Evidence of meeting #31 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 change.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you.
Thank you much for your very interesting presentation. I'm wondering if you had the opportunity to listen to our last witnesses, Dr. Howard and Mr. Yeo.
12:25 p.m.
Director General, Trade Negotiations, Global Affairs Canada
I just caught the tail end of the video conference.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
It would be great for them to be able to hear your presentation, because one of the concerns that Dr. Howard raised was a lack of input regarding health and climate change in trade negotiations and trade discussions. I'd be very pleased for her to hear about Bill C-13.
Could you inform us how long it will take in the transition period to put this into place?
12:25 p.m.
Director General, Trade Negotiations, Global Affairs Canada
It all depends how quickly countries ratify the agreement. We have 92 out of 110. You have to get a certain percentage of the WTO members. The process is moving ahead well.
As I mentioned in my opening comments, the G20 ministers, when they met in Shanghai in China earlier this month, committed to ratifying the agreement by the end of this year, so if the G20 members get on board and any other outstanding members sign up, in an ideal world we'd have it sometime early next year.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Okay. Thank you.
We've also heard from witnesses across the country who have identified concerns about the harmonization as well as phytosanitary concerns. Will Bill C-13 help bring that together?
12:25 p.m.
Director General, Trade Negotiations, Global Affairs Canada
It's really dealing with the trade facilitation elements of trade, not the sanitary and phytosanitary aspects or the TBT elements. That's not really the purpose of Bill C-13 .
Again, I don't know if my colleagues from the regulatory departments have any comments to make.
12:25 p.m.
Director, Centre for Regulatory and Compliance Strategies, Department of Health
Under the Food and Drugs Act that in part regulates food, along with many other federal statutes, the current regulatory regime for food is maintained. All of the authorities that are brought to the Food and Drugs Act via Bill C-13 are applicable to food as well. The increased controls at the border over imported food would be available as well.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
My last question is more of a general interest question. It's on the disposal of non-compliant goods. I know you said it's at the cost of the importer, but I'm sure there are cases in which the importer, for whatever reason, is not able or willing to pay for the disposal. How do we go about that as a government?
12:25 p.m.
Director General, Trade Negotiations, Global Affairs Canada
It may well be that the response will come from Health Canada and Environment Canada in that regard. Perhaps Health Canada might go first.
12:25 p.m.
Director, Centre for Regulatory and Compliance Strategies, Department of Health
I think there is some work to be done in order to implement this broad legislative authority that we have placed in these statutes. That recovery of cost will be according to Treasury Board policies, according to regulations and the Financial Administration Act, and according to existing policies as well around recovery of costs and the financial structures that ministries administer.
12:25 p.m.
Acting Executive Director, Legislative Governance, Department of the Environment
There are no amendments to CEPA with respect to that article in the TFA.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Oh, I'll think of something.
I'd like to refer back to the trade and investment strategy that you mentioned, Mr. Usher, and that my colleague Ms. Ramsey talked about. It was about preparing the small to medium-sized companies, but especially the small, for exporting. How will this information regarding Bill C-13 be disseminated to the small company or organization in Canada?
12:25 p.m.
Director General, Trade Negotiations, Global Affairs Canada
Right now there's a lot of information, obviously, and not only on the WTO website; we also have references on our Global Affairs Canada website. As we do outreach through the trade commissioner service and talk about how to facilitate trade in export markets, this will be an element. At this stage we're saying that this is a negotiated agreement and that we're hoping to ratify it. I think once the agreement enters into force, then the nature of the messaging to our exporters will change.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Great. To me, preparing businesses for export markets is critical, particularly in the east. It isn't only preparing them to get into the markets but also helping them stay in the markets. For those who lost market share or opportunities, probably a significant amount of work needs to be done to encourage those companies to enter the export markets again.
Thank you.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you very much.
I hope that gives everybody a better understanding of where we're going, because we'll be dealing with clause-by-clause study in a couple of weeks.
Unless you have any more comments, folks, thank you for coming. We know where to find you, I guess, if we're stuck on any clause. Thank you very much.
We'll suspend for a minute while everybody leaves the room. Hopefully the MPs will stay at their seats. We have some future business to deal with.
[Proceedings continue in camera]