International Trade Committee on June 18th, 2019

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Chief Bellegarde, you mentioned something about government procurement, which you think is a number one thing we should be looking at, and I agree. I think this is really important.

Canada lost its buy American exemption. In January, Mr. Trump made an executive order in that regard. With government procurement, it would be really important that Canada maintain access to the American market, which is 10 times larger than our market.

How would you see this government procurement work with first nations, especially with the mandatory part of it that you brought up?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

It will have to be a short answer.

[National Chief Perry Bellegarde]

The short answer is to work with the appropriate minister and appropriate government department in terms of a policy change inside, towards a policy that reflects that set-aside.

That's it.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Maybe we can talk a bit about that later. Thank you.

[National Chief Perry Bellegarde]

Yes. We can talk later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Carrie.

Now we're going to move over to the Liberals and Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Do you guys have it figured out?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

It's 30 seconds more with the time he wasted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You can split your time. Go ahead.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

First of all, I'd like to give a vote of thanks to the committee's support staff for this long, five-hour meeting. I would also request that they have access to coffee, refreshments and food.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

I think that's unanimous. Mr. Dhaliwal, the sooner you're finished, the sooner we can all eat.

Go ahead. You have the floor.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

After being landed in Calgary in 1984, I went to the University of Calgary and then moved to British Columbia. Western Canada is where my heart has always been.

Bob and John, you mentioned $500 and $600 per animal. Can you tell me the amount of wealth that will bring to western Canada, not per head but in terms of total amount?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Do you want to do the math?

Just for clarification, is this the beef industry or the whole area of agriculture?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

I'm talking about the beef and the agriculture, the whole industry.

[John Masswohl]

To put it in perspective, in round numbers, at $600 a head, we'd need to market approximately four million head of cattle per year, whatever that works out to. That's about $2.4 billion in additional value from having exports.

It's not theoretical for us. We know what happens when the U.S. border closes, as it did in 2003. The price of cattle went from about $1.15 a pound, before BSE was discovered, to within a week or two being 25¢ a pound. That's a massive loss.

Let's say Bob has a load of cattle he has to sell, 40 animals in a truck, and he phones the buyers in High River, Alberta, and asks what they are paying. Then he phones the buyers at the facility in Pasco, Washington, and asks what they are paying. He'll find that the buyers in High River know what the ones in Washington are going to pay and they're going to match it. They're going to be aggressive.

If he doesn't have that option to sell to Washington, that's when he knows that he's going to get at least $500 a head less for those animals. That's $20,000 on a truckload of cattle, and it's not theoretical. We know that is the case.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you.

Chief Bellegarde, would first nations in British Columbia benefit from this new agreement? Are they generally happy with the way it's gone?

[National Chief Perry Bellegarde]

We have 634 first nations. You're not going to get 634 chiefs unanimous on any issue. This is by far the most progressive agreement to date. We're going to build on it. Most first nations would say it's moving. Is it ideal? Of course not, but it's a start. This is the first time we've ever had an indigenous person's voice around an advisory table.

To Minister Freeland and her team, kudos for that.

We feel excluded on a lot of fronts. Time and time again I hear from chiefs that all these trucks of lumber are going out of our territory, but nothing is coming back to the first nations community in employment or revenue sharing or anything. We're saying that has to stop. Once you start getting first nations people out of poverty, it builds a better country. Getting involved in the economy is what we have to start working on.

You have an aging workforce in Canada. You have a skilled labour shortage. We have to start focusing on the fastest-growing segment of Canada's population, which is young first nations men and women. Get them educated. Get our people trained and get our people working.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Mr. DiCaro, you have Unifor workers in British Columbia as well. Can you tell me how the new agreement will overcome some of the challenges and enhance opportunities in British Columbia?

[Angelo DiCaro]

We have a wide-ranging membership. We focus a lot on auto. It's a very important sector of the economy. We talked a little about B.C. and softwood lumber. This is going to be a big issue. Seeing this dispute hopefully through to a satisfactory resolution would be a huge benefit. The ability, through this retention of chapter 19, whatever it's called in the new agreement, is very important for us.

There is one thing about the media sector. We also have a number of workers in local television in B.C. The ability for us to fight off some very aggressive demands of the U.S. broadcasting industry for greater market access to the Canadian cultural market, but also to retain that cultural policy exemption for the reasons that were already mentioned in maintaining Canadian content quotas is critical for us to continue supporting our local news industry. This is where we have a significant stake in that game in the face of ongoing challenges, largely from U.S. online broadcasters. I think our members in B.C. are paying close attention to those two examples.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We're going to move to the Conservatives.

Mr. Allison, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bellegarde, we obviously get the fact that certainty is important. We also have the issue of what's going on in the States with the Democrats and stuff. I'd like your take on that. I know we want to show we're there. The challenge is that they're not there. How do you see this moving forward as we try to ratify but not get too far ahead, basing your understanding on your connections in the U.S. and what you've heard from the Democrats?

[National Chief Perry Bellegarde]

We have to demonstrate that we're committed as a country to getting this ratified, no question. You have to be mindful that the movement to enforcement or passing it in both Mexico and the U.S.A. has to be done co-operatively. We have to watch. You can't get too far ahead.

We can support some of the requests by the Democrats to reopen it, but if you start opening it up, it really becomes precarious. I would caution that moving, but not too fast, has to be done in a co-operative manner. It can't get too far ahead. It's a tricky implementation process on an international front. If we really want to breathe life into this agreement, all three countries have to ratify it. If one is missing, it doesn't mean anything. It's too important to our economy to create that flow of jobs and economic development and economic growth to play silly games with this. We have to be very careful. It has to be very strategic.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thanks.

John and Bob, you guys talked about value add, and I think one of the things that we've talked about here at committee is the whole issue around competitiveness and how we do that.

I love the fact that you are finishing more product to send to the States or wherever the case may be. Talk to us about some of the things that you are working on, just so you can do more of that value add piece, which I think is key for everything we do.

It's one thing that we send our wood and our oil and all that stuff south, or we export it, but I'm a big believer that we should do more of that here in Canada, whatever that is.

Talk to us about the success of what you guys have been able to do, how you've been able to do that and what the challenges may still be.