International Trade Committee on May 9th, 2017

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

I'm so happy to be able to ask you about the bridge. This is the elephant in the room down in Windsor-Essex. It's so incredibly important to our region. I attended the Great Lakes Economic Forum a couple of weeks ago. Everyone was talking about the bridge and what will happen with the new bridge project, but there are already 10,000 trucks going across the Ambassador Bridge every day. It's the largest trade point in North America, really.

My question is about that border. If anything happens to hinder the efficiency or the security of goods crossing there, can you speak to us about the impact it would have on jobs here in Canada?

[Caroline Hughes]

That's exactly the problem. We rely on the efficiency of the border. Again, our vehicles cross the border seven times from start to finish, and we're competing with the imported vehicles that are coming in on ships across one border. You can fit a lot more vehicles on one container versus the trucks that we use to carry our vehicles, so it exponentially becomes a disincentive to investing in Canada or a disincentive to producing in the NAFTA region.

[Mathew Wilson]

Here's a stat that I find interesting. When the Ambassador Bridge was first built Canada-U.S. trade was almost non-existent. Canada's total exports at the time the Ambassador Bridge was built were about equivalent to one week's worth of auto trade today.

If you put that in perspective we’re still shipping over that bridge, which was meant for global trade at the time, and what we ship today in a week just in one sector is the equivalent of what was shipped in a year then. At the Ambassador Bridge, two sectors make up about 95% of it, agriculture and automotive, so the infrastructure in Canada—and this goes back to RCC and beyond the border and beyond that—is woefully inadequate to deal with it. And we're not just talking about the Ambassador Bridge, which you're familiar with obviously, just one corridor.

I cross a lot, for example, personally going down through the Niagara way. The Peace Bridge has three lanes. It's backed up all the time, never mind a long weekend when everyone else is going. The trucks are backed up with them. The Blue Water is the only bridge we've really seen an expansion on at least in the Great Lakes area and recently. We need more trade infrastructure.

To the world too, we have very limited access whether it's east or west. Whether it's trucks and cars or whether it's even energy supply, we can't get our stuff to the world. We've really lacked in our investment in trade infrastructure for decades. This isn't a recent thing. This is a decades-old problem.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Have you already seen an impact, because I can tell you that my office receives phone calls weekly from businesses, from people who work across the border who live in my region? There has already been a change at the border. There is a lot of uncertainty about people being able to cross, about goods being able to cross, things being turned back or held up. Are you experiencing any of that just from what has happened?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

It's going to have to be a very quick answer.

[Caroline Hughes]

Yes, we have seen a thickening of the border both ways in terms of more frequent requests for letters and inconsistencies in terms of what we're being asked for, especially the people movement across the border.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you.

We're going to move over to the Liberals. They have the last slot here today.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm the last province going that way. I'm from beautiful British Columbia. In February 2017 a CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that withdrawing from NAFTA would be devastating for workers, businesses, and the economies of our countries. He also said that the jobs of 14 million Americans depend on the agreement as well.

How would the U.S. withdrawing from NAFTA affect the Canadian provinces and the U.S. states in the Pacific northwest? Also, what actions should the Government of Canada take to ensure the efficient implementation of the agreement?

[Matt Morrison]

That's one of the objectives of our survey and our modernization task force, to really determine what are the on-the-ground impacts of the current NAFTA.

We don't know what might be proposed so it's hard to know how that would change, but we certainly want to get as much data as we can and make sure the data gets to the right place.

I'm not totally sure about the intent of your question.

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

The intent is we just want to see...particularly because I come from British Columbia and I'm concerned about the states in the Pacific northwest. If we bring in the modernization or change NAFTA, get out of NAFTA, do you agree with that and what should we as a government do to make sure that we are able to achieve the best interests of the Pacific region?

[Matt Morrison]

I think there are already great relationships between B.C. and Washington, and this will continue. I think it's great that Bill Gates is very keenly interested in the innovation corridor between B.C. and Washington state. He has a great deal of interest personally in this relationship. The innovation corridor is really a big part, with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook all opening offices in Vancouver but connecting to Seattle. That's the future.

We have to make sure that whatever agreement we have allows for the free mobility of those workers to attend meetings etc., because that's a big problem we face daily, for Canadian workers to be able to come down to Redmond, Washington, and meet with the corporate headquarters and so on. The professional list in NAFTA is so old, there was no Internet when it was made. We have to update that list. That's a huge area that I see needs to be in the modernized agreement.

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

Following up on Ms. Ramsey's conversation that we had on the bottleneck, I come from British Columbia myself. There is also a corridor there as well, the Pacific border upgrade. As far as I remember, it was the last Liberal government that committed money and the Conservatives followed that through. We committed the money. Anyway, it doesn't matter, that carried on. And now we've also committed $2 billion over the next 10 years.

I would like to hear your comments on how that will help. Is it enough, or do you need to see more done?

Anyone can answer.

[Mathew Wilson]

I'll start. I don't want to get into a political fight over who committed money. I think there's been—

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

The Canadian taxpayer.

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

That's a good one.

[Mathew Wilson]

The Canadian taxpayer, that's a good one.

I don't know what the right number is, $2 billion, $5 billion, $10 billion, I don't know. My comment was more to the fact that we let this stuff drift for decades and we never paid attention to it.

Certainly in the auto sector, they were screaming for new crossings in southern Ontario. I know in tourism, in places in the east and west, they were screaming for it for years and nothing was done. It's something that was unfortunate that happened. I do think that over the last decade or 15 years there has been a renewed intention on it, certainly in the Windsor corridor, in southern Ontario, now out west and the Pacific northwest of the U.S. There has been more investment that has gone in.

Let's wait and see when those investments actually come into play, like the Ambassador Bridge replacement or doubling with the new Gordie Howe bridge, for example. We don't know what the impact of that is really going to be until it's actually operational. I can tell you, even the extension of the 401 has made a huge improvement going into Windsor. It's beautiful and very efficient. It has helped a lot, I know, moving trucks through.

Let's see what the infrastructure does, but let's not fall asleep at the switch again for a couple of generations. Let's make sure we stay on top of it. I guess that's the big message.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, and that wraps up your time.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

I think all MPs had a chance to have dialogue and questions, really good questions here this afternoon and, of course, really good presentations from the witnesses. We really appreciate you coming.

I would also like to note, as you know, that our committee is switching gears quite a bit to different studies. A lot of witnesses who are here today have repeatedly come back and helped us out with our studies, so we really appreciate you coming back and helping us again. As you say, this whole process is going to take at least a year, probably, so our study will go right into the fall. We will probably give you some updates, or the final draft of our study.

Again, thank you very much for coming. We hope to see you again.

The meeting is adjourned.