International Trade Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

They'll have to be quick answers.

[Shiv Chopra]

With your permission, I would like to speak to it. Rather than just workers, wherever they work from...I know it's a question of trade, but we should be looking at the product. What can Canada best produce that the world wants and is the best in the world? That is exactly where the SPS clause comes in. We should be concentrating on making our food the best in the world and following our own laws that exist now—

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

One of the things that we see going forward is that we can make the best products, but people are services. If we have the best people, we can move those services abroad. If I hadn't been elected to this place, Texas would have been a great place for me to work.

[Shiv Chopra]

We have to follow our own laws first. We have to follow our own law, which is the Food and Drugs Act. We are not following that law. That is a very important thing. It's why the Europeans won't buy our food; Japan is reluctant, and South Korea is reluctant. They don't want to buy our beef and they don't want to buy our cheese, but they are able to export to us. There is no way—

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I can see Ms. Cook's body language.

Do you want to finish up in my last five seconds?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

No, there's no time left, Mr. Trost.

[An hon. member]

He can have mine, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You might have more time later on. We are moving over to the Liberals now.

Mr. Peterson, you have five minutes, and I hear you're splitting the time.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Chair, you're correct. I'm going to split my time with Madame Lapointe.

Following up on Mr. Trost's framework, we're all looking at what's going to happen in Canada if we ratify the TPP, and that's presuming that we're looking at a deal or no deal. Has anyone given an assessment or analysis of what happens if our partners—Mexico, the U.S., and other countries—enter the TPP and we don't?

I think that needs to be the analysis because, as Mr. Trost pointed out, the U.S. may not ratify it, in which case there may be no deal at all, so there's no point in even doing that. But if the U.S. is in, Japan is in, Mexico is in, and we're not, has anyone done the analysis on what impact that would have on your various industries and trade sectors?

[Phil Benson]

I thought there was an automatic entry once you sign the agreement if enough parties sign it, so America and Japan, we're in. It might be whether you sign it or not....

As we've said, the C.D. Howe Institute has said it's negligible as to whether we sign it, as 98% of the stuff we deal is already free trade. For us, the only complaint we're getting from the farmers' groups is not being able to move enough grain to existing markets, so I don't think it would have a major impact whatsoever. The questions we have to ask are on the negatives that you've heard about: trademarks and food safety.

On food safety, a big issue that I've heard people talk about is the science. I know that Mr. Chopra, whom I really respect and have known for many years, is right, but even if he's wrong, as we know about pipelines and moving oil by pipeline, what the facts are is irrelevant. If people are convinced in Japan and elsewhere, especially in Europe, that the dairy we're trying to sell is somehow tainted, you aren't going to sell a lot. That's the aspect: how do we look after Canada?

My call to you was to look at this point of how many jobs, and not just jobs, but how the wages of the middle class and the workers are going to go up. How are we going to grow consumers for the economy if 17% is construction and 70% is services? When you work through it, there's not a lot left. How do we make sure they have enough money so that we can grow our economy?

That's exactly what your government did in the budget, and I hope it continues. Congratulations for doing that. It's the first one I've seen in 24 years that did that, so good for you.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That's my portion of the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

I think Mr. Carey wanted to make a comment.

[Dave Carey]

With all due respect to our Teamsters friends, agriculture and agrifood processing is the largest manufacturing sector in Canada. It surpasses auto and aerospace combined. Canadians do export agriculture goods to Europe, to Japan, and to all those markets, and Canadian agriculture products are applauded abroad for their safety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Madame Lapointe.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have a question for the officials from Grain Growers of Canada.

A report by the U.S. Trade Representative on the topic of trade barriers in Japan suggests that “Japan requires wheat to be imported through [the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries]” of Japan, which then raises the prices of wheat.

Do TPP countries or trading entities other than Japan apply markups on the wheat they import from Canada?

[Margaret Hansen]

As far as we know, it's Japan.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

So Japan is the only one.

Which grain producers would benefit the most from the TPP? You have mentioned those who produce canola, wheat, oats, but which ones would benefit in terms of exports?

[Margaret Hansen]

It's most likely canola. A lot of canola goes into Japan. They take our seed but not our oil because there is a tariff on canola oil going into Japan. Australia has a green agreement in Japan, so they're getting preferential access tariffs on the canola seed industry as well. The TPP would put us on a more level playing field. It's expected it would also bring more canola seed processing to Canada. We have developed a canola processing industry. It employs a lot of Canadians in high quality, high paying, specialized jobs, and we would anticipate those to increase.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

I think I'm out of time.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We're going to move over to Ms. Ramsey.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you so much.

You perked up my ears when you were talking about jobs, because I come from a portion of the country that has seen huge unemployment rates over the past 10 years. It's been very devastating to southwestern Ontario. When you're talking about jobs, specifically the grains and seeds, can you tell us how many jobs you anticipate you would add in Canada under the TPP?

[Margaret Hansen]

It's difficult to know how many jobs we would add. We do know that agriculture and agrifood probably employ one in eight Canadians. It's the third largest contributor to GDP. Jobs would be added. It's also what would be lost potentially by not signing on. We know that as farmers we're just one aspect. We grow and sell the seed, but it's the whole value-added chain, the whole suppliers, all the communities.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you. Seeds: do you have any estimates on how many jobs would be created in Canada under the TPP?

[Dave Carey]

We don't know the exact number of how many jobs would be created, but we do know that as exports increase and more products are being produced, more people have to be employed. The seed industry has increased exponentially in employment numbers over the past number of years.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

This is probably the toughest thing we face because we have no economic impact study from the government; therefore, we don't know where we are in terms of jobs in Canada. We're relying on different studies. Some of them have been mentioned here today. The one that stands out is the Tufts University study because it estimates we'll lose 58,000 Canadian jobs. That's massive. Although there will be gains in certain sectors, this is an overall snapshot of what would happen in Canada. You have heard from others about the amount of growth.

I want to go back to you, Ms. Hansen, because I would like to dig into the non-tariff barriers. This is something we've heard from agriculture across the board, and this is a far larger problem than reducing the tariffs. In many cases we're not able to get into those markets because of these non-tariff barriers.

Can you speak to us about which TPP countries you face the biggest challenges with in terms of non-tariff barriers?