International Trade Committee on Nov. 17th, 2016

[Angella MacEwen]

No. A lot of German, French, and other companies.... “Services” is actually code for municipally provided public services, where they'll be coming in and doing waste water.... They've already privatized those services in Europe. There are large companies with that expertise, and that's their advantage. That's why they wanted access to municipalities.

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

Thank you, Ms. MacEwen.

Mr. Everson.

[Warren Everson]

I'm going to punt the question a little bit, but I will mention to you that we host the Canadian Services Coalition at the Chamber of Commerce, and they would be delighted to be witnesses to talk about this agreement. We also host the Intellectual Property Council, and if you are interested in a new witness on IP, I can have one here for you tomorrow. We're interested in that.

I think our assumption of the services is that Canada is very powerful in financial services, insurance, consulting, engineering, architecture, and the like. As you know, one of the first provisions of CETA to be agreed upon was joint recognition of the certification of professionals. I think there is a whole raft of different kinds of services where we can still expect to do extremely well.

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

One more...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

I think we have enough time for one more round of questions.

We're going to move to the Conservatives.

First, I would like to welcome Mr. Clement to the most exciting committee on the Hill.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I would tend to agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Okay. So you're going to split your time—

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

As Keith Richards once said: “It's great to be here. It's great to be anywhere.”

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You're going to split your time with Mr. Hoback. Go ahead. You have the floor.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I'm going to ask just one question of Mr. Everson and Madam MacEwen.

I was struck by something you said, Angella, about training adjustment and the relatively poor efforts that Canada has made on that front. I have done a bit of research on this. It is in fact true that in terms of adjusting workers to new realities that are put in because of trade agreements, when you look at what we've done versus what European countries and other trading nations around the world have done, you see that we do a third to a half of what they do in terms of training adjustments.

I wanted to get your perspective and the perspective of the chamber on what we have to do better, because I don't think any of us want a situation where people are left out and ignored. There is a lot of talk these days about how the political class has ignored a whole swath of people on both sides of the border, but also on both sides of the Atlantic, and I think part of that has to do with a very poor record of training adjustments.

I want to tease out more of your views on that and hear from Warren too.

[Angella MacEwen]

Absolutely. We have the labour market development agreements, which have been at around $2 billion since they started. Those have been devolved to the provinces, and I think we are in the process of renegotiating them. Using what we already have in the labour market development agreements and increasing the funding, as the Liberals promised during the election...and they've done a bit of that so far. It's about increasing the funding to that and targeting areas that are hard hit and providing what we had when auto workers were very hard hit and we had worker adjustment centres in place. Employers provided some funding, governments provided some funding, and there was personalized assistance.

Another thing that we need to do if workers are within five years of retirement, say, is to consider having employers—or funding from government compensation packages—actually pay into their pensions or pay them an early pension if they are unable to find a job. There's retraining, and then there is support for workers who are near retirement. Also, we do pay. We already have a fraction of the labour market adjustment policies that Europe has. Globally, we're absolutely terrible on this front.

Also, when workers are doing this training, we don't provide them income supports. If your EI runs out and you're still doing the training, or if you need a certificate to become a nurse and you need three years of training for that, we don't provide funding while you're doing that training. If we can provide income support to workers who have been hit, either because we are shutting down coal plants or because of trade deals....

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you.

I wanted to hear from Warren a bit anyway.

[Warren Everson]

Yes, but you're mostly going to hear the same thing. We strongly agree. The human resource is the main thing that a nation has and, increasingly in the modern economy it's the only thing that really matters, so we're strongly supportive.

This government has been pretty creative so far. We've seen at least an opening of the door to a lot of new experiments. At the chamber, we have a very active committee in this space, and we publish routinely on the new tactics of work-enabled learning and the like. We strongly concur that this is essential.

I've made the point that a lot of the time trade agreements are just a signpost on a road you were going down anyway. Americans, as we saw under Mr. Trump's campaign, are very angry about job losses in manufacturing, but the highest level of production in manufacturing in the United States ever was yesterday's. They are producing more goods than they ever did before; it's just that they are not employing as many people.

Agriculture is the same. They produce four times as much as they did pre-war, with a third—or a quarter, or a fifteenth, or whatever it is—of the workforce.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

There a a lot of good jobs for robots.

[Warren Everson]

Unfortunately, yes. The trade agreement wasn't the cause, but it certainly gets the attention.

However, when you say, all right, we are actually signing on to this course of action and this economic future, I do think it's an obvious moment to recognize that you have to pay attention to your workers while you're doing that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Mr. Hoback, do you have a question?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Chair, I'm going back to the cattlemen.

I have one question on your third item. What were the expectations or what would you look at as far as what you'd want to see from the government as to the creation of these facilities that you can export into Europe? Do you have any idea of price tags or of what's been talked about and committed to in the past and where you're at right now?

[John Masswohl]

I think that's a conversation we want to have collectively with us, the packers, and the processors to sit down with the department and craft something. To give you a couple of examples, in order for the cattle to be eligible, they have to be raised without the hormones.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

So to do that would mean...?

[John Masswohl]

To do that, it's probably about an extra 20% cost of production. Half of that is the physical cost of feeding them and keeping them longer. Probably half of it is the documentation and having the CFI certify your facility. A lot of producers are holding off on that until they know this is real.

If we can have the government say that they will make it a priority for CFIA to get out and certify your farm so that you're enrolled in the EU program without costs to the producer, a lot more producers would be actively getting involved. Producers are raising cattle without the hormones anyway, but they aren't certified under the program.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Again, it's making sure that we have the mechanisms in here to take advantage of the deal, and the proper certifications.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Okay. Even with all of our interruptions, all the MPs seem to have had a dialogue with the witnesses, and the witnesses all seemed to get their five minutes in.

Thank you very much for coming. We hope to see you here again.

We're going to suspend now for one minute and then go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]