Evidence of meeting #95 for International Trade in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agreements.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Good morning, everyone. Welcome back in this new year. I hope everybody had a good session in their riding. I hope everybody will love this early morning meeting of ours, especially anybody on our committee who's a farm boy or a farmer.
Mr. Hoback, it's good to see you back.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
We are classified as the most active, fun-loving committee on the Hill, so we're going to keep it that way.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Just before I start, I would like to inform the committee that we've submitted our report on NAFTA. We got it in under the wire before Christmas, and everything's out there.
We're going to have some future committee business. In the second hour, we'll talk about our Asia trip and whatnot, but our committee agreed to this study on the potential agreement between Canada and the Pacific Alliance, which would include Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru.
We're going to have a few meetings with witnesses to get our heads around it and to see its potential. Today's our first meeting, and I welcome our guests here on the panel today, our witnesses.
We're short one witness, I think, Mr. Robertson. There was a switch of rooms, so we can continue. Then, when Mr. Robertson lands here, we can get him to jump right in.
It's great to see our witnesses here. Many of you have been to our committee before. We have quorum, so we'll get going. Thank you for coming before our committee. It's very important that we get your perspectives before we do anything from this side.
As you may well know, we try to keep the presentations to under five minutes each, so we can have lots of room for dialogue with the MPs.
Without further ado, I think we'll start with Mr. Alex Neve from Amnesty International.
Go ahead, sir. You have the floor.
Alex Neve Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, committee members. It's a pleasure to be back in front of you.
It is a time of peace in Colombia, which was lauded by the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for bringing decades of devastating civil war to an end. However, serious, widespread human rights violations continue. Last week we published an urgent news release highlighting the forced displacements of over 1,000 civilians over the course of just four days of renewed fighting. We've drawn particular attention to the concern that peace continues to be elusive for indigenous and Afro-descended communities, which have frequently been forced from their mineral and agricultural-rich lands during years of war, and are now facing obstacles and threats as they seek to assert their rights to restitution.
Mexico continues to face a devastating human rights crisis marked by years of enforced disappearances, now numbering an estimated 34,000 people, and extensive torture and threats and attacks against journalists and human rights defenders. Numerous encouraging laws have been passed to strengthen human rights protection, but have consistently fallen short when it comes to implementation. Ildefonso Zamorahas, an indigenous Tlahuica leader, has spoken up about logging in his people's lands in central Mexico for over 25 years. He has been relentlessly threatened and attacked. Ten years ago loggers killed his son Aldo. In 2015 and 2016 he was arrested and jailed for nine months, at which time Amnesty International recognized him to be a prisoner of conscience, targeted simply because he seeks to protect the environment and defends Tlahuica territory.
In Peru, an Amnesty International report issued last September documented callous and deliberate failure by the authorities to protect indigenous communities in the country's Amazonian and Andean regions from toxic contamination of their water supplies arising from metals such as mercury, cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, and lead, all linked to oil drilling and mining in the area. Meanwhile, human rights defenders who stand up against such concerns are regularly threatened, attacked, and subject to harassment through unfounded court cases.
In 2016 and 2017, Amnesty International activists around the world, including in Canada, stood in solidarity with Máxima Acuña, a Peruvian farmer and environmentalist who defied endless pressure from multinational and local mining companies determined to push her off her family's land.
In Chile, activists with the Defence Movement of Earth, Environmental Protection and the Access to Water, MODATIMA, have campaigned to expose illegal extraction of water in water-scarce regions of central Chile. Human rights defender Rodrigo Mundaca Cabrera and other members of MODATIMA are regularly threatened for this important work, including numerous death threats, which have intensified so much over the course of the last year that many MODATIMA activists are now fearful to leave their homes.
Amnesty International is not a trade policy organization. We do not answer the question before you on whether Canada should pursue a free trade agreement with the four countries of the Pacific Alliance with a “yes” or a “no”, but we are a human rights organization.
As these opening examples illustrate, there are serious human rights concerns in each of the four countries of the Pacific Alliance, and those violations very often occur in contexts related to economic and commercial activity associated with the business opportunities that stand to grow and expand with freer trade. There is danger for human rights defenders speaking out about the impact of business operations on the environment, and peril for indigenous leaders seeking to defend their land in the face of powerful economic interests. Labour leaders are threatened and killed. Contamination and pollution from mining and other activity are posing serious, even lethal, health risks, and there are acts of violence by company or government security forces when disputes and protests arise about a corporation's operations. That is why trade agreements and trade policy attracts Amnesty International's attention.
Ideally we encourage governments to pursue trade, business, and investment in ways that will advance human rights protection at home and abroad, but at an absolute minimum we insist that governments take measures and adopt safeguards that ensure that trade policy and business activity do not cause or contribute to human rights violations.
Amnesty International welcomes the government's efforts to advance a progressive trade agenda generally described as including strength and provisions in trade deals with respect to environmental protection, labour rights, gender equality, and the rights of indigenous peoples, all of which is important and very welcome. But, the key question remains, how do we ensure that these and other serious human rights concerns will be adequately safeguarded as trade deals are negotiated and implemented—in other words, that there will be more than just words on paper?
Amnesty International has therefore repeatedly called on the Canadian government, over many years now, to commit to carrying out independent expert, transparent, and comprehensive human rights impact assessments of all bilateral and multilateral trade deals, both before a deal is finalized and at regular intervals thereafter, with any potential harms identified by such assessments addressed to ensure compliance with international human rights obligations. Our recommendation with respect to any potential deal with the Pacific Alliance is that it be subject to robust human rights impact assessments.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you, sir.
We're going to go to the Canada West Foundation with Ms. Hall Findlay.
Welcome. You're no stranger to this building.
Martha Hall Findlay President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada West Foundation
Thank you for inviting me. It's fun to be on this side of the table this time.
Liberal
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada West Foundation
Thank you.
Before going into my own comments, I want to say that I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague Alex's concerns about human rights, labour rights, gender rights, indigenous rights, and the concerns that are raised about things that happen in many parts of the world. I think we all share those concerns, but I'm here today to wholeheartedly support our engagement with the Pacific Alliance. It really comes from a different approach to how one can deal with the sentiments and concerns raised about some of the challenges that people in different parts of the world—and frankly, in Canada—still have to deal with.
We at the Canada West Foundation certainly—and it's worth repeating—wholeheartedly support Canada's signing of the open trade agreement with the Pacific Alliance. We've supported the government's efforts in response to the invitation to become an associate member. This is a tremendous opportunity for us. Just as a reminder, only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore have in fact been invited to become associate members. This is not only a terrific opportunity for us to expand economically, but also socially and with other forms of engagement with the countries involved in the Pacific Alliance.
Importantly, this would be an opportunity to expand our engagement in Asia. At first blush that might not seem obvious, but the Pacific Alliance was partly formed because the Latin American countries involved in APEC felt as though their influence was maybe not as strong as it might have been. Therefore, the formation of a bloc, the Pacific Alliance, was an opportunity to improve that influence. Canada's involvement in it would allow us to participate in that increased engagement with Asia. Peru and Chile already, for example, have trade agreements with China. Those opportunities to learn from their experiences can only help us in our continued negotiations with China and, indeed, with other countries in Asia.
In sharing the concern about human rights and various other issues, this is the challenge that we always face whenever we're discussing trade agreements, even with the sentiment behind the so-called progressive trade agenda. We pride ourselves in this country on being pretty progressive. We're not perfect by any means. We're not perfect on gender equality. We're not perfect on indigenous rights. We're not perfect on labour rights. We're not perfect on environmental concerns.
To some extent it is challenging. Other countries look at Canada coming onto the world stage and sometimes, frankly, appearing to lecture them on how they should be behaving and how they should be treating different sectors in their domestic economies and societies. The fact that we do as well as we do is indeed something to be very proud of, but trade agreements really need to focus on trade. On the concern for human rights and having a progressive agenda, Canada can do far more by leading by example, as opposed to lecturing others on what they need to do. We are in a far better position to lead by example the more we engage economically and the more we engage socially.
Fundamentally, even though my colleague, Mr. Neve, and I can have similar concerns, we come at the whole concept of trade very, very differently. We are very much of the view that the more we engage in trade, the more we engage economically, and the more we engage socially, the more we have an opportunity to expose some of the things that happen, the greater the opportunity to be more engaged in helping change those things, as I've said, by leading by example.
My third and final point—I won't speak for long, as I look forward to the questions—is that we already trade. Whenever we talk about trade agreements, and obviously this is about the Pacific Alliance today, but this comment holds true for whenever we engage in trade negotiations, the history of Canada is one of trade. It started with wood and fur. We trade a lot. Canada actually trades more, relatively speaking, than almost any other country in the world. Trade agreements don't all of a sudden create trade. We already trade with China a lot. We already trade a lot with the Pacific Alliance countries. Indeed, we already have trade agreements with all four of the Pacific Alliance countries.
The point I want to make is that whenever we engage in a trade negotiation, there are people who say, “We don't like this about that country, we don't like what they do internally, we think they should do this or that”, or “we need to be able to be seen to be encouraging better behaviour and more progressive behaviour”. These are good sentiments, but a trade agreement doesn't start or stop trade.
Sure, from an economic perspective, we encourage the greater engagement. From an economic perspective and a social perspective, we encourage trade agreements because they can open trade more fully, but the point I want to make is that—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada West Foundation
—it is better to have an agreement because it will put rules around the trade that we already have. It doesn't start and stop. A trade agreement allows us to put parameters and rules in place for that relationship, which is better than not having rules at all.
Liberal
Daniel Richard Corporate Counsel and Director of Government Relations, Cavendish Farms
Thank you.
Liberal
Corporate Counsel and Director of Government Relations, Cavendish Farms
That's right.
Corporate Counsel and Director of Government Relations, Cavendish Farms
That's right. We're in Alberta, P.E.I., New Brunswick, and Ontario.
I thank the committee for the invitation to appear this morning. You're right, Cavendish Farms began operations in P.E.I. in 1980. At that time, Cavendish Fries was shipping 25 truckloads of product per week. As of last year, we were shipping 815 truckloads of French fries per week.
Most of North America's quick-service restaurants are our customers, and over half of the retail frozen potato market is Cavendish's. We are also one of the largest private label manufacturers, and most of the retail and restaurant clients use Cavendish. We're the fourth-largest frozen potato processor in North America, and we have four plants in Canada: two in P.E.I., one in Ontario, and one in Alberta. We also have one in North Dakota.
Aside from providing product to the U.S. and Canadian marketplaces, we've exported to over 50 countries in the last three years and produce over 1.46 billion pounds of product per year.
Right now we're building a new plant in Lethbridge, Alberta, that will triple our capacity out of Lethbridge. Obviously, that product has to find a market, which makes us very interested in this conversation today.
Right now our market share in TPP countries ranges from zero to 6.7%, but we see a lot of opportunities in several of these markets. Currently, the duty rates on our import product ranges from zero in the several of the countries, because we do have some trade agreements—and I had some slides but for technical reasons I couldn't provide them today—to 10% in Japan, and about 5% in Australia and New Zealand, I believe.
In the U.S., our duty rates are the same as our competitors'. As I said, we're the fourth-largest potato processor in North America. Two of the big three are based out of the U.S. Currently, our competitors in the American market, while they have the same duty rates, do have a logistical advantage over us, in that they have easier port access because of where they are located. They're closer to the market, so they have fewer days of shipping time, which is an advantage in our world.
Now that the U.S. has opted out of the TPP, we see this as an opportunity to equalize the game, or certainly to give us a leg up in these particular markets.
Of course, duties are only one of the obstacles to trade. There remain some non-duty barriers. Japan, the largest import market for frozen potato products outside of North America, has non-traditional requirements on food quality and safety. They also require their own packaging.
Mexico, which is one of the top three markets for frozen potato products, has passed laws that require unique retail packaging compared to the rest of the world.
Malaysia has cultural sensitivities that require unique SKUs, stock-keeping units.
In Chile and Peru, where we see significant market opportunities, there are non-traditional barriers to trade that include microbiologic and inorganic testing, which are not required in other markets in the industry. Just getting our product registered in both of these markets can take over a year, which means that it's very difficult to respond in a timely manner to market forces there.
In order for Canadian producers to be able to be competitive and to meet the competition around the world, we fully support Canada's ratifying the Trans-Pacific partnership agreement.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Thank you, sir.
That's given all of our panellists their time. Now we're going to have the fun stuff, the inter-connection with the MPs. We're going to start with the Conservatives.
Mr. Allison, you have the floor first. Go ahead, sir.
