International Trade Committee on May 18th, 2017

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

I agree. There's no reason that we shouldn't correlate our list with your list and hit them with a double shot: here's what you gain from NAFTA because it's both Canada and Mexico together. Texas comes to mind and California comes to mind. They're both number one for us, and I'm sure they're right up on top of your list as well. We should compare that. If you have that list, please supply it.

[Agustín Barrios Gómez]

Yes, I mean, I keep telling our members of SRE, which is our foreign affairs, and also commerce that I want to see bumper stickers on F-150s saying, “This job is a NAFTA job”.

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

Yes. Coupled with that, we have the mid-terms coming up in the U.S. Again, all politics is local. If we could link arms and say, “Here's the amount of trade coming out of state X and here's what your congressmen and senators need to be talking about”, and if we could drive that through to Washington from that level, I think it would be very important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Ritz.

[Carlo Dade]

We have the list. It's not by state, but by metropolitan area in the U.S. It's Canada-U.S. We have to stop talking about the largest trade partner in terms of U.S. states, because I think that's actually fairly meaningless. The largest trade partner means 1% of a state's GDP, but when you get down to the metropolitan area, that's where it means something.

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

Sure.

[Carlo Dade]

We have the list with Canada, Mexico, and who's the largest for New York, for Cincinnati, for New Orleans, etc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, sir. Those are very good comments. When our committee was in Colorado we met with the mayor of Denver, who is very knowledgeable about the importance of trade between our countries. All levels are important.

We're going to move to the Liberals now.

Mr. Peterson, you have the floor for five minutes. Go ahead, sir.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon.

Mr. Dade, I'll start with you. Please do give my regards to Martha Hall Findlay. Before she was the member of Parliament for Willowdale, she ran in my riding of Newmarket—Aurora in the 2004 election, so I've known her for quite some time. Say hello to her for me when you get the chance, if you don't mind.

I'm going to quote from a research paper that was published by the University of Calgary's school of public policy, which I know you're familiar with. It states:

Closer engagement with Mexico will also help Canada to strengthen its bargaining position with the United States; the two countries can form an effective counterbalance against the United States on matters of joint interest.

That seems to be a consensus with people here, and I want to drill down on that a little bit. What matters of joint interest should there be closer collaboration on between our countries that would improve this bargaining position vis-à-vis the U.S.?

I'll start with Mr. Dade, but some of the other members can give their input as well if they get an opportunity.

[Carlo Dade]

First is the overall importance of the relationship and being able to communicate that to metropolitan areas and districts in the U.S. We are working together, so our consul general in Dallas, for example—and Colin may be able to speak to this as well—is working with the consulate generals of Mexico. Mexico has three consulate generals in Texas. We have one that has to cover Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but it's idiosyncratic with the Mexicans. Some Mexican consulate generals are very strong in the diplomatic presence; others are incredibly weak, because they're focused only on consular activities. So where there is that, we are working together.

In terms of the trade agreement, agriculture, the rules of origin within North America, is the second area. Regarding dairy, the primary concern of the Americans is not supply management. This is Martha Hall Findlay's latest paper on supply management. It will be out in a week, and I'm told to shill it for her. It's actually a damn good piece of work. The Americans' concern is with access to the Mexican dairy market. That's their number one priority. If we're worried about dairy, and the Americans are worried about continued access to Mexico, shouldn't we be talking to the Mexicans?

That's just one example.

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

Exactly. Thank you for that.

Mr. Gómez, Mr. Ortega, Mr. Robertson...?

[Armando Ortega]

I would simply restate that Canada and Mexico should work together to defend the dispute settlement mechanism. That is essential. We can also join forces in terms of sanitary and phytosanitary rules. Certainly, I agree about the rules of origin, because in the end, again, we have to ensure that North America is the most competitive region in the world. I hope the Americans will understand that in the course of negotiations.

[Agustín Barrios Gómez]

To come back to country-of-origin labelling, it's something we can pick up, as well as procurement. Government procurement is something we need to work together with the United States on.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Robertson, did you have anything?

[Colin Robertson]

I would say trade, but I think the bigger issue is the whole rules-based, liberal international system, the architecture, whether we're talking about the World Trade Organization, the United Nations.... This stuff is all now under a bit of siege. Countries like Canada and Mexico have been the beneficiaries. We need to be working together with other like-minded democratic countries to shore up the system.

So yes, NAFTA, the North American economic accord, is the immediate challenge, but I think the bigger challenge we face is that of the operating system under which our two countries have done quite well and thrived, and that we now have to invest in as well, with other like-minded nations.

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

Okay. Thank you.

Just briefly—I think I probably have a half-minute left—Mr. Gómez, if NAFTA doesn't work for whatever reason, and TPP doesn't work, are there any other joint initiatives that Canada and Mexico should undertake?

[Agustín Barrios Gómez]

The very first thing that we need to be very clear on, both our countries, is that NAFTA without the United States will work with Mexico and Canada, period. We need to be very clear. It's in the treaty that if somebody pulls out, that's fine, the other two maintain that same relationship, but we haven't said it. We haven't come out and said it, and that's something we really need to do.

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

Okay. Thank you. I think that's my time. Thank you for your testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Peterson.

We're going to move over to the Conservatives now.

Mr. Van Kesteren, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, all, for a very interesting discussion.

There's one thing that nags at the back of my mind, though. That is the 49%, or whatever you think it is, 50% of people who put Donald Trump into office. We can debate free trade, and I think everybody in this room would agree that it's a marvellous thing and it makes sense, but there are a whole whack of people who have given up on free trade.

Mr. Gómez, I appreciate it. I like that idea about this truck as a NAFTA truck, but I'll tell you, you drive that truck in southern Ohio and that would get the exact opposite reaction that you want.

Here's the thing. I appreciate too, Mr. Dade, what you said about Congress coming around. I see that happening, but I just read an article, I think it was this morning—I was just trying to find it now—and this guy's calling for three million people, with guns, out in the streets if they try to impeach Trump. That's how mad these people are. We cannot ignore the one thing that brought all this about, and that was the demise of midwest America. I suggest that every one of us should just take a road trip. I've done it. Just drive through the midwest United States and see what these people are so mad about.

We have to recognize that we're not talking about Mexico, and Canada and some other small country. We're talking about a country that, when I was first elected, had 26% of the world's GDP. Its armed forces spend more money than the top 13 countries in the world—that includes Russia, and China, and all the others. This is huge. We've talked about some wonderful ideas. We've talked about some ways that the Americans have not been very fair, and how Donald Trump...but I think he's just a phenomenon. It's the force behind him that we have to reckon with. I just wonder if somebody wants to touch on this, say a word on it, that we mend that before we come to the table and suggest we open up renegotiation.

[Carlo Dade]

We are not going to mend that. The hard-core opposition to NAFTA, those people who have given up hope on liberalism, I don't know that we're going to be able to move all of them.

I was in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration. What struck me most, walking around the streets, taking the metro, was how angry the Trump supporters were. You've just won the election. You lost the popular vote and you won. You claimed that the election was going to be rigged, there was no way you could possibly win, and you won, yet you are still angry. You are still mad.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

That's the point. They're getting mad all over again because they had hoped that this was going to change, and that some of those....

We can't argue. We went across Canada and we heard the same argument, not from Trump supporters, but from people who think that free trade is a bad deal. There's a whole host of people, but I'm more worried about the ones in the midwestern United States.

[Carlo Dade]

Here's the issue, though. When you look at Trump supporters, they were also mad about Obamacare, and then they realized, slowly, that people were going to lose health coverage. A lot of people didn't care that they were losing health coverage, they still supported Trump. But some people started reconsidering when they saw the impact, something that was abstract became something concrete. We're not going to get to all of the hard-core opponents of free trade. We're not going to get to the real opponents of NAFTA, but around the edges, people who didn't really think about this or didn't realize the full impact when they voted, those are the folks we can get to when we show up in their individual congressional district, or we can get to plants and show people direct jobs.

You're also seeing this in the United States—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

It's not working yet, because I'm seeing congressmen who are going back to their constituents and are getting booed right out of their—

[Carlo Dade]

I'm seeing congressmen who are talking about issues on the table with NAFTA, and are getting an earful from their constituents, who are saying, “Wait a minute, when we talked about NAFTA you didn't mention that it was going to be my job that was gone, you didn't mention that it was going to be trade”. You also see people who elected Trump, who voted for Trump, who are married to illegal immigrants to the U.S., and didn't realize that their husband or their wife was going to be deported. Now they're suddenly waking up, seeing their spouse being deported, and they're suddenly realizing that what they did in anger might not have been that great an idea.