Evidence of meeting #18 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 tpp.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
But if you throw CETA in with Canada—Canada has an agreement coming in CETA—and TPP, now all of a sudden you have a tremendous amount of access globally. One country has a preferential treatment into a wide range of very lucrative markets.
Is that not going to attract more businesses here?
Director, University of Windsor, Cross-Border Institute
Very quickly, I would say that's the strategy Mexico has pursued, with the same results.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
We're going to move back over to the Liberals.
Ms. Ludwig, you're up for five minutes.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Again, it's a great conversation.
My questions are related to labour mobility. We've heard a number of different panellists across the provinces discuss the significance of the labour mobility chapter in the TPP. We've heard a previous panellist, from Unifor, talk about the fact that the U.S. has opted out of the labour mobility angle.
There are 350 million people who live within the United States and roughly 36 million living in Canada. In the early 2000s there were studies done predicting a skilled labour shortage in Canada.
Madam Hasenfratz, do you bring in any skilled labour to help out and provide temporary support at times, or even longer-term support within your organization?
Chief Executive Officer, Linamar Corporation
Yes, absolutely. The availability of skilled labour continues to be an issue. We're doing an enormous amount to try to develop people right here. We have more than 600 apprentices working for us globally, in our organization alone.
We're growing quite rapidly. We've been growing in double digits every year, and having strong technical people is absolutely key to the innovation that I was discussing earlier from a process perspective and that continues from an improvement perspective. As a result, we have gone beyond our borders to try to bring people into our operations to supplement what we can produce using people internally.
I think immigration is great stop-gap that we can use, until we can start to develop more and more people and encourage more people into skilled trades. That starts much younger, doesn't it, with a focus on STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—and getting more people into those areas and increasing the number of people going into skilled trades.
I think this is working; we are seeing more people in STEM and we're seeing more people starting to go into skilled trades, which is fantastic. It's just that the numbers aren't big enough yet, so we need to keep that effort going. In the meantime we can use immigration to help fill the role.
Director, University of Windsor, Cross-Border Institute
On that same issue, I think there's a skilled labour shortage in Canada, but there's a skilled labour shortage in all of the other developed countries involved in TPP, and it's worse just about everywhere else.
One reason it's a great opportunity to expand trade relations with Japan is that Japan is a very sophisticated country that is facing the most severe labour shortage of any developed country probably in history, because of their demographic situation.
Canada, having a labour force that has skills and education levels comparable to those of the Japanese labour force, could be very complementary to them. If anything, this is a comparative advantage that Canada has, which may also contribute to more Japanese investment in Canada, because that situation is a tough situation here but a terrible situation in Japan.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
When Canadians decide to travel internationally for work, particularly, let's say, in an environment like Japan's, what are the opportunities and the risks they might bring back to Canada as employees and contributors or non-contributors to competitiveness?
Director, University of Windsor, Cross-Border Institute
I want to quickly make sure of what I just said. I wasn't saying it's an opportunity for us to send our people to Japan. It's an opportunity for the Japanese to send their production here, where they can take advantage of the availability.
Director, University of Windsor, Cross-Border Institute
Yes, that's right.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
I'll just share, as an example, as an international business educator, that I have found over the years the tremendous benefits to my students of travelling internationally and bringing back the social and cultural experience, but certainly the technical expertise back to Canadian companies, and of having that experience internationally.
From many standpoints, I don't see that as negative. I see it as quite positive.
I'd also like to hear from—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Your time is up. We're going to have to move over to Mr. Ritz.
You also have only four minutes, so that we can tidy up the panel.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
I can talk fast.
Thank you so much for your presentations today. It was very interesting stuff.
On PACA, Matt, most certainly we were addressing that as quickly as we could. I had actually made an offer to the horticultural industry that if we were to do a check-off, I would match what they put in and we would build our own body to facilitate it.
There's a misunderstanding in the horticultural council that somehow it covers it for bankruptcies only. About $7 million has been used over 20 years, so it's not an insurmountable amount, which could be addressed, but it's not about no or slow pay at all, as some in the hort industry think.
I know they're here later, so we'll have that discussion.
It can be fixed fairly readily without getting into bankruptcy and insolvency and so on.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce
That's a priority we're hearing. Thank you for addressing that.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Yes, absolutely.
Linda, thank you for your presentation. On content rules, I would think you would be apoplectic seeing the content rules go down in the TPP, being a Canadian innovator. Or do you see it more as an opportunity to join the global supply chains?
Chief Executive Officer, Linamar Corporation
As I was mentioning earlier, if you look at Canadian content requirements under NAFTA, they're zero. There is no requirement for this work to come to Canada. Admittedly, it's a bigger bucket with smaller players. You can leap to the conclusion that you're going to get more, but really there's no requirement for that work to come here, and there isn't any requirement for it to come in TPP. That's why I believe that we compete by being innovative, and efficient, and a great solution for our customers. I'm not worried about the content rules, because the content rules aren't how I'm winning business. That's not how I won those billions of dollars of business, and it's not how I'm going to win business in the future.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Bill, you also made the point about Japan's building platforms here to make use of our skilled workers. I absolutely agree with you. We're actually seeing that happen already with the investments from Honda and Toyota to address the CETA opportunities that are coming. Honda is going to build the CR-V here simply because of that. Again, it creates those opportunities for Linamar to take part in that supply line as well. I wanted to reinforce that point.
Again, to Linamar, being global as you are, you must have IP concerns, you must have proprietary products, and the way that you do things. There have been a lot of concerns raised about the ISDS chapter, that it's terrible, that we're giving up our sovereignty and all that. Do you see that as a help or a hindrance in dealing with other countries where you actually have an appellate body and a set of rules that you can actually go to as an investor?
Chief Executive Officer, Linamar Corporation
Are you talking about in terms of protecting IP?
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Well, protecting you as a business in other jurisdictions, including IP. You have the ISDS clauses, which some people say are terrible, that we're giving up our sovereignty, but I see them more as rules-based adjudication when a government changes the way that they would allow you to operate.
Chief Executive Officer, Linamar Corporation
Exactly.
I think the other benefit is that if you have harmony in terms of rules, then you have fewer individual rules to follow and requirements to meet. Not having harmonious regulation adds costs to a whole bunch of different industries where they have to follow these rules, follow these rules, and follow these rules. If we have a common set of rules, then that does help to improve efficiency.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Okay. Great. Thank you.
There is also talk that the phase-in period is too short. When you look at global investors, and I have a country that's going to hold the line for 25 years, and I have another one that is going to make changes in five years, where are you going to put your money?
Chief Executive Officer, Linamar Corporation
I'm all in favour of moving quickly. I think that's another key way that we compete, by being able to move fast, to be nimble, and make things happen quickly. I would always prefer to move quickly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
We're ending our panel here right now. I thank the witnesses for coming. We had a very lively exchange.
Can I ask the MPs to stay at the table for a minute because we have some media here and they want to take some shots of all of us at the table?
We will suspend the meeting.