It certainly hampers our industry in terms of growing the value-added side. Where you see a lot of the tariffs is on the value-added side, and that's where we're trying to grow our economy. We've seen a lot of growth, and quite frankly, the jobs come from the value-added side.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
Maybe some of the partners that you represent have done economic impact studies of their own, or some type of an economic analysis that you could provide to the committee.
Senior Vice-President, Trade Development, Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership
Even using farm machinery as an example, there are duties on some types of farm machinery imported into Australia, which is a big market for us. It's about an $80-million agricultural machinery market, yet on our equipment there's a tariff. If you eliminate a 5% tariff, it makes you that much more competitive. It's going to up your business in terms of numbers and so on.
We'd have to go out and collect the data, quite frankly. We don't have it in one spot today.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
Fair enough. I think that to support the work we're doing here, the more information we have on the benefits you're bringing to us today, the better we can make our decisions and put our report forward to Parliament.
My second question is really around the ISDS. I hear and understand that you see this as being an impartial dispute resolution mechanism based on international standards, which protects foreign investors and thereby encourages increased investment flows between signatory countries.
That said, such mechanisms have been criticized for a variety of reasons. For example, some believe that the mechanisms are not sufficiently transparent, that members selected for the arbitration tribunals are not fully impartial, and that the mechanisms could create a regulatory chill, or a reluctance by governments to make new regulations or enforce existing ones. Will the provisions included in the investment chapter of the TPP ensure that the Government of Canada will preserve its full rights to legislate and regulate in the public interest, including for public health and environmental reasons?
Liberal