Evidence of meeting #121 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 companies.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Ailish Campbell  Chief Trade Commissioner and Assistant Deputy Minister, International Business Development, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Paul Halucha  Assistant Deputy Minister, Industry Sector, Department of Industry
David Bhamjee  Vice-President, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Export Development Canada
Elisha Ram  Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development
François Lecavalier  Senior Vice-President, Corporate Development, Business Development Bank of Canada
Kevin Waugh  Saskatoon—Grasswood, CPC
Terry Sheehan  Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.
Patrick Hum  Senior Director, Manufacturing Industries Directorate, Manufacturing and Life Sciences Branch, Industry Sector, Department of Industry

11 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

I call this meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome, witnesses, and everybody in attendance.

This is our second meeting dealing with the impacts of tariffs on Canadian businesses, companies, and workers. We had a very successful first meeting. We had good witnesses, good dialogue and good questions.

Today we have with us officials from five departments.

Welcome, folks. It's probably not your first time at committee. We always say that presentations should be five minutes at the most, but if they're shorter, we appreciate that too so we can have lots of room for dialogue with MPs.

It looks as though we will have time for two rounds of questions today.

If my colleagues are ready, let's jump right in. We'll begin with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Ms. Campbell.

11 a.m.

Ailish Campbell Chief Trade Commissioner and Assistant Deputy Minister, International Business Development, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Standing Committee on International Trade.

I'm here to provide a bit of general context on trade diversification, certainly Canada's journey on this over the last several decades. I very much look forward to your questions as well.

As you know, Canada is a trading nation. A very important fact about our merchandise trade exports is that we have 0.5% of the world's GDP, but we have more than 2.5% of the world's exports. That's just goods. I'm also very excited about the increase we've seen in services trade—and perhaps we can talk about that in the Q and A—with everything from engineering to financial services. That's a big part of our diversification story.

We know that engaging in foreign markets enhances productivity—the productivity of companies who exchange technology, talent, and products, as well as the productivity of Canada. Fortunately circumstances have never been better for Canada. The signing of the Canada-EU trade agreement, CPTPP, which is currently, as you know, in Parliament for consideration, and now the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement provides unprecedented access to customers around the world. We will be the only G7 country with free trade agreements with every other G7 country. Our population will have access to the world's richest consumers, over 1.3 billion of them. I think that's a good news story for small business everywhere.

In his August 28 mandate letter, Minister Carr, the Minister for International Trade Diversification, was directed to lead the development and implementation of a trade diversification strategy. An initial piece of $50 million was announced at the end of June to support export market diversification. I'm thrilled to tell you that essentially we're just adding speed to a pretty good machine that's already running.

I want to leave three key messages with this committee. First, the trade commissioner service is here to work with businesses of all sizes. We have regional offices across the country, in every region, in Halifax, in Toronto, in Montreal, in Calgary, in Vancouver, and in every province and major city in between to work with small business. This is an invitation to the committee to refer companies that you meet in your role as MPs and in your parliamentary duties to the trade commissioner service.

Second, why work with us? It's very simple. Companies that work with the trade commissioner service export 20% more to 25% more markets. That's evidence we've gathered with our chief economist and Statistics Canada over a long period of time. The bottom line for companies is that that means more customers, more orders, more profit, and more jobs. So, please, do work with us.

Third, what exactly do we do? We provide market intelligence, open doors, and do troubleshooting. In the Q and A I'd be happy to talk to you about where we see our footprint. We are increasingly seeing more traffic from Canadian business, including in our bedrock relationships with the U.S., where we have a very deep set of city networks as well as state networks in addition to our embassy in Washington. As well, we've seen huge growth in interest in our Asia offices. We have 1,000 experts around the world in 160 offices, who are essentially the international business development officers for Canadian businesses of all sizes and particularly small business.

I'll take note of the Chair's comments and keep this short. We can talk trade numbers. We can talk stats. We can talk about the increase in trade with the EU. We can talk about the fact that despite the challenges the aluminum sector is having with the illegal duties the U.S. has imposed, some of which my colleagues will address, we've seen a 200% increase in aluminum exports to the EU over the last year.

The trade commissioner service is certainly doing its part to act aggressively for Canadian small business. I will conclude by saying that this is an invitation to each of you to work with and refer companies to the trade commissioner service. We want to be put to work for Canadian business.

Thank you.

11:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you.

We're going to go to the Department of Industry now and Mr. Halucha and Mr. Hum. Go ahead, you have the floor.

11:05 a.m.

Paul Halucha Assistant Deputy Minister, Industry Sector, Department of Industry

Thank you very much.

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the impacts of tariffs on Canadian businesses, companies and workers, in particular Canada's steel and aluminium industry.

Let me begin by speaking to the responsibilities of my department.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is the lead department responsible for analysis and policy development regarding Canada's manufacturing industries, including the steel and aluminum sectors. This includes focusing on innovation and competitiveness.

Let me speak for a moment to the significance of the steel and aluminium sectors in Canada. Combined, the steel and aluminium industries employ approximately 33,000 Canadians, while contributing almost $9 billion to Canada's GDP in 2017. There are 10 steel-making firms in Canada operating 16 mills in five provinces. There are three large aluminium producers operating smelters in Quebec and British Columbia.

Canada is currently the 17th-largest crude steel producer in the world, and the third-largest primary aluminium producer. In 2017, Canada produced an estimated 13.7 million tonnes of crude steel and 3.2 million tonnes of primary aluminium.

Steel and aluminum are major inputs for industries such as energy and construction. They are also vital for many manufacturing sectors, including automotive, aerospace, metal fabrication, and machinery and equipment.

What this means is that the impact of the current North American trade climate on steel and aluminum goes well beyond the companies and the workers in this industry.

The imposition of the section 232 tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium from June 1 has had a number of impacts. There has been a significant increase in steel and aluminium prices globally, but also in North America.

The benchmark monthly steel price in North America has reached heights not seen previously since 2008. Since the beginning of the year, the benchmark price for U.S. Midwest hot-rolled coil has increased from $729 U.S. per tonne in January to a peak of over $1,000 U.S. per tonne in July. From that high, the benchmark has fallen to $956 U.S. per tonne. This is in contrast to 2017 and 2016, when the average monthly price was $680 U.S. and $571 U.S. per tonne, respectively.

In aggregate, from 2018, the average annual monthly price is $927 U.S. per tonne.

On aluminium, the pricing trend is similar to steel. The global price of aluminium has increased from roughly $2,000 per tonne in January 2018 to $2,718 per tonne in the middle of April 2017, but we are now beginning to experience a decline.

In the months following the imposition of U.S. tariffs, the all-in price of aluminium has surged by more than 40%. There is no doubt that the price increases are a result of the ongoing trade action. To a certain extent, high steel prices and aluminium prices have helped mitigate the impact for primary producers.

The complete story, however, is that these firms are also incurring significant costs in certain circumstances as a result of the tariffs. For instance, electricity, a key input for steel producers, has seen price increases that further weaken cost competitiveness.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is cognizant of the pressure that increased prices could place on supply chains and downstream users of steel and aluminum, and the department is closely monitoring the impact. Higher steel and aluminum prices increase costs for many users, but there are many factors to consider, including supply contracts, volume consumed and the contribution to the overall cost of a product.

To this end, we have been in regular contact with automotive, aerospace and other manufacturing stakeholders regarding the U.S. deal on aluminium tariffs. ISED has been active as have other departments in advising companies of programs in place to assist industry.

One of our primary focuses has been informing what was needed to support steel and aluminium. The government's package announced in late June included $2 billion for the steel and aluminium sectors delivered by the departments and agencies appearing before the committee today, and at the next meeting. This includes $800 million from the BDC, $900 million from Export Development Canada, $250 million from our strategic innovation fund managed at ISED, $50 million for the Global Affairs' export diversification program, and $75 million from Employment and Social Development Canada.

Since the announcement of the package, we have worked with firms to help them understand who qualifies for what stream of support with an eye to helping them improve their operations and competitive positions.

With regard to the strategic innovation fund, to date we have received more than $1 billion of submissions that have come into ISED that aim to improve the cost and environmental efficiency of production, as well as improve product offerings where they see a demand today and into the future. We're also mindful that any investments help our producers better serve the domestic market.

Negotiations are going well with companies, and the first announcement is imminent, with others soon to follow. The tariffs are also impacting our efforts to resolve the overcapacity problem globally.

As a member of the G20 global forum for steel excess capacity, Canada is collaborating with other countries to focus attention on the countries that subsidize steel and ship it to destinations around the world in a way that disrupts those economies whose producers operate on market-based principles. These negotiations have not gotten any easier since the unilateral actions of the United States.

Since its inception Canada has consistently advocated for governments to be transparent in their provision of support for steel capacity, and Canada is a voice for measures that will alleviate this problem. We have to be absolutely transparent in our information as a means to our advocating that others do as we do. It was two weeks ago that Canada participated in a ministerial meeting of the global forum on steel excess capacity, held in Paris, where all of member countries agreed to take further measures to address steel capacity. Canada remains committed to demonstrating leadership in this important multilateral effort to address an issue that is detrimental to the financial health and stability of Canada's steel sector.

Finally, the government has thoroughly engaged with the steel and aluminum industry and other impacted stakeholders throughout this ordeal, and has initiated a number of responses measured to alleviate any negative impacts. Early in the year the government introduced regulatory changes to Canada's trade remedy regime to address transshipment and circumvention. For example, the Canada Border Service Agency has been provided with greater flexibility in addressing price distortions and an injection of new funding for new investigators, and it is now able to engage with a new type of investigation to address suspected circumventions of duties.

Such regulatory amendments have aimed to strengthen our ability to address unfairly traded imports that enter the Canadian marketplace. On top of this, the Department of Finance has initiated a safeguards consultation in August, and any measures that arise from this would stabilize markets in response to import surges. The government has also been closely monitoring trade patterns through regular trade monitoring committees on steel and aluminum, with the steel trades surveillance committee having met this week—and it has been meeting very regularly since the tariffs were put in place, with full industry participation.

We will continue to work with the steel and aluminium industry on the impacts of U.S. trade measures and in delivering the support they need.

We look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you, sir.

We're going to move to Export Development Canada and Mr. Bhamjee.

Go ahead, sir. You have the floor.

11:15 a.m.

David Bhamjee Vice-President, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Export Development Canada

Good morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for inviting me to appear today. My name is David Bhamjee, and I'm here in my capacity as the Vice-President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Export Development Canada.

It is a pleasure to be here today and to update you on the ways in which EDC is supporting Canadian exporters affected by the tariffs on steel and aluminum.

I will keep my remarks brief. Hopefully that will leave more time for questions.

The steel and aluminum industries are essential to our economy, and EDC is proud to work with them. We have long-standing relationships with Canadian steel and aluminum companies and, in turn, they know us well. By way of background, EDC is an international lender and leader in helping Canadian companies mitigate risk. We finance export activities. We provide insurance services, connections and support that allow Canadian companies to compete internationally.

In 2017, EDC has served more companies than ever before—just under 9,400 of them, and over 80% of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. I say that because, when Canadian companies are hit, it's important for us to be able to be there for them. That's what we want to speak with you about today.

When these tariffs were levied, we engaged with our own experts internally and with our partners across government and with industry to better understand both what the impact might be and the things that EDC may be able to do to assist. Coming out of those discussions and as part of the government's overall response to the tariffs, EDC has made over $900 million in lending and insurance support available to viable companies in this sector over the next two years. Through this capacity, we're available to provide companies with access to liquidity, capital and risk mitigation solutions. Since the start of the year, EDC has provided $133 million in financing and insurance support to 27 companies in the sector.

As we went through this exercise, we recognized that a big component of its success would concern the question of awareness and making Canadian companies aware of what we can do to support them. To facilitate that, on first of August both EDC and BDC reached out to over a thousand companies in the steel and aluminum sectors, both sub and direct, to let them know about the support that would be available to them. At EDC, this outreach resulted in 27 leads, all of which we have followed up on. Companies have also come to us just seeking more information, but are not necessarily looking for a financial service at this time. When we came across instances where EDC support wouldn't have been appropriate, we looked to direct them to the appropriate partner.

In addition, as part of EDC's engagement with the sector, we continue to participate in the Government of Canada's round tables. We have created an internal task force to coordinate with our regional offices and have launched a dedicated website and a 1-800 number to make sure that companies are connected as quickly as possible with the solution provider best suited to serve them. We remain in close contact with our partners across government, with our customers and with the industry, so that as companies make choices, they know what's available to support them.

Again, I'd be happy to take any questions. Thank you.

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you, sir.

We're going to move to the Department of Employment and Social Development and Mr. Ram. Are you good to go, sir?

11:15 a.m.

Elisha Ram Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development

First, I apologize for being late this morning. I'm not very good at reading directions apparently, but I'm very pleased to be with you today. Thank you so much for the invitation.

I'm Elisha Ram, the associate assistant deputy minister in the skills and employment branch of Employment and Social Development Canada.

ESDC offers a suite of services and programs, which are both available and have already been deployed, to assist workers and employers who have been affected by the new tariffs on steel and aluminum. These include immediate income supports through the employment insurance system for any workers who have become unemployed, and work-sharing arrangements with workers and employers that can help to prevent layoffs as companies adjust.

There are also federally funded training and employment supports delivered by provinces and territories through labour market transfer agreements.

Beginning in the spring of 2018, Service Canada, which is part of our corporate umbrella, has proactively reached out to more than 120 employers, including three national and three regional unions as well as industry associations and other stakeholders in the steel and aluminum industry across the country.

Employers are generally contacted within 48 hours of known or announced layoffs or closures and are offered information in joint outreach sessions with provinces and territories in order to provide seamless communication about the programs and support that employers can take advantage of. To date, we have undertaken 13 information sessions, and we are looking to provide more.

In addition, over the summer, the government announced new targeted measures totalling $75 million over four years through ESDC to help prevent layoffs to the extent possible in the sector and to provide assistance to those who have been affected by the tariffs. This includes $25 million over three years for temporary special work-sharing measures.

Briefly speaking, work-sharing is an adjustment program designed to help employers and employees work together to avoid layoffs when there is a temporary reduction in the normal level of business activity. This is the key instrument by which employment insurance income support can be provided to workers who have willingly accepted reduced working hours in order to allow their employers to adjust. The program is particularly helpful to small and medium-sized enterprises, which tend to sign the majority of work-sharing agreements.

The additional flexibilities announced in the summer allow employers and workers to apply to extend work-sharing agreements for a maximum of 38 weeks, which is normally the maximum, up to 76 weeks. There are also a waiving of the mandatory waiting period between applications to the program and lower requirements for employer transition plans. These measures will help employers remain viable, prevent layoffs and avoid or delay potential closures. They also provide employers and workers with more flexibility and allow employers to retain skilled workers as they adjust.

To date, we have signed 13 regular work-sharing agreements related to the tariffs on steel and aluminum, which are estimated to have averted over 300 layoffs and to have helped nearly 700 employees. We continue to work with other employers in the sector to make sure they are aware of these flexibilities.

In addition, the government is making available a total of $50 million over two years through the bilateral labour market development agreements with provinces and territories. The additional funding will ensure a dedicated envelope is available to provide a suite of training and employment supports to workers affected by the tariffs to help them transition to new work. This includes offerings such as employment counselling, job search assistance, skills training and targeted wage subsidies in order to help employees obtain different kinds of work experience.

We will of course continue to work closely with the provinces to monitor the situation to ensure that affected workers and employers have the assistance and support they need.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you, sir.

We're going to move over to the Business Development Bank of Canada and Mr. Lecavalier.

11:20 a.m.

François Lecavalier Senior Vice-President, Corporate Development, Business Development Bank of Canada

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will make my presentation in English, but it would be my pleasure to answer your questions in French when the time comes.

As you know, BDC is the only Canadian bank dedicated to entrepreneurs. We are an independent Crown corporation that reports to Parliament through the Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion. The key thing to know about BDC is that we're complementary. What that means is that we provide financing on a commercial basis, but we do take more risk than the other banks in Canada. We also offer, as a lot of you know, venture capital and advisory services.

In the steel and aluminum sector, we have made available an envelope of $800 million, as Paul mentioned earlier, over two years, for higher risk but viable businesses. The envelope is essentially going to allow us to take greater risk, and that is simply because of the situation we are in today. We, as a Crown corporation, have a responsibility to step up. The financing is being provided on commercial terms and can include flexible repayment terms and also our advisory services.

In terms of the use of the financing, we're promoting greater innovation. We want to help the SMEs in the steel and aluminum sector, essentially, expand into new markets, increase their operational and environmental efficiency, and purchase new equipment and technology. We want to help them succeed in the face of the illegal action taken by the U.S. by helping them to expand and work in other markets.

The envelope, I am glad to say, was operational on day one, when the tariff measures were announced by the Americans. The field was fully briefed immediately. BDC is efficient because we have 123 business centres across the country and over 2,200 employees and 600 account managers. That's what makes a difference: We've got boots on the ground. That includes, of course, our strong presence in Ontario and Quebec.

In terms of outreach, we work closely with our colleagues at EDC. We contacted every existing client and every potential company that was affected and—drum roll, please—these are the results, which are what you guys will be interested in. As of September 30, meaning three months of operations of the line, we have signed loans totalling $131 million to 189 clients. The key is that we are taking more risk. Thirty-seven per cent of the dollars authorized are assigned to clients who are below the average risk rating for our book of senior loans. That means we are working with clients who are a greater risk, which is exactly what we wanted to do. One-third of 189 clients are new to BDC, and as every banker will tell you, a new client is, by definition, a riskier client because you don't know them that well. But we're there to get to know these people.

In terms of regional distribution, almost 80%—77%—of authorizations are in Quebec and Ontario, a heavier weighting for these two regions than the weighting in our overall portfolio. That of course is what we expected given the concentration of the industry in those two provinces.

Thank you very much.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you, sir, and to all of your organizations. We see your work when we travel internationally. Our committee recently did a study on the ASEAN countries, and so we see some of your staffers out there doing the work and a lot of our companies. The Canadians out there appreciate the outreach that many of you do in these other areas. We see that in motion.

We're going to go now to a dialogue with the MPs.

I'd first like to welcome the member from Saskatoon—Grasswood, Mr. Waugh.

11:25 a.m.

Kevin Waugh Saskatoon—Grasswood, CPC

Thank you.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Welcome to the most exciting committee on the Hill.

11:25 a.m.

Saskatoon—Grasswood, CPC

Kevin Waugh

I'm told.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

We'll see how it goes.

Without further ado, the Conservatives have got the first five minutes.

Mr. Allison, you've got the floor.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Dean Allison Conservative Niagara West, ON

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witness for being here today. I'm a big fan of EDC and BDC, it goes without saying.

I want to take a bit of a different angle here. As a former business person, I understand that when you borrow money, you have to pay it back. What I'm trying to get at is that the government came out, with great fanfare, with about $2 billion worth of relief, but the reality is that a lot of these small and medium-sized enterprises I'm talking to are not able to get access to it, whether it's duty drawback or duty relief, duty deferral—whatever the case may be. The challenge I have is that loaning more money is not helpful, although it may be helpful if we get a deal and we get it resolved as we move forward.

When I talked to over 150 stakeholders this summer in three provinces—as a Conservative group we spoke to over 200—I can assure you that no one I talked to was able to get access to this money. That's partly because of the way the programs are set up. It's not a function of what you guys do, because you guys work within your parameters.

When I look at the $1.7 billion, either through BDC or EDC, I see a $250 million strategic innovation fund, which, by the way—correct me if I'm wrong—is only available for companies with over $10 million in sales and over 200 employees. Is that correct?

11:25 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Industry Sector, Department of Industry

Paul Halucha

Yes, it's correct.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Dean Allison Conservative Niagara West, ON

Okay.

I'm not saying there aren't programs out there. What I was saying is that these programs are not available to some of our SMEs who need them the most. The challenge I have as we move forward.... I don't know if you have these numbers. These are probably Finance's numbers. I would be curious, through the chair, whether we need to ask Finance how much we've collected. Looking at the two schedules that we have and the different rates of 25 and 10, I calculate that we'll collect somewhere around $2 billion, plus or minus. But what is actually going out the door in terms of relief or drawback? I don't mean additional loans, because, guess what, those all have to be paid back, and we're grateful for them. They do provide a niche, but that's not exactly what we're looking at.

When I look at the $1.7 billion through loans, when I look at the $250,000,000 that went through the strategic innovation fund, I don't see a lot of things because it's case by case. By the way, it's a surtax that's being charged, not a duty, so it makes it tough to be eligible for duty remission or duty drawback programs.

What types of programs are we making available to our SMEs that wouldn't require them to pay back some of the unfair and illegal tariffs that were mentioned, given the fact that the tax is actually a surtax? It's not a tariff, so it's not eligible for duty drawback?

Does anyone want to tackle this?

I need more than five minutes. I can't do this in five minutes.

Anyway, go ahead.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

You've been around too long to ask for more than five minutes.

11:30 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Industry Sector, Department of Industry

Paul Halucha

I'll take a stab at it.

On the strategic innovation fund, $10 million is actually the project size. That's the de minimis on it.

In part, it's because of the administration of the funding. The way the funding is set up around these types of programs is that they're there to support investment. The companies need to come forward with investment plans, and then, through negotiations and based on our terms and conditions, we are able to effectively buy down a portion of the investment they're going to make. The strategic innovation fund is able to provide non-repayable funding, and we have done that. There have been a lot of announcements over the last year, including for the auto sector, that included non-repayable elements in the form of grants, in addition to the loans. There is some flexibility on that.

We also have, through the department, regional development agencies, which have existing budgets, and we have been working actively with them. As with the strategic innovation fund, though, there needs to be a capital project or an investment that the company is looking to make. What we don't have programming at ISED for is simply for turning tariff receipt cheques into cash. That has been one of the challenges we've had in terms of the discussions. The duty drawback provisions do allow that to happen, but some of the frustration you've heard is around the time it has taken for responses. We're all aware of that. I think you'll hear about that when the Department of Finance and CBSA come in to talk to you about that. They are working to get the process done as quickly as possible.

The other thing is that, in the U.S., there is a remissions process as well. With the duties they're collecting, there is a process by which companies can seek to have the money returned to them. What we saw early on when the tariffs were put in place against Canadian firms was that a lot of shipments didn't go for while, particularly on the steel side. The reason they didn't go was that they were waiting for their customers in the U.S. to post the remission requests on the United States Department of Commerce's website. There's data now, and Canada represents about 20% of the requests that have been made to the Department of Commerce. They would obviously have to be approved and considered, but that one plus the duty drawback are the two closest programmatic lines that we have, in terms of the need you've pointed to.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you.

You're going to have another round, Mr. Allison, but you're almost a minute over, so we're going to move over to the Liberals.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you have the floor.

October 4th, 2018 / 11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Mrs. Campbell, first of all, I want to commend the officials at the foreign affairs department for all of the great work they have done to come up with this new and improved USMCA agreement.

There's a lot of excitement in my neck of the woods in British Columbia. Can you tell us how this new and improved USMCA will help companies, small businesses, and Canadians?

11:30 a.m.

Chief Trade Commissioner and Assistant Deputy Minister, International Business Development, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development

Ailish Campbell

Sure, I'd be happy to. I'd just like to commend Minister Freeland, Ambassador MacNaughton and Steve Verheul, our chief negotiator, for their incredible work. As a public servant, I liken this almost to a war, and Steve and his team have been away for over a year working on this. We're thrilled to have come to a conclusion that we can share with Canadians.

As you know, the deal has been announced, and more technical work is currently being done so that we can present the full agreement. I think I can mention a few stylized facts. The first is that business likes certainty. It now provides certainty to business that access to the U.S. and Mexican markets is not in question.

The second piece, which I think is equally important, is that the U.S. remains our primary trading partner. The U.S. is, if you will, the training ground and the training wheels for many companies who then go global. It would be inaccurate for us to talk about the world and how firms, particularly Canadian SMEs, grow to profitability and grow as quickly as possible without talking about key U.S. markets. So we're thrilled to have that access under way.

The last point I would make is that our negotiators are not standing still. I take note of this committee's important work on Asia. The conclusion of the CPTPP is essential, and we will be amongst the first countries to ratify and bring that agreement into effect.

I would commend the work you are undertaking to examine ASEAN and our Latin-American counterparts. This work will allow us to cover even further the supply chains of the world, the Fortune 500 companies, and the innovative new technologies in IT and clean tech that, as I think you've heard, my colleagues from EDC, BDC, and others are bringing home to Canada and that Canadians are contributing to the world. This will be relentless.

As my last point, the trade commissioner service provides up to $50,000 for a company of any size, but particularly for SMEs, to go to a market they haven't yet explored.

So one of my top takeaways for this committee is to please refer SMEs of all descriptions in all sectors to us. This is absolutely a kind of hyper-growth passport so that we can assist companies to get to growth faster.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC

We mentioned SMEs. On Tuesday a witness at committee said that they do not have resources and time to access all of the programs the government has announced. What are we doing to educate or inform those small and medium-sized businesses on how to take advantage of the programs that are in place.

Anyone?

11:35 a.m.

Chief Trade Commissioner and Assistant Deputy Minister, International Business Development, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development

Ailish Campbell

I would just say critically that what you're seeing here is Team Canada. This is team trade. Active referrals from EDC, BDC, ISED to us and vice-versa are occurring rapidly.

I think the fundamental point you made, though, is about entrepreneurs and time. They don't have time to decode what I call our “alphabet soup”. You'd almost have the whole alphabet if you mentioned all of our acronyms.

Whatever client or customer comes in to deal with us, it's our job to actively engagement with that company and to help them not only by referring them, but also by actively case-managing them, if you will, through to receiving all of the duties. Here I take note of the fantastic steel and aluminum website that EDC got off the ground immediately. That was one-stop shopping for all SMEs on all forms of results.

To take note of the earlier question on SMEs, we would love to know, as appropriate and while respecting privacy, any one of those 200 firms you've worked with, so that we could bring them into our active case management across the core federal public service and with our Crown corporation partners.