Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the committee today.
It's a pleasure to be here to provide my views on the TPP.
I'm a lawyer. I deal with international trade and policy. I was many years ago, in the 1970s, a Canadian diplomat. I represented Canada in many international organizations and international negotiations, including at the GATT, at the OECD at the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, at the OECD at IMCO, and it goes on and on. I have for many years, after leaving the government, practised international trade and policy, and that's where my work has taken me.
Let me address some major points in my introductory comments, and then I'll be pleased to answer questions. I should say that the real expert here this morning, certainly on IP, is Barry Sookman, who's one of Canada's leading experts in this area.
The TPP is part of an evolution of international trade rules inspired by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and furthered by the World Trade Organization. It's part of the progressive development of the rules of law that bind countries together. It evolves from the NAFTA and a range of other trade agreements, multilateral and otherwise, that Canada is a party to. When you look at the TPP, you have to see it in that context. The pillars in the TPP are derived from the multilateral system enshrined in the WTO agreement.
All of this is good. When I was in the government, we were striving to develop rules of international law so that Canada as a middle power would have the certainty of rules of the road—legal rules—and not be subject to power plays by larger nations. Rules are good. It's everything that Canada's foreign and trade policy is about: developing rules. Those have to be good rules, and they have to be rules that comport with Canadian interests, but the whole trend in international trade diplomacy is the quest for legally binding rules between states.
In the domestic context, there have been some negative comments about the TPP. We heard them earlier. I don't intend to join issue with some of those comments, but I would like to give you a more general and, I think, more balanced perspective.
The objective of this committee is to look at the TPP and reach an overall balanced conclusion. It has to be assessed in terms of the balance provided for in the agreement. The agreement is about much more than intellectual property. IP is part of it, an important part of it, but it's only a part of it. A lot of other things in the TPP have to be factored into any assessment.
I might say that in typical Canadian fashion, when we look at international trade agreements, I think we unfortunately tend to look at the defensive aspects, at what we have to give up or where we have to compromise in a negotiated outcome. What we don't do effectively enough is articulate our offensive interests, where we gain by having rules that benefit Canadian suppliers of goods, of services, and of capital in foreign markets. What the TPP does, in short, is provide the certainty for Canadian companies that want to export their intellectual property, their goods, their services, and their capital into foreign markets.