Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, honourable members of the committee.
I'm Dan Ujczo, an international trade and customs attorney with the law firm Dickinson Wright PLLC. I'm appearing on behalf of the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance.
As many of you know, Can/Am BTA is an organization of the leading infrastructure operators and logistics providers in the major U.S. and Canadian companies that move goods and services across the Canada-U.S. border. Can/Am BTA will be celebrating its silver jubilee next week here in Ottawa. Jim Phillips, its long-standing founder and CEO, sends his best regards in a typical Jim fashion. He looks forward to seeing you next week at his conference.
By way of background, Dickinson Wright is a law firm that was founded in Detroit in the 1870s. It has since expanded to 17 offices located throughout the United States and Canada, and our offices here in Ontario date back nearly to Confederation. We are a bi-national law firm. We represent many of the leading Canada-U.S. companies, and we do so on the ground in the U.S. Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest. Issues having to do with Canada-U.S. trade and the North American trading corridors are vital to our operations.
I'll just build on the chairman's opening comment. We are members and supporters of most of the Canada-U.S. business groups, including many of those seated here today. We founded in 2015 the U.S.-Canada S.A.G.E. initiative to coordinate, for the first time, the efforts of all the Canada-U.S. business groups including those sitting here. We came together in beautiful Columbus, Ohio, my home town and the political battleground of Ohio. It's also the home state of LeBron James. We came together for the first-ever U.S.-Canada summit, from which the parties issued the first statement of general principles governing the Canada-U.S. relationship, the Columbus Statement. We have been meeting on a regular basis ever since.
In the coming days, we will launch a NAFTA renovation initiative that will serve as a clearing house of information and intelligence on NAFTA. We will be having a monthly web-based town hall in which the U.S. administration and Congress have agreed to participate. We would like to invite members of this committee, and representatives throughout the Government of Canada, to participate as well.
Last, but not least, prior to the launch of the formal negotiations in the fall, we will be holding a cross-continent advocacy blitz regarding NAFTA. U.S. and Canadian companies will be going throughout the United States and meeting in key congressional districts to produce common communications and messaging. We believe that if all politics is local and all trade is personal, the next 6 to 12 months will require the largest on-the-ground advocacy campaign in local districts that we have seen in several decades.
My overarching theme today is that we cannot let this once-in-a-generation chance to modernize Canada-U.S. and North American relations pass without taking significant steps. I am mindful of the political realities on the ground in the United States. I live and work in the U.S. Midwest. Where I grew up in beautiful Youngstown, Ohio, two things were true. First, although I had heard there was such a thing as a Republican, I had never met one. Second, when I was working in a steel mill, NAFTA wasn't a four-letter word, though it was usually preceded or followed by one. The truth is that NAFTA is nearly a fatally damaged brand. Attempting to tweak the status quo will not work. Voters in places like Ohio and Michigan in the mid-term elections will run to the extremes of either party, creating more political and business uncertainty.
Additionally, I've been engaged in Canada-U.S. relations on the ground for nearly two decades in the U.S. government, the Canadian government, and the private sector. I can tell you that I don't expect we will see another opportunity like this in our lifetime. In the U.S., we have shiny-ball syndrome, so when the attention is on an issue it's time to act.
Last, but not least, we can't assume that the status quo will continue. The U.S. is doing much more on trade than with NAFTA alone, including something called particular market-scenario situations, where the U.S. is looking at China and its proxies and going after those with trade enforcement measures. Now is the time to stitch together preferential access.
In that vein, I offer a three-point strategy, all surrounding the letter E.
First, we need to show that the Canada-U.S. trading relationship is the example of what a 21st century trading agreement looks like. We applaud the Prime Minister's successful visit with President Trump, and we've hosted a number of the ministers and Team Canada. We have stretched across political parties and levels of government to come into the United States. Now is the time for the next set of messengers and messages. There are at least five consultation periods going on, on various trade issues. It's time to get the Canadian views and U.S.-Canadian companies to participate in this effort and give real-world examples of these issues.
We also support one of the lessons, which is that we need to embed—the second E—the progress we've made on issues like border management. We learned over the decade of border thickening that if the border doesn't work, NAFTA doesn't matter. Can/Am BTA and a number of folks, including those sitting on this panel, did a lot of work on the border, in admittedly a more hostile and inward-looking United States following 9/11. The best thing Canada can do at this point is to pass pre-clearance legislation and also embed the regulatory cooperation council. We believe that is the next phase of international trade. To the extent that Canada and the United States can establish that and make it work—and we're probably the only two countries of our size in the world that can make that work—it will give us a competitive advantage vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
With that, I'll yield my time. Thank you.