Evidence of meeting #33 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 pei.
1:30 p.m.
Atlantic Chapter Executive Committee, Sierra Club Canada Foundation
Well, no, not for lobster. That's what they're fishing right now. There's plenty of them.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
We're going to be seeing the fishing community in Newfoundland, and they need to know if we should enact new legislation. Are you suggesting that we have stronger quotas on, say, bluefin tuna? I'm just mentioning a few—you mentioned cod—possibly flounder. Where are we in danger?
1:30 p.m.
Atlantic Chapter Executive Committee, Sierra Club Canada Foundation
I don't have an opinion on that. I think we're doing okay as far as quotas and that sort of thing go now that we've had the cod collapse and such crises. There are a lot of problems still, but my point is climate change and its effects on the oceans are a major blow to the future of fisheries. It's already being felt in the fishery, and more so in the health of the ocean. It's beyond what we want to take from the oceans. We're tied to them, and it's critical to the oceans' health to be protected.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Okay, thank you.
I want to skip over to the Cattle Producers. P.E.I. is just one surprise after another. You said there were—I wrote it down—400 producers of cattle. What would the average herd size be?
1:30 p.m.
Chairman, Prince Edward Island Cattle Producers
The average herd size on Prince Edward Island is probably around 100 animals or fewer. We have a few larger producers, but a large producer on P.E.I. is 1,000 cattle. I had the opportunity to be in Calgary three weeks ago, and 50,000 heads is an average in places out there. No, we're smaller, with more diverse farms on P.E.I.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
Okay, just quickly.
Do they use crop rotation with crops or do they have pasture and leave it just for their animals?
1:30 p.m.
Chairman, Prince Edward Island Cattle Producers
No, crop rotation is used on P.E.I. Some small areas are pasture only, and that's wetter land that can't be cropped. Most of the land on the island is in a three-year, five-year rotation.
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Okay, sir, thank you.
We're going to move to the Liberals, and we're going to start off with Ms. Ludwig.
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you very much for your presentations.
Mr. Morrison and Ms. Bradley, back in April, the National Cattle Feeders' Association submitted a brief to our committee. In that brief they said:
The most significant immediate benefit that NCFA members would get from the TPP would be greatly improved access to Japan, a market already absorbing Canadian agri-food products worth over $4 billion annually—considerably more than Canadian agri-food shipments to the entire market of the EU. Canadian beef exports to Japan were worth over $100 million in 2014. Canadian beef producers expect to double or triple annual exports to Japan to nearly $300 million.
You mentioned during your presentation that Australia and the U.S.A. are immediate competition to the Canadian market. What might be the impact if the Americans and the Australians ratified TPP and Canada did not, in terms of the competition threat from Australia and the U.S. to Canadian beef exports?
1:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Cattle Producers
We have the numbers on that, but I can't find them here at the moment.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
1:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Cattle Producers
The competition for the TPP, not so much for the Canadian market, is not the U.S. and Australia, but certainly the U.S. and Australia could be our biggest competitors for access to those markets in the TPP. If we are not part of the negotiations getting into that trade agreement, we will lose out on any further access to those markets, or any existing markets, perhaps, too. We're already facing high tariffs there, but the TPP would bring us down to levels that are an advantage over Australia. Certainly the U.S. is not clear on where they're going with the negotiations. We encourage Canada to get out ahead of the U.S., do its own negotiating, try to get agreements in place so we can worry about keeping our own markets there and expanding. Certainly Japan is an excellent market, and we want to expand that, as opposed to losing it.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Reddin and Ms. Boyd, I have two questions.
To what extent have your organizations participated in consultations on TPP, CETA ,or previous trade agreements? Can you tell me a Canadian trade agreement that you do support, and why?
1:35 p.m.
Atlantic Chapter Executive Committee, Sierra Club Canada Foundation
Of course, we've taken what involvement we can. Most of us have been volunteers in the previous consultations, sending in submissions and such things. As far as trade agreements go, I'm stretched to think of one, but that's not usually what we're thinking about. We look at what happens when we have agreements like the free trade agreement, and the problems that come up, especially with challenges that corporations make to their profit margin.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
1:35 p.m.
Chair, P.E.I. Health Coalition
We haven't had much opportunity to be in any kind of consultation like this because of the secrecy of CETA and the TPP for so long. There hasn't been much time. There's been a lot of work catching up, but we've been following it and trying to get information.
You asked about a trade agreement that we could agree with. Until some time around the 1980s, the trade agreements were quite sound and good. It was more or less “I'll trade with you for what you need, and you'll give me what I need.” These were great trade agreements. However, with these modern ones now, the constitutions and everything else are written by the big corporations. These are about investment rather than trade. We're not against trade, but the TPP especially will cement the control of big business over—
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
I only have 30 seconds.
Looking forward, if other countries are trading in terms of trading blocs and working back and forth with each other, there are obviously pluses and minuses. What might be the impact if Canada were no longer involved with those types of trade agreements?
1:35 p.m.
Chair, P.E.I. Health Coalition
I really think that Canada has to do more on its own self-reliance. It has to build up its own markets here in Canada, for sure, and it has to get away from selling raw products and trading them off. It has to go back to some industrialization of this country.
What we've done with the trade agreements is that people say you can get money by selling your raw materials and your energy to the world. Everybody says forget about industrialization, that this is the easy way to go. Trading off our raw materials is a huge mistake. It's shown in every sector how we're losing and losing.
We have a green economy that is a challenge for us to build in Canada, which in 10 years could produce a million jobs. It would help so much with all our problems with climate change. Why don't we get to work on that, build that, create those jobs for Canadians, strengthen this nation? We'll be stronger as we face the other nations.
I'm not against trade, but the kind—
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you, Ms. Boyd and Ms. Ludwig.
We're going to move to the NDP now, and Miss Ramsay for five minutes.
1:35 p.m.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
I thank you all for your presentations.
From the cattlemen's association, we've certainly heard this in every province, and federally as well. We understand the market that you'd like access to in Japan. Unfortunately, as you can hear from this particular panel, quite often we hear that this deal is about far more than just tariff and non-tariff barriers. The six chapters that deal with the type of trade you're interested in having aren't the issue. It's the other 24 chapters of the 30 that are concerning.
The environmental impacts are very real. The ISDS cases that have been brought against Canada quite often have an environmental theme. We can look at the Bilcon case, challenging the environmental assessment process federally and provincially, and the Murphy Oil case, challenging our corporate social responsibility to the communities that they exist in. We look at AbitibiBowater, and the Lone Pine case for fracking in Quebec. This has tied the hands of provincial governments and our federal government over and over around environmental issues that legislators are trying to improve for Canadians.
This is legitimate. This is absolutely happening, and for hundreds of millions dollars. These cases are being brought forward. It impacts the way that we are going to be able to legislate.
You mentioned the Paris accord. We've had Jacqueline Wilson, a lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, come before our committee. She said that the TPP environment chapter doesn't protect the environment. It won't likely be enforced, and it's not nearly strong enough to counteract the environmentally detrimental provisions elsewhere in the TPP.
Could you comment on that?
1:40 p.m.
Atlantic Chapter Executive Committee, Sierra Club Canada Foundation
As I said, I was just looking at the various agreements that we already have on environmental issues, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The TPP will, in effect, override those, and a lot of good work that went into that is going to be lost, indeed made even worse. The environmental protection that we have would be lost by the overriding provisions of the TPP.
It's more of a disaster than we already have, which we certainly have.
1:40 p.m.
NDP
Tracey Ramsey NDP Essex, ON
I think it has definitely threatened our environmental sustainability, and we need to take a harder—