International Trade Committee on Feb. 1st, 2018

Evidence of meeting #96 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 fta.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

A Potential Agreement Between Canada and the Pacific Alliance: Consulting Canadians

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Andrew Dixon Senior Vice President, Trade and Business Development, Saint John Port Authority

Hassan Yussuff President, Canadian Labour Congress

Angella MacEwen Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress

Adriana Vega Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

René Roy Vice-Chair, Canadian Pork Council

Martin Lavoie President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Pork International

Gary Stordy Director, Public and Corporate Affairs, Canadian Pork Council

10:40 a.m.

Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Adriana Vega

Absolutely. It can't hurt. In these dynamics, it's almost a bit of a tension horizontally and vertically. If you look at CETA, for example, we know for sure that the U.S. business community was observing very closely, because they got pretty close on their TTIP agreement. Now CPTPP, of course, is one more where the American business community is concerned. They're saying, “Well, there goes our leading and our leadership role and first-mover advantage.”

Absolutely, having that added advantage on our side helps.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK

Would it be fair to say, though, that if we didn't have that advantage, we would have a draining of Canadian businesses to south of the border? If we didn't have market access and those types of advantages over the U.S., what would we have the advantage on? How would we compete?

10:40 a.m.

Director, International Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Adriana Vega

I would agree with you to some degree, but I can tell you the biggest concern that foreign investors have when we talk to them is NAFTA. You can't detach our relationship with the U.S. from how we operate in the world. You can't suddenly just detach how our supply chains work north and south of the border. Yes, I agree with you. It's definitely something that we can perhaps set aside on the list of great things that we can compete with, but at the same time, we have to be very mindful that our relationship with the United States is always going to be there and that NAFTA is a huge piece of that.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hoback, and thank you to the witnesses for coming today. It's amazing how well we're doing as a country with some of the industries. We're big players on the world scene. Keep up the good work. We'll have a report in the upcoming months, and you'll be able to get a copy of it.

That wraps it up this morning. We're on time here, and there's another committee that wants to come in.

The next meeting is Tuesday, the same time. We're going to be very busy Tuesday. We'll have two panels, so MPs, try to be on time, and I'll get it going.

Everybody have a good weekend. Thank you.