Thank you, Mr. Chair, and the members of the committee, for this chance to add a few words to those of my friends, Caroline and Mathew, and my colleagues as well, on behalf of General Motors Canada.
As a quick reminder, GM Canada has world-class assembly plants in St. Catharines, Ingersoll, and Oshawa, Ontario, where we make engines, transmissions, cars, crossovers and, soon, trucks. Our business directly employs about 10,000 people in Canada and we generate many thousands of related jobs in our supply chain, in customer care, and in dealerships coast to coast.
Most recently, we have increased our R and D and our engineering work in Canada for key future automotive technologies to a total of about 1,000 engineering positions who are working in areas like active safety and autonomous vehicle development software, and we're doing that in Oshawa, Markham, Kitchener, Waterloo, Toronto, and Kapuskasing.
NAFTA, of course, is the framework that enables GM and the broader North American automotive industry to be the manufacturing engine of our economy. NAFTA's automotive chapter sets out the trade rules for the deeply integrated and highly efficient auto supply chain between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. That's a unique aspect of our industry that really must be understood and protected in these negotiations.
My advice to the committee, put simply, is that we can and should modernize NAFTA in a way that strengthens our competitiveness as a global trading bloc and at the same time we must take extreme care to “do no harm” to the integrated NAFTA auto supply chain, which is extraordinarily beneficial and important to Canada's economy.
NAFTA enables automotive parts, materials, and finished vehicles to cross our borders duty free and just in time for the benefit of our customers. Famously, auto parts and materials of our tier one and tier two customers may cross borders six or seven times as they are built up into components, ready for final assembly.
At GM Canada we export a little more than 90% of the vehicles that we make, primarily en route to dealers and customers all across the United States, which, of course, is a market 10 times the size of ours. At the same time, we import almost 90% of the vehicles that our dealers sell to Canadians. Our auto trade with the U.S. is balanced, it's duty free, and it's very beneficial to our economy and for consumers.
While our vehicle trade is balanced, Canada imports significantly more auto parts and materials from the United States than we're able to source locally or elsewhere. This trade in auto parts benefits both Canada and the United States. It contributes to Canada's competitiveness, while supporting U.S. manufacturing jobs, especially in the Great Lakes states.
Canada is the number one customer for the U.S. and much of that business is in auto parts, so it's a good thing to remind our U.S. colleagues. Oshawa, for example, receives about 80 trucks a day that go across the border and about 50% or more of our suppliers' individuals parts come from the United States.
In this complex and mutually beneficial trading relationship, there are some things we must take care to maintain and protect and there are some things that we believe can be modernized and improved. Under the category of “do no harm”, we must set out to reduce, not add, red tape. A lot of bureaucracy is still required in tracing auto parts as they move across borders in NAFTA today. We would prefer to see tracing eliminated.
NAFTA's rules of origin for qualified duty-free automotive trade within North America are already the highest of any U.S. agreement. These should not be increased if we are to maintain our global competitive stance. And we cannot just look inward in considering NAFTA. Canada, the U.S., and Mexico together are a competitive bloc in the global auto business. We must enhance, not compromise, that competitiveness.
Under the category of modernization, GM Canada supports the recommendations recently put forward by the American Automotive Policy Council, AAPC, and those include that we should build upon the progress made through the RCC and others to align our vehicle technical standards within NAFTA, while insisting that countries outside NAFTA recognize and accept our technical standards.
North American product is globally competitive, but we must insist that others tear down their non-tariff barriers to our exports. If we want to continue enjoying the economic benefits of our North American auto sector, the global auto trade cannot be a one-way street into our market.
Modernizing also means continuing to improve our border infrastructure as we are doing with the Gordie Howe bridge in Windsor and continuing to streamline our customs procedures for goods and for people.
The AAPC has also called for adding enforceable currency manipulation disciplines that Caroline mentioned, so that countries outside of NAFTA do not take advantage of our market by artificially reducing their currencies.
To sum up, we build things together. In this deeply integrated North American auto sector, GM is at the forefront of Canadian jobs, exports, and innovation. There's a great deal at stake as we open NAFTA negotiations. We should start by ensuring we do no harm to our integrated supply chain, and then we can modernize our auto trade in NAFTA by cutting red tape, aligning on standards, improving the movement of goods and people across borders, and by strengthening our global competitiveness as a global trading bloc.