Evidence of meeting #7 for International Trade in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cusma.
A video is available from Parliament.
Mayor, City of Windsor, and Member, Big City Mayors' Caucus, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
I don't see any issue with respect to blockages. I think the extra capacity with the bridge will certainly mean redundancy in the system, and all the high-tech infrastructure that's being installed will certainly allow goods to cross much more quickly than with the existing infrastructure.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mayor Dilkens, I don't have any questions, but I know you're experimenting with Amazon's Ring doorbell and the Neighbours app. I look forward to seeing how that goes.
To the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, thank you all for your work in helping get this deal done. You said the government has a positive role to play. The government, in association with you and so many other Canadians, has successfully concluded this deal.
You mentioned that you expect your members to scale up and become global players, based on the strength of this agreement. They can use this agreement to increase their manufacturing capabilities and become global players. You also said you'd like to see your members competing with the rest of the world, with the strength of this particular agreement.
Yesterday we had some of your major members here: the association of steel producers and the association of aluminum producers. Their members—the entire aluminum industry and the steel industry—are focused only on the North American market.
It has been 15 years since we had a new smelter constructed here in Canada. For 20 years, steel industry production has been holding at around 15 million or 16 million tonnes. They are not investing to increase the capacity to become a global player, to compete in the rest of the world. They are content with going after this captured market. Is it the right approach?
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
Without commenting on what individual businesses of our members are doing—they're all competitors, and certainly they have their own plans—what we're looking at in the context of CUSMA is the fact that it will do two things, which flow from one another. One, it will bring back certainty to the Canadian market—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
I understand that. My question was specifically this: Do you expect your members to increase their capacity to become global players, to compete with the rest of the world market, based on this trend?
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
Yes, and that's where I was going with this. It is our hope that once this is a done deal, with the certainty that this will return to the market, it will bring investment flows back into Canada. When you have all this uncertainty and an un-negotiated trade agreement for something as fundamental to manufacturing as NAFTA or CUSMA, what happens is that all the investments dollars go to the safest harbour, which in this situation is the United States.
So our hope—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
You know, we had NAFTA for very long, and there was uncertainty for only over two years. Do you think all the investment dollars that went to the U.S. occurred only in that two-year frame? I'm looking at the trade between Canada and the U.S. It has basically remained stagnant. In U.S. dollar terms, I think in 2012 we had around $324 billion. Last year it was $319 billion. It is not increasing.
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
Yes. I think that speaks as well to the increasing uncompetitiveness of the Canadian market for manufacturers to do business in.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
You talk of increasing confidence. We had NAFTA for so long. We now have this.
February 20th, 2020 / 12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
I can understand that there was uncertainty for a couple of years, but why are Canadian exports not increasing?
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
There are many reasons that exports aren't increasing. NAFTA is only a part of it. Certainly, on average, Canadian businesses are small. They are smaller than their international counterparts. What happens when you have so many small businesses is that you don't have the scale and the capacity to be able to export.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
We have CUSMA, the new NAFTA, today. We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We have a free trade agreement with Asia-Pacific countries. With all these free trade agreements, we still can't grow...?
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
Exactly. With the free trade agreement, the analogy I would use is that you can bring the horse to the trough, but—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
What you're saying is that the manufacturing sector is a sunset industry.
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
Manufacturing in Canada represents a huge part of the economy, with 1.7 million jobs. It's not going anywhere, but it could certainly—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
The point is that it is not growing up. That's what I'm trying to say.
Liberal
Director of Policy, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
No, it is struggling because of a number of factors. If we can bring one element of certainty back to business decision-making in Canada by having a free trade agreement like CUSMA signed, because it's so fundamental, that's one step. We have lots to do. Trust me; we could talk to you for hours about all the competitiveness issues.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
No, but we had fundamental things. We had NAFTA for long, long years. For decades we had it. Then we brought in the free trade agreement with the European Union. Now we have a free trade agreement with Asia-Pacific, but look at the steel and aluminum primary producers. They have not invested a dollar to increase their installed capacity. They don't have any plans to do that. They are quite open about it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
I'm sorry, Mr. Arya, there is no opportunity for an answer to that.
Mr. Savard-Tremblay.