International Trade Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

[Chief Roy Fabian]

Not that I'm aware of. All communications come to me first before I forward them on to my staff and to the other people to respond to these things, and I haven't seen anything from that department you're talking about.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[Peter Redvers]

Just to add to that, I'm the director of lands, resources, and negotiations, and no, we haven't received any, and we certainly haven't had the resources to be able to do that kind of analysis on our own.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You're out of time there.

We're going to move over to the Liberals.

Mr. Fonseca, you have the floor. Go ahead, sir.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for their remarks and for being very open about how they feel about the TPP. This is a huge agreement that we would be signing onto if it were ratified, and as the chair mentioned, it would impact every Canadian in some way directly or indirectly.

A year ago tomorrow, this country chose a different government, a Justin Trudeau Liberal government. I know from knocking on doors in southern Ontario that one of the reasons they wanted that change for our country was to change from a previous regime, the Harper regime, which was very secretive in terms of how it conducted its government. We also found this in the territories. In the Northwest Territories, all the members there who represent the people of the Northwest Territories are Liberal. At people's doors, I heard that people wanted to know, they wanted to be consulted with, and we made a clear commitment to consult. The first thing that we as this international trade committee did was to get on the road and to consult from coast to coast to coast with Canadians, with all stakeholders, to make sure that everybody had a clear understanding of what the TPP was all about. Before October 19 of last year, people were really in the dark. They had no clue what the TPP's impacts would be. We heard from all of you today that you were not consulted by the previous government.

The ISDS came up a number of times within your comments. If you had the ability to change the ISDS, would that also allow for your thoughts on the TPP to change, and would you see that as an agreement that could work for Canada? Any one of you can answer.

[Peter Redvers]

Thank you.

That's a very broad statement. To go back to the consultation, there are small-c and capital-C consultations. There were certainly no section 35 consultations, and even this committee is not really fulfilling that obligation. It's fulfilling a public consultation process. You need to understand that the duty to consult should certainly have arisen much earlier, particularly where there is a potential for infringement, .

Certainly we don't have the resources and haven't had the resources to do a full and complete analysis of the TPP. We just simply don't have those resources. We focused in on the ISDS because it's the one that we believe could drive a wedge between Canada and first nations with respect to the notion of true reconciliation, which was also one of the key promises of the Liberal government and one of the reasons they did get some support among first nations.

If this agreement, and particularly that chapter, limits in any way the ability or fetters in any way the ability of the Canadian government to exercise its full constitutional obligations, then that's a really significant problem, particularly with respect to exploitation of natural resources within first nations traditional territories, so yes, that needs to be looked at very carefully. There really needs to be absolute certainty that there's no fettering of the ability of the Canadian government to fulfill its constitutional obligations to protect treaty and aboriginal rights, and that clarity is not there at this point in time.

As for some of the other clauses relating to either the environment or local contracting and the ability to protect jobs through preferential kinds of treatments—and in the case of the fishing industry, to be able to develop subsidies—those also need to be examined.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Redvers.

I heard Chief Fabian say that he was very proud of the fur trade and the legacy of trading with indigenous peoples, and we are a trading nation.

Mr. Bourassa, you mentioned the auto sector and how it may be impacted. As you know, even within auto, 90% of everything that is produced here in Canada is traded to other nations around the world, so all of those cars are being shipped all over the world. I wanted to ask—

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Sorry. Don't throw a question in now. You have five seconds left.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

—whether you are amendable to any trade deals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Give us a quick answer, please.

[Jack Bourassa]

Trade deals in and of themselves are fine, but only trade deals that are negotiated between governments, not trade deals that have been initiated by corporate CEOs and lobbyists.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We have two three-minute slots left.

Madam Lapointe, you're going to ask questions for the Liberals for three minutes. Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon and welcome to the witnesses.

I had a question for a witness, but he seems to have left.

Mr. Ward, in terms of economic development, you talked at length about seafood tariff rates. You said that this would remove the tariffs for Vietnam and Japan and that you have tremendous opportunities.

Do you also have an infrastructure deficit, as in the case of the Northwest Territories? What type of infrastructure would you need to sustain your economy and sell your products?

[Jerry Ward]

That's a very good question. I could take the rest of the afternoon, if we had time. Clearly, for a resource-based industry and the fishery in particular, despite having two million square kilometres and 40% of Canada's coastline, we have no docking facilities whatsoever for any of our fishing vessels, from a small 30-foot boat to a 67- to 70-metre modern factory freezer trawler.

That's absolutely essential if we want to develop the inshore fishery within Nunavut. It would obviously mean a substantial number of jobs, because it would employ more people within the community and so on.

The first item would be with regard to dockside facilities and marine infrastructure in particular. The other, of course, would be with regard to the vessels themselves, and the ability to repair vessels and so on.

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

Thank you.

If there were a port or a designated space for your boats, what would that mean in terms of the number of workers or additional jobs in your region?

[Jerry Ward]

The products that we produce, as I indicated earlier, are shrimp and turbot. We can certainly sell them all today because they're in great demand, and worldwide supply is down, of course. If we had more infrastructure, it would provide more high-paying jobs for Inuit in some of these isolated communities, who simply don't have work anywhere today.

In Nunavut, in communities with 25%, 30%, or 35% unemployment, a small plant hiring 50 people would probably employ half of the 25% to 50% of the employable population in that community. If infrastructure provided the ability to ship the product out, obviously more jobs would be created, and more high-paying jobs specifically.

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

Thank you very much. That's very interesting.

Thank you, everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Madam Lapointe.

We just have three minutes left, and Mr. Ritz, you have the last three minutes.

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

Gentlemen, thank you for your presentations today. I'm going to use my time to move a motion here, and I would like to read it into the record:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on International Trade conduct a pre-budget study on the effects that the recently announced, Liberal Government carbon tax would have on Canada’s trade competitiveness, given that exporters in other countries, including but not limited to the United States and Australia, are not subject to the additional costs of a carbon pricing scheme; that this study be comprised of no less than four meetings to be held at the committee’s earliest convenience; that departmental officials, including André Downs, Director General and Chief Economist, from Global Affairs Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada be in attendance for at least one meeting; that the committee report its findings to the house no later than February 15, 2017.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Before we have discussion on this motion, I think we should thank the witnesses.

Thank you very much, folks, for coming to us today. We're just tidying up some legal stuff here. Thank you very much for your presentations.

We are going to be continuing on with this report until the end of the year, and hopefully by then, or by the first of next year, we will present it to Parliament. Your input is very important and it will be part of our report.

Thank you again, and have a good winter.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Go ahead.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I would like to see a recorded vote. If we go in camera, then of course we can't have a recorded vote, or the recorded vote is not valid for something else, so I would move that we actually have a recorded vote before we even consider going in camera.

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

Are you requesting a recorded vote on going in camera?