Thank you, Chair.
I think there are some numbers we need to get out there on the ISDS side of it. Everybody talks about the liabilities that Canada has. Foreign direct investment since NAFTA started has been $5.3 trillion. Payout on ISDS awards has been $171 million, and $123 million of that was to AbitibiBowater. One case was $121 million. It was because they nationalized a pulp mill.
When you weigh the two, the numbers are weighted one way versus the other, and that talks about the importance of agreements like NAFTA.
The TD economic special report on NAFTA said that in 1993 we had $290 billion in trade. In 2012 we had $1.1 trillion. That shows you what happens. Jobs in Canada have increased by 4.7 million since 1993. When you start looking at the economic impacts, you start seeing what it does to our economy. I wish I had the numbers for Quebec and could relate them, but I don't. I think it's important we understand exactly what happens when you allow trade to happen and allow the private sector to grow and employ people.
I come from Saskatchewan. Under the previous NDP government, we had seen our kids leave, we had seen our companies leave, and all of a sudden we had nobody there to provide the services. We had no way to pay for the services we wanted. Our health care and everything else was in jeopardy because we did not have economic activity because of the policies of that government. It's amazing how eight years changes things.
I know the committee members talked about being in Saskatoon a couple of weeks ago and about all the young people who were there in Saskatchewan. That's because we allowed the industry to develop and allowed the private sector to come back and invest in our province.
You know what? All of a sudden we have to get more nurses. We need more doctors. Our communities are growing. Our small towns are growing again. The joke used to be to ask the last person in Saskatchewan going to Alberta to turn off the lights. The joke has turned around. Now the last person in Alberta coming to Saskatchewan turns off the lights.
It shows you how important it is to get the policy correct.
When we did the CETA study, one of the things that was identified in that study was the infrastructure that was going to be required to take advantage of these trade agreements. One of the things was that all of a sudden we were going to have this east-west flow. In Saskatchewan we're going to have to do a trade mission to Quebec City to look through your port and understand what you can and cannot do, because there's going to be an increase in activity through the port of Quebec and the port of Montreal out of Saskatchewan and Alberta in the prairies. I know that for a fact. Agricultural goods all of a sudden won't be going north and south; they'll be going east and west.
I think that's going to be vital for the growth of this region. The impact 10 years from now....
There's another thing I want to dispute.
They say there has been a trade deficit in the last 10 years. Let's look at the numbers specifically. Our dollar was high. It was at $1.00 to $1.10 in a lot of cases in that 10 years. A global recession was unheard of and unprecedented. In the U.S., it definitely would have an impact on trade in manufactured goods going across. One could argue that if we hadn't had those trade agreements in place, it would have been substantially worse.
What did we learn? The beef sector, for example, came back and said they needed to have more than one market. Then they looked at Asia, they looked at Europe, they looked at other countries, and that's where things like TPP come into play. They say they can compete in South Korea, but the U.S. got there first with their free trade agreement, and now they're at a disadvantage. They need time to gain back the market share they lost because the U.S. was there first.
If you look at the South Korea deal and say we lost trade, yes, we did. That's because we were late to the table signing the agreement, and that's what scares me about the TPP. If we're not there, the impact is going to be felt across Canada, and it's going to be substantial, because the U.S. and Mexico would be there.
In the case of the port authority, if we don't have these trade agreements going forward, what is your future?