International Trade Committee on April 26th, 2021

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Everything sort of went blank there. I don't know what happened. I didn't have an Internet issue, it seemed.

My question for the minister was that there are a total of nine indicators, so for the other six, I'm wondering if the status of those could be tabled with this committee.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I'm always happy to be transparent with the committee and will have my officials provide that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to Mr. Sarai, please, for six minutes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister. It's always good to have you here.

Can you please give us an overview of how Canada is maintaining a rules-based international trade and investment opportunity and the role that ISDS plays in balancing foreign investor protection with the ability to regulate the public interest?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

ISDS, as the honourable member rightly points out, does offer protection for Canadian companies operating abroad where Canada has secured those provisions in those free trade agreements. It certainly allows our Canadian investors to confidently access those international markets, while at the same time we carefully balance foreign investor protections to a country's right to regulate in the public interest. This balance is what we seek to do.

Canada is a trading country, and we are very proud that Canada is the only G7 country with a free trade agreement with every other G7 country. Ensuring that there are provisions in place to enable Canadian exporters and companies to grow, and to grow in the international market, is really important, and having that careful balance of ISDS provisions for companies to invest confidently while at the same time ensuring that a country continues to retain the right to regulate in the public interest is what we aim to do.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

President Biden's first bilateral meeting was with Canada, which is definitely a good indicator. The road map for a renewed U.S.-Canada partnership announced after that first meeting established a blueprint for an ambitious and whole-of-government effort against the COVID-19 pandemic. This road map aims to support our countries' mutual prosperity.

Could the minister please tell us more about the road map for a renewed Canada-U.S. partnership and what it means for Canadians?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I think for Canadian workers and Canadian businesses, given how integrated our supply chains are and how important a trading partner the U.S. is, the Canadian-U.S. road map is really important.

It sets the path forward for how our two countries will collaborate. To answer your question, it is to create more jobs and prosperity for Canadian businesses and for our workers and to do so in a way that also allows both of our countries to make progress on the environment. To grow back better or build back better, economic growth must include green growth.

It was very exciting to have the Prime Minister announce just last week, together with the President of the United States, our ambitious targets to fight climate change. As well, as you've seen in the budget, also tabled last week, there are significant investments help get us on this road to economic recovery so that our businesses and our workers can come roaring back when we finish this fight against COVID-19.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

As members of Parliament, we hear a lot of complaints about the bureaucracy in all different departments, but there's one area that I actually have had nothing but praise for in the last five or six years. That is the trade commissioner service.

I've noticed that it's very important that we take advantage of Canada's trade agreements, especially to scale up and to export to new markets.

Can the minister explain how the trade commissioner service assists our forest-sector businesses in their efforts to export to new markets?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Yes, absolutely.

The forestry sector is so important to the Canadian economy. I'm so proud of the work that the Canada trade commissioner service does on behalf of all of our businesses, particularly for this sector.

The trade commissioner service has facilitated a range of business-to-business opportunities for members of the sector, particularly to help them diversity and look beyond the markets they have been in. This also applies to the small and medium-sized businesses that operate in the sector. It is facilitating those market opportunities and enabling those very companies that are looking to explore additional markets and helping them with CanExport funding so that they can indeed take advantage of some of the opportunities by attending trade shows. Frankly, during this pandemic, to do so virtually is something that our trade commissioner service continues to do. I always call them Canada's best business development and sales team all around the world.

Their job is to help our Canadian businesses access those markets, yield the subsequent contracts or businesses, and navigate through some of the issues that might exist in international markets. Ultimately the goal is to help our Canadian businesses grow and diversify into markets where, when they grow, they can create jobs, and they're great jobs for Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Sarai.

We'll move along to Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

You have six minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Madam Minister. Thank you for being here today.

You said that trade is a priority because our companies must be able to keep their market. Apart from the increased funding for Global Affairs Canada in the budget, there's very little content or substance. Why isn't there any support for exporters that want to diversify their market, for example? There isn't anything on that.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Honourable member, I would respectfully disagree.

This budget is going to support Export Development Canada to do even more work to help Canadian SMEs export. We continue to pursue opportunities for our trade-focused businesses through our work. Canada has access to some 1.5 billion customers in the international marketplace. We are helping them secure businesses through virtual trade missions. I might add that we have done several throughout this pandemic, including to the European Union, where we saw some 1,100 businesses take part in a summit, and to France just a couple of weeks ago where over 300 businesses...and there many businesses are women-owned, youth-owned, indigenous and racialized.

Helping them get access to this market and continuing to support them on this road to recovery is absolutely a priority of this government and we will continue to do this work.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I asked you why there wasn't anything and you told me that we disagreed because there was something. So be it!

We disagree on that, but I want to focus on market diversification for our companies. You said that there's help. I'm asking you how and in what way.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Let me point to one, honourable member. We're making a $4 billion investment to help our Canadian companies become more digital. This includes main street businesses, of course, that we've seen access platforms through this pandemic, accessing e-commerce for them and getting them into not only domestic markets to buy local, but also the opportunity to have them bring customers to their businesses.

It's a whole range of businesses, whether it's manufacturing or through service sectors, a $4 billion investment helping our businesses become competitive and productive and, through the increasingly digital marketplace that is the global marketplace, setting up our Canadian businesses and investing in them to make sure they have all of the tools available to them to access those markets and to operate competitively and, in doing so, create good Canadian jobs. This is the kind of investment in this budget, and it's $4 billion.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I imagine that, in terms of this support for digitization, you're referring to the money invested in the strategic innovation fund. However, you should know that the criteria make it extremely difficult for SMEs to access the fund. It's easier for a multinational corporation to access it.

However, why don't we go further in terms of the research and development tax credit? Why don't we go further in terms of investment tax credits? It would be much easier.

There's an investment tax credit. It's a step in the right direction, but the impact is unclear. The bigger the credit, the greater the impact. Why don't we go further down that path?

I'm telling you this in a very constructive manner.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I appreciate that very much.

I was talking about the $4 billion investment for digital adoption. That is in addition to the investment in the strategic innovation fund, which, of course, will invest in many companies that are growing and growing to be global. The investments here include another $450 million through venture capital, because we know that enabling enable more investment in our most innovative and growth-oriented companies will help them grow.

There is also an immediate $1.5 million in expenditures that businesses can expense starting right away, and it will be there for three years because this budget is about finishing the fight against COVID-19. It is setting up Canadian businesses to have the tools they need, including investing in themselves but with a really good incentive to be able to expense up to $1.5 million over the next three years. It's also to create a continued investment environment through venture capital that will invest in some of those most promising companies that are looking for venture capital, but also making changes to the small business financing program so that access to capital of up to half a million dollars is available to them, but in a wider range of categories like working capital, equipment including soft equipment that knowledge-based companies will....

I would venture to say this is the most small business friendly budget in Canadian history. These are investments for our entrepreneurs and for our Canadian businesses that operate domestically, and in doing so grow into those global Canadian companies that will create good jobs anchored in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll move on to Mr. Blaikie for six minutes, please.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Minister, for being here today.

One of the things that struck me about the departmental plan for 2021-22 was the business-as-usual approach within that plan, in that the emphasis continues to be pretty much uniquely on trade liberalization and a laissez-faire approach to globalized trade in a time when....

At this committee we've heard.... And I don't think it's some sort of retrograde protectionism to talk about regional supply chains, whether these are understood as North American or as some kind of region composed of some of our longest-standing western allies for essential things, whether it's vaccines or personal protective equipment or other types of things that we've come to know in the course of this pandemic that are, first of all, really crucial either to public health or to our economy.

Unfortunately, in times of crisis, our trading partners aren't necessarily going to continue offering that free flow of goods as they put their emphasis on their own population. That basic fact of the pandemic, which can be responded to in a number of ways, doesn't really get addressed in the departmental plan, which I found kind of shocking, frankly.

In your opinion what are some of the lessons you've learned for Canada's trade policy in the pandemic? From reading your departmental plan, it seems that there are no lessons; there's just the attitude of, “Let's keep doing what we were doing before the pandemic”. We might offer some targeted financial support here and there to try to help people get through, but ultimately where we're going is maintaining the same uncoordinated emphasis on trade liberalization from before the pandemic.

If I'm mistaken in that, this is you opportunity to correct the record. I'd be interested to know how the government sees Canada's trade agenda changing in the next five to 10 years as a result of the pandemic, because the departmental plan sounds like, with the exception of the references to targeted supports for COVID, which tend to be spending, it could have been published in the years preceding the pandemic.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you for that important question. This government's approach to free trade negotiations has been, at its very core, not only to provide market access, of course, but also to ensure that in doing so we are negotiating agreements that have enforceable and progressive elements. That includes labour and the environment, and trade and the work we are doing while growing into international markets. We are doing so in an inclusive way that ensures that everyone can benefit from trading: women, indigenous people, young people, small and medium-sized businesses and micro-businesses. Inherently many of them are those very entrepreneurs whose businesses are under-represented and need to get access to growth, and Canada's trade team is supporting them.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Minister, maybe I could narrow the question a little.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Do I have another 30 seconds to finish my response?

In terms of COVID, to answer your question, we have been working consistently with our multilateral trading partners through the WTO, for example, where we have been advocating not only for continued openness of critical supply chains, but also working on initiatives like trade and health to ensure that the multilateral trading system really will work at its core for people. At times like this during the pandemic it is not a theoretical exercise.

It is what we are doing and have been doing throughout this pandemic, and while it may be reflected in the departmental plan as continuing to work on the multilateral trading system through the leadership of the Ottawa Group, I would also point the member to the consistent communication of the work we have been doing with our partners to ensure that trade really will benefit a broader number of people, including small and medium-sized businesses, women and indigenous people.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Sure. The issue I'm trying to get at, though, is that I think part of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 35 seconds, Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

—the conversation now is to say that trade agreements are intended to commodify everything. For instance, my father made efforts in the late nineties and early 2000s to try to make the point that water shouldn't be treated as a simple commodity under trade agreements. The NDP has argued in the past for certain things being more important than to be treated as a simple commodity on the market.

The language of the departmental plan, in the time of a pandemic, when we have seen that certain kinds of things are more important than just a commodity on the market, doesn't make any attempt to try to differentiate or single out those products and talk about a different kind of trade strategy for those particular kinds of goods, when we have a lot of experts and a lot of trading partners who are talking in those ways.

It's a very strong ideological position for Canada to adopt, to say we're not going to entertain those kinds of talks, but are just going to continue on as we did before the pandemic.

That's the issue I'm trying to get at.

Is there a list of particular goods or services that the government now thinks maybe shouldn't just be treated under general free trade agreements, but that we need more particular kinds of agreements or understandings or strategies for?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, Mr. Blaikie, but you're way over your time.