International Trade Committee on Sept. 29th, 2016

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentations here this morning. As you can see, there are a lot of different viewpoints on whether we should or shouldn't, and how far, and what should be covered and what should not be covered. The deal is there in principle, and we're looking at ratification of the next steps and so on. They were great presentations. Thank you so much for giving them.

I'd like to start with you, Jon, if you don't mind, just because you're on my list that way.

Your last statement was that Canada must participate. I fully agree with you. We can't be left behind. It is a global marketplace, whether we like it or not, but we do have to make sure that Canadian employees and Canadian employers do not experience excessively negative effects through our participation.

You also made the statement that scale is developed through global access. When you talked about movement of goods and movement of people, I was quite intrigued. The whole TFW process has been a thorn in government's side in some aspects, but it has been the boon that makes things work on the other side. As governments, we recognize the benefit of it, but how do you put forward a process that everyone agrees to? The fallback or safety valve has always been the provincial nominee program. Were you able to make use of that? In moving forward, when you start talking about more skills and so on, it falls back to the provincial nominee so that these people become citizens at the end of the day.

[Jon David F. Stanfield]

We have not accessed that program. We accessed it once when we could not find a department head for our textile department. We went through that program and brought a person in from Pakistan who had skills in that area. I think that largely it all comes back to the availability of labour. We might not need them for 12 months, but we do need them for a certain time frame, and that's probably a federal program.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Yes, it's the temporary portion of the—

[Jon David F. Stanfield]

I thought it was not right that the whole thing blew up when the Royal Bank was using foreign workers. There are companies like ours that live in rural areas and need access to labour. Maybe it's not the use of temporary workers, but there is some other moniker that could be used for a federal program or the movement of labour inside of TPP so that we could have access to a labour pool for x amount of time.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Within the TPP there is a labour standards chapter that also allows you to bring in expertise or export expertise from here to your shop in Vietnam on a temporary basis, and it's the same thing coming back. That's in there, so you do have that labour mobility to a certain extent. Whether it will be fine-tuned enough for you, we'll find out.

I was intrigued by the tonnage that's going through the airport. That's phenomenal. Do you have a capacity ceiling you're looking at that will lead you to say, “We are getting close, and we have to expand and do more”? There will be more markets than just the Korean distributorship as we start looking at Malaysia and Vietnam and different things like that too. Is there a glass ceiling that you're looking at?

[Ian Arthur]

Next year, with the good work that Nova Scotia has been doing with their Asia outreach strategy, we have a significant opportunity. If we can get some agreements in air service through the Chinese authorities and through Transport Canada, then we have a significant opportunity with direct air service to Shanghai. We also have Qatar, which is flying a Boeing 777 in once a week. They're looking at expanding. Next year we are looking at significant growth. We will go from 300 tonnes a week to upwards of 600 tonnes a week of live lobster.

There is a glass ceiling, and we are investing $5.5 million in a cargo pad. We're building it so we can facilitate that quickly, and we will also need more refrigerated space in the future.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Sure. Part of the problem is the seasonality of some of these products as well. You have big peaks, and then valleys, so it's hard—

[Ian Arthur]

It's all year round.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Yes, which is great.

All of your workforce at the airport would be unionized?

[Ian Arthur]

The vast majority, yes, 85%.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

We're hearing from all the unions and we'll have some here later today.

They hate this. They don't want this. You're the devil for actually taking part in it. How do you work with your unionized employees who seem to have dug their heels in and are saying, “No way, no how”, and yet you are very bullish about moving forward?

[Ian Arthur]

Well, I don't think our employees are necessarily part of the union groups that would oppose—

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

The numbers are claimed.

[Ian Arthur]

Yes. Essentially we're a facility, so our employees work to facilitate all the airplanes, whether passenger or cargo, that are coming through. The more business for them, the more work they get. They're pretty happy about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, sir.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

I'm not done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Mr. Ritz, I know you're on a roll, but we have to stop it.

We're going to move on now to the Liberals for five minutes.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you have the floor.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the panel members.

My question is to Mr. Arthur.

You mentioned about moving goods efficiently. If we ratify TPP, do you see any improvement in border security in the process? Is there something that you would like to see happening?

[Ian Arthur]

That's a great question. Border security is of utmost importance, and security at the airport is reliant upon the countries that actually have security in their own country.

We have great arrangements with the United States and most of Europe. It's really important to ensure that there are security agreements between Canada and whatever countries we're going to trade with to ensure that whether it's goods or people, we know what or who they are and we know that they're not coming here to do harm. That's absolutely critical in the aviation industry, as you can imagine.

There are all sorts of goods that are shipped through facilities worldwide that are not what they say they are. The good news is that we have 24/7 security at our shipping facilities and all shipments are scanned and reviewed. Yes, it's of utmost importance.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Stanfield, congratulations. You are one of the oldest successful ventures here locally.

My concern is competing with the world. Most of these competitors are producing overseas. You had to go to Bangladesh because your customers forced you to do that.

In the present climate, how would you remain competitive when all the larger brands rely more on production overseas?

[Jon David F. Stanfield]

That's a good question, and it's one that we face every day.

Our competitors are all very global. They have manufacturing platforms throughout the world. What we have available to us in Canada is a quick turnaround and distribution play. We were vertical from the year 1 forward, so we can turn around product very quickly and get it into the Canadian market quickly. However, the cost structure in certain areas of our business is much higher than it is for those businesses in LDC nations.

I think the flattening point could be part of the TPP process. If some of the benefits of LDC nations are lessened or lowered, companies can utilize the TPP or other trade agreements, whether it's the European agreement or this agreement, to gain access to markets, whether for labour or for products, and import them to allow them to be more competitive in the marketplace against low-cost nation producers, I think that will benefit our company. I think we'll then have a choice to produce the same amount of products in Canada that we do today.

If not, we're going to be producing less, and once you get to a certain level, all of the products will be imported and all of the jobs will be gone on the manufacturing side. That's significant when you think about rural-based small towns.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Mr. Ritz said that under the TPP you will be able to bring in a workforce as well. Are you keen to get the TPP ratified and take advantage of the terms of that agreement?

[Jon David F. Stanfield]

Yes, I think so, as long as the skilled labour includes the people who sew, because that's a skill. In the modern world, that's not a skill. A skill is how you integrate technology into your mobile phone or how you integrate technology into a car and these types of things, but maybe not how you sew underwear. The important thing there would be that skills are not tightly defined but broadly defined by industry, versus a specific avenue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We're going to move to the NDP now.

Ms. Ramsey, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you so much for your presentations.

A couple of themes came through.

There are some serious gaps between the TPP and what is needed in communities here in Nova Scotia and across Canada in terms of supports, not just for agriculture but across every other sector as well. We've heard that consistently.

The other thing is the perception that we can't be or aren't trading in TPP countries. We're 97% tariff-free with TPP countries already. This 3% is the gap we're looking at. There's a very serious price to pay for dropping the tariffs on that 3%. Essentially, in terms of farming, we've pitted beef and pork farmers against dairy farmers. It's is a horrible situation for us to see playing out in Canada, which has the best agriculture in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

Another thing is the money. An economic impact study came out a few weeks ago from the government. It predicts that we'll see 0.127% GDP growth by the year 2040. That would represent $4.3 billion. Ironically, that's the exact same amount that's promised to supply management in the first 15 years of CETA and the TPP. It's essentially cancelling it out.

This isn't the finance committee, but I think we can do the numbers and say that at the end of the day we won't end up seeing the benefit in Canada. Potentially we need to look at other markets, such as Japan, as we've heard here.

Mr. van den Heuvel and Mr. Oulton, in New Brunswick we heard a prediction that half of all the Atlantic dairy farms would be wiped out with the TPP. I'm wondering if you could speak in terms of Nova Scotia as to what the impact would be on the supply-managed sectors if they aren't compensated. If that money doesn't come forward, what would that look like in Nova Scotia for supply management?