International Trade Committee on April 21st, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you. The time is up.

We're going to move on to Mr. Fonseca for five minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the presenters. Thanks for your passion, for your presentations, for the knowledge you have brought here to the table. I'm also going to ask you for your experience.

In every trade deal we have winners and losers, as we've heard, pros and cons, those who are for and those who are against. We've had numerous trade deals between Canada and other countries. I recall NAFTA. My dad was working in manufacturing and lost his job through NAFTA. That was something that happened to our family. It affected our family in a way that was adverse. But we consult with the public, with organized labour, with workers, with associations, with organizations, with business, and we want to hear from all sides.

Tapping a little bit into your experience, for most of you at the table—I say “most of you” because I'm not sure whether you were born when NAFTA came about—were you in favour of NAFTA when it was signed on to? Could you just tell me?

[Kevin Rebeck]

No.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

You were not in favour of NAFTA.

[Brigette DePape]

The Council of Canadians definitely was not.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Todd, you probably would have been in favour.

[Todd Burns]

Yes.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

We have another big agreement right now that we have signed on to, and that is CETA, the Canada and European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. I'd like to know where you stand on that agreement.

[Kevin Rebeck]

I have a number of concerns. It's not unrealistic that we enter trade deals, but we need to make sure that, again, profit isn't the only determinant. Workers' interests need to be protected. Often those voices end up at a table like this when a deal is at the stage of yea or nay, and we lose out, because the input we could have provided to help sculpt a good deal is collected after the deal is drafted and done.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

But weighing everything that you have seen in CETA, where would your organization, the Manitoba Federation of Labour, stand on CETA?

[Kevin Rebeck]

Again I'd say there is lots of room for improvement.

[Douglas Tingey]

As we speak, we have people in Europe to speak against CETA, so quite clearly, that is where we stand.

One of the things I'd like to point out, as you go through your list, is that these documents are no longer traditional trade agreements.

When I cut my teeth in the early 1980s in this space, trade agreements were about dumping, safeguards, tariffs, and that sort of thing. These agreements now are political agreements that deal with wide swaths of public policy, and most importantly, investment. You have to stop talking about it as a trade agreement. It's a trade and investment agreement. For most other major players in this, it's the investment side that's the most important, so I would encourage you to do that.

I'll mention one very last thing, as you've opened the window for me. We are quite concerned that there are silos continuing in this conversation. You cannot talk today about trade and investment without talking at the same time about climate change mitigation. You cannot. This committee cannot release a report without sitting down with its colleagues on the environment committee and trying to hash out who's going to take priority.

Are climate policies going to take priority over our trade policies? They are going to butt heads directly in the next few years. The TransCanada litigation in the U.S. is a warning of what's going to be happening here as we start to take our obligations to deal with carbon budgets and that sort of thing seriously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you.

Todd?

[Todd Burns]

I'll be the first to admit I haven't done my homework on CETA so I don't have a lot of comment on it.

One thing I can say is that the EU has been a tough nut for us to crack in terms of a market. There's been more policy, additional approvals, and so on, and just sort of red tape for us to cut in terms of entering the market, which leads us to have a very small market share there. If there were parts of the agreement that would help us overcome those barriers, then of course, in terms of the ability to help us grow our business, we would be in favour of helping us get an easier market entry into some of those countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We just have a half a minute left, if somebody wants to finish up.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I'll just say that Canada is an open-ended trading nation, and we've seen just in the Windsor area that well over $1 billion, I believe, goes between those borders every single day. Looking at those trade agreements, and maybe at something like CETA, I know that the ISDS is something they're looking at as a gold standard within CETA in regard to seeing if the ISDS would work. If the TPP were to be reopened, is that how you would like to see an ISDS work?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You used up your half a minute on your question, so we will have to move on.

We have one MP left for questioning. Our last five minutes will go to Mr. Ritz.

Go ahead, Mr. Ritz.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention here today.

I'm a little concerned, and I have to correct Tracey when she says it was only hundreds of people who were talked to. That's not true. It was hundreds of groups and organizations, which represent tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Canadians.

Very similar to that, Kevin, you started off by saying you represent 13,000 labour people and so on. You are their voice. If we talked to all 13,000, we'd hear the same message, right?

[Kevin Rebeck]

Just like if a government official says they speak for all Canadians....

First off, we represent 100,000 members.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Okay. Even better.

[Kevin Rebeck]

Second off, we arrive at our decisions through—

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Even better, so today we've talked to a million people through their representatives.

I'm being facetious—

[Kevin Rebeck]

Clearly.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

—but that's sort of the idea.

We also had a lot of the businesses that hire your unionized people here today—in the pork sector, in the grain sector—saying that this is a good thing, that we need this, that our unions are supporting it because they recognize that this is how they will solidify the next five, 10, 20 years of their lives, building their families, buying houses, setting up their pensions, and all of that.

We're getting a bit of a cross-message here. Is it because the businesses are profit-driven and you're looking at the practical side? Is there a disconnect?

[Kevin Rebeck]

Well, you have a few points there, so clearly there is a disconnect.

What's more likely when you're talking to a business owner? Are they dealing with the interests of their business or are they representing their workforce and the concerns of their workers?