International Trade Committee on Jan. 30th, 2018

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and to our witnesses for being here today.

I've got three questions.

The first question revolves around the fact that we do have agreements with all four of these countries right now. In your opinion, what is the benefit of a new free trade deal, and where do you see the greatest benefit coming? Do you see an increased amount of trade as a result of a renewed focus?

Talk to us about what would be different versus the deals we have right now. In fairness, I'm probably going to direct them to Ms. Hall Findlay, just because she's probably got more expertise on this question than the other two witnesses.

Do you have any thoughts, Ms. Findlay, on the benefit of a free trade deal with the Pacific Alliance versus the deals we have now? Is it a matter of updating progressive standards? What do you see as the main benefit?

[Martha Hall Findlay]

I think a lot of people have that same question, because you're absolutely right that we do have free trade agreements already with each one of the four members. What we don't have is a relationship, one that deals with some of the issues that will be covered in this new arrangement, as things move and change so rapidly, and there are digital economy issues and labour mobility issues. Those are things that aren't necessarily covered in those agreements already that can and should be.

So there's a broadening of the opportunity, but there's also the value in having an agreement with the Pacific Alliance as a bloc. The Pacific Alliance created itself to become a bloc. The irony is that North America really ought to be more of a trading bloc in terms of the rest of the world, and obviously that's a challenge, but to have an effective trading bloc, you need to have internal regulations, and internal harmonization, for example.

Frankly, even under NAFTA, North America was unable to do that as well as we might perhaps have done, and we can always hope, but that is something the Pacific Alliance has done. So not only do we have the agreements with each one but also we have the opportunity to take advantage of the harmonization that they have been building among themselves. Add to that the fact that they have increased relationships with many of the Asian countries. Through APEC, through the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, both Peru and Chile have agreements themselves with China, there is an opportunity for Canada to use that conduit, if you will, to enhance our trading and other relationships with other countries.

I'd just add that if the other members that were invited to become associate members—Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore— joined, that would add to our engagement with those countries as well, which is an added benefit.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Sure. I'm hearing you say harmonization, regulation, that kind of stuff, labour mobility possibly, and things like that.

[Martha Hall Findlay]

Yes.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

What about infrastructure in our country? We could spend a whole meeting on just that. What more do we need to do in terms of infrastructure around trade and certainly around the west, ports, and all these kinds of things? I want you to answer in 60 seconds, but as I said, it's probably a discussion for a whole bunch of meetings.

[Martha Hall Findlay]

My 60-second answer would be that you need not just a meeting but actually a whole study on trade infrastructure. We keep talking about how important trade is but we actually need to get stuff to market. I'd love to hear my colleague from Cavendish talk a little bit about infrastructure, for example. From the west, it's great. You're expanding in Lethbridge, but we need to get stuff to market. We need infrastructure, so I recommend a much bigger study, frankly.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Sure. Maybe that's a good suggestion for future studies.

Mr. Richard, do you have any comments quickly on infrastructure, from your company's perspective?

[Daniel Richard]

I didn't really come prepared to answer that, but I can certainly prepare a brief for the committee. For us, it's all about logistics. The faster we can reach those ports, the better, and so anything that will support that, obviously would be exactly the advantage that we feel we don't have against our American competitors. We have to cross the Rockies to reach the ocean, and right now it's not.... Everything can be improved. That's for sure.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Perfect.

I have one last question. In a recent National Post article, Carlo Dade from your foundation raised the question of who deserved credit for progressive aspects of the TPP. He asked whether, if all the government did was to get cultural exemptions strengthened through a tweak or two, that meant the Harper government really negotiated a progressive agreement.

With the exception of changing the name, to your knowledge at this point in time, did anything progressive happen with TPP in terms of labour and environment and some of these things?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Could you give us a quick answer?

[Martha Hall Findlay]

First, I think it's great that both the prior government and the current government wanted to sign the TPP, so, one, that was good. I don't think we achieved as much in terms of what was written as I think perhaps the current government had hoped. There is a concern that it may backfire. We damaged our respect internationally for sure. We continue to do so, frankly, by appearing to be lecturing others, and I think we have to be very careful about that.

Kudos to the negotiators for actually getting something signed. I don't think we accomplished as much certainly in that regard, but those of us who are really concerned about it would prefer, frankly, if we didn't focus so much on that and would focus more on, as I said before, getting the deals and then leading by example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you. I'm not trying to be hard on the panellists, but I remind my colleagues not to ask a question with only 10 seconds remaining in your time.

Go ahead, Mr. Dhaliwal, for the Liberals.

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

Welcome, Mr. Chair, and committee members.

Carrying on with what Mr. Allison asked, my question is this: when we look at Canada, it's the small businesses that are the backbone of many communities. Particularly in the community that I come from, small businesses are the key. To what extent will this agreement give small businesses the opportunity to trade better than what they're doing now?

[Daniel Richard]

Usually what small businesses are missing is a lot of the internal strength to be able to process and wade through all of the regulations. To the extent that you have a clear, defined set of rules for trading with a country or a pact, that certainly makes it easier.

The government can support small businesses by educating businesses as to what opportunities there are. We find that a lot of small businesses don't realize the opportunities in foreign markets. This could be a great opportunity for many of them to understand how they can access these foreign markets.

[Martha Hall Findlay]

There are things we can do domestically. Whether it's SMEs or encouraging women-owned businesses, for example, rather than saying you should do this, there's an awful lot we can do here at home in domestic policies.

The United States is very good at including exemptions in some of its trade agreements to allow them to provide extra support, extra government procurement requirements, for example, to women-owned businesses or minority-owned businesses.

We like to think that we do things really well here. We can still do things a lot better. In negotiating agreements like this, there's a tremendous opportunity for us to look domestically. How can we help and encourage some of our SMEs and women owned-businesses? How can we effect changes here and use exemptions in trade agreements so that we can encourage Canadian small business and the like?

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

Can you give me some tangible examples that you would like to see improved domestically, Martha, particularly when it comes to women in business?

[Martha Hall Findlay]

I look to the example that the United States has given. When negotiating trade agreements, one of the issues is government procurement. It's common to say that we want to have government procurement opened up so that we will have open and clear access.

Obviously when the United States does something like Buy American, we get upset about that because it flies in the face, frankly, of open access. However, in the United States they have successfully maintained exemptions for minority-owned businesses or small and medium enterprises. They have specific programs that encourage government procurement, extra opportunities, if you will, for government procurement contracts for some of the sectors they want to encourage. There's no reason why we can't do the same here. It should be something we keep in mind as we negotiate trade agreements with other countries.

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

Mr. Neve, first of all, thank you for the great work that your organization does across the globe.

You mentioned that there are still human rights violations across these poor nations. We have a free trade agreement with Colombia and we signed a parallel agreement with it when it comes to the environment, as well as on child labour and human rights. In your opinion, by signing that agreement did the situation improve or is it still the same?

[Alex Neve]

Thank you for the question, because that is very much on our minds.

The human rights provisions in the free trade agreement we have with Colombia are unique. It's the only trade deal Canada has with those provisions included. It was an opportunity, but sadly in our view, at the end of the day, it was a missed opportunity to achieve what I put in front of you today as a recommendation: this idea of having an independent, comprehensive, human rights impact assessment.

It's neither independent, nor comprehensive. It's not independent, in that it is carried out by government officials on both sides of the deal, by Canadian and Colombian officials. What is truly needed for any impact assessment in the human rights realm, environmental realm, and gender realm is for it to be truly done on an independent basis.

The agreement with Colombia is also not comprehensive. The review that's part of the Canada-Colombia agreement is very narrowly focused on identifying any specific tariff reductions that are linked to that deal, and then drawing a direct line from those tariff reductions to a human rights violation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, sir.

[Alex Neve]

That's not the nature of the concern.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We're going to the NDP now. Ms. Ramsey, you have the floor.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our presenters today.

I think we're at a point where modern trade agreements have become about so much more than just trade. Therefore, to say that we could somehow extract them at this point would, I think, be very difficult, because the stories Mr. Neve brought us today—horrific stories of human rights conditions that most Canadians would be shocked to learn about—are happening in the countries that we're considering as trading partners.

We can't continue to trade with no regard for its impact on people. That means on people here in Canada, but also on people in the countries we're trading with. We need to ensure that we have robust human rights provisions that are enforceable, that allow people who are working on the ground in these countries on behalf of Canada to have mechanisms to challenge this behaviour, particular when it's a Canadian company that's participating in the behaviour. We could certainly look to what's happening in Mexico in the extraction sector for examples of that. Of course, an ombudsperson has been announced, which we're supportive of, but that needs some fleshing out.

I don't believe that Canada should promote lower standards in accepting this, because it also hurts Canadian workers. When we accept lower standards in other countries, it has a direct impact on workers here in Canada, because we start to compete on very uneven playing fields, if you will.

We had the Global Affairs officials here on December 11, and I did ask them about the human rights tools they were using in the Canada-Pacific Alliance agreement. We couldn't get a direct commitment from them. I specifically mentioned Guiding principles on human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements, which I'm sure you know well—it's been published by the UN. You've mentioned another tool that you're bringing us today.

What tools do you feel the government should be using, and what training do our trade negotiators potentially require to understand the impact and use of these tools?

[Alex Neve]

We too feel that the UN principles that have been developed over several years now by a range of UN human rights experts.... These experts aren't necessarily focused on trade—because it's come up through the UN human rights system, not through trade bodies—but have had opportunities to really study the impacts on human rights of what's in, or sometimes what's not in, trade deals, including the right to health or equality rights of women, or a whole range of other human rights concerns. That is what we have repeatedly recommended the government use as the framework to develop a robust human rights impact assessment process going forward.

We would be a bit of a world leader here. We wouldn't be the only government that's out there. The European Union is doing more and more around the human rights impact of their trade deals—but we certainly would be leading. I think that's where we often hope and expect to see Canada when it comes to global human rights issues, that we're not waiting for the pack to get ahead of us and then catching up, but that we want to be creating best practice and developing new models.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

You spoke specifically about one of the Pacific Alliance countries, one that we have a trade agreement with, namely Colombia. My colleague asked about the human rights provision that's in that agreement.

Can you speak more specifically to what is lacking in it and what has created an environment where the human rights violations continue even though we have some sort of mechanism? How do you see that being improved?

You mentioned, of course, the tools. How do you see that language being built upon going forward so that we don't have these provisions and agreements that are unenforceable and largely just aspirational?