Evidence of meeting #113 for International Trade in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ministers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
Yes, Madam Chair, there are two more recommendations, as I understand it. One is going to be about—and I think Mr. Sheehan was trying to interject on this—the copies for the clerk of the public study. Perhaps we can look at that. The last part of that was our ask for this report to the House of Commons. If we can deal with those two, I think we'll be done the meeting today, unless anyone else wants to talk after that.
If we want to talk about the first part, you have Mr. Sheehan on the call, and he can speak to that.
I know Mr. Sidhu had spoken, and I know Mr. Sheehan is going to speak about the commercial interests of that. We're prepared to have an amendment showing, as Mr. Sheehan, perhaps, will speak to, that committee members only have access to that public consultation that was finished on, I think, August 2, and that they have access to it in accordance with other best practices of other committees, where we, through the clerk, put our phones to the side and view those documents as parliamentarians. We'd be okay with that part of the motion being amended.
Mr. Sidhu, you had that amendment originally, though.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Before I open it up for a full discussion, we're going to see what other amendments we agree on in this last part of the motion, so I'm going back to you.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
That's what I had originally proposed when I first spoke. I wanted to add the words “subject to necessary redactions due to commercial confidentiality and national security considerations”, as we heard from Mr. Sheehan. That's important to protect Canadian interests. If someone is giving us feedback about our consultations, we shouldn't be just putting it on the Internet. I think that's probably the best way to do it.
In the second line after the date, “July 2nd to August 1st, 2024”, I would add those words.
I'm happy to go to a vote so we can—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Does everybody understand what has been suggested here? It's subject to the rules and best practices of dealing with confidential information.
Mr. Sheehan, you were trying to make a comment on that. We're dealing specifically with that. I need to go back to you to finish the point you were trying to make on that confidentiality issue.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Sure. We've seen this movie before. When Trump put the section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, obviously a lot of committees jumped in. We had a Team Canada effort and we definitely processed stuff, but at that time—I'm just going to share a little history—there were people who could make those written submissions, as Mr. Sidhu said, and as the original mover, Mr. Williams, mentioned, there could be stuff in writing, but I also support those people having the ability to come here. It's and/or, because an individual in whatever business could come forward and still provide this committee with some great insight about the consultation process.
This isn't the first time we've done this. It's not the first time we've put tariffs on various things, including steel and aluminum. We put anti-tariffs, dollar for dollar, on the section 232 tariffs that were placed on us. They were very successful. This committee did a lot of work on this. We were down in Washington in the faces of people at that particular time, so we had a combination of sending it in writing, redacted and unredacted.... Also, whatever the industry is, whether they're from out west or in the east, north or south, it doesn't matter; there are Canadian businesses that could still share with this committee to help us understand.
A lot of what we're talking about is like the proverbial barn doors that have already been opened and all the Canadian industry and politicians have already been out on the horses with this. This consultation has been done, but it's important that we still be informed and stay in step with this through the process, because I think this is going to lead to other roads. This is something that we work on every single day. In budget 2024, we had the market watch group set up. I would like to hear about what's going to happen with those folks—budget 2024 just happened—but also some of the other levers that we have as well.
That will be covered by the officials, as has already been pointed out by many people. We have a very strong trade regime, but we always have to look at ways to strengthen it, because it's a bit of a race. We put things in anti-circumvention and market distortion, and the bad actors then try and move around them, so it's this holistic approach.
What I'm trying to share is a little bit of the history of this committee and what we have done before.
Tariffs work. They're not dumb. The last time we put tariffs on even our closest ally, the United States. It was an anti-tariff. We didn't want to do it but we had to and we won. It was very targeted.
I would be really interested in allowing this, and I don't know why we have a September 30 deadline. The consultations were announced in June. They were undertaken and they've closed. They've been closed for three weeks now. As we take a look at this study, why are we limiting it to such a short time frame when the process is already under way? Part of it is finished, and that's what this resolution is talking about—the closed part—but there's still much work to be done over time on this, and I think we have to roll up our sleeves and continue to work on it. I don't know why we have these deadlines.
Those are my thoughts. I really appreciate your time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Terry.
The concern was pushing September 30th with four meetings beforehand. It should just get started and be left open-ended.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
Madam Chair, I think we're at the point right now where we're saying that we're okay as a committee. Mr. Sidhu mentioned following best practices as committee members in going to see the public consultation, but obviously, based on the commercial sensitivity, we don't want to make that public, and we're okay with that. If that part's okay with everyone, we're good to move on.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Does the clerk have the wording that Mr. Sidhu mentioned about it being subject to best practices to deal with confidentiality?
Okay.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
Agreed.
Madam Chair, the last part is whether Mr. Sidhu, when he brought his amendments, were to eliminate the line that states “That the committee immediately report to the House of Commons that the government immediately match the United States' tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles”. Understanding that, based on the clerk's findings, sometimes that's not there, I'd recommend we just have a quick vote on this one.
The reason we feel it's important on the Conservative side is, when we look at our trading partners and at the spirit of the committee and the spirit of thought about what we want to send as a message to the Americans, Conservatives have stated that we do...and obviously we're doing a study on this, and a recommendation will come back to the House.... However, in the spirit of that, before the study starts, we should make that statement to show that we believe in that. We believe that tariffs should be there and that we match the Americans.
We're prepared to state that we'd like a vote on this last amendment that Mr. Sidhu made. We believe it should stay in, but Mr. Sidhu believes it should be eliminated. Respectfully, that's okay. We would just like a vote on that right now.
The Clerk
My advice would be that it's perhaps asking you to do two things in one. I don't know that I'd go as far as saying that it's procedurally out of order, but I would suggest that you [Inaudible—Editor].
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
Yes, just strike it out. Leave “report the findings to the House”, then strike the rest of it out.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
As I originally mentioned in my first intervention, I suggest that we remove all the wording after “report its findings to the House,” period. That's the end of this, and then we would remove the next three and a half lines after that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Okay.
Did everyone hear that clearly?
All right. I'm going to call for a vote on that, as requested by Mr. Williams.
Mr. Clerk, would you please take the vote?
The Clerk
The question is on Mr. Sidhu's amendment to remove all the language after “and report to the House” in the final statement in the motion there. The question is whether to remove it, so a “yes” vote would remove that language from the original motion. That is Mr. Sidhu's amendment. I'll proceed to the vote.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Mr. Sidhu's amendment carries, so this part has been deleted from the motion.
We have a motion amended a few ways here, there and the rest of it. I do have a speakers list. Does anybody want to speak to this, or have we spoken to it enough that we can...?
Mr. Arya, are you okay? We'll be ready. Do you want to speak or not?
