International Trade Committee on June 1st, 2022

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to start with Mr. Ghayyur.

I had the chance to go on a Governor General's trade mission type of thing. We went to Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. I was brought for the border stuff that I do. The Mexican component was for the justice system. They're changing their justice system around to be more accountable. Peru was interesting, and so was Guatemala, because of a series of human rights issues that have been going on.

The interesting component, because I think I side more with you, is in terms of needing to have better behaviour before you even start to engage in some of this, as opposed to exploitation. Is there a kind of tipping point or is there a structural component...? I'll ask the other guests here to think about this as well. How do we build that into even our offices or the extensions of developing relationships as we go ahead? Usually, they're kind of seen as separate, but we are going into trade agreements now that have these components. The new NAFTA has it baked inside, as opposed to outside the agreement, and that's a big advantage to them.

I'll go to you first, please, and then I'll go to the others.

[Taha Ghayyur]

Thank you.

Actually, what you just mentioned, the example of the new NAFTA, is exactly what we have been proposing and talking about. We would like to see us and our government take this seriously and more proactively.

We don't want to be in a situation like the one in Myanmar with the Rohingya people. For five years, our group, the Burma task force and Justice for All, was talking about an impending genocide, until it was too late, in 2017, and then our government took action. We want to make sure we are proactive about it, and hence it needs to be embedded, as you said, in those agreements. That's really what we're looking for at this point.

It needs to be proactive and dealt with ahead of time, rather than dealing with it and talking about sanctions when it is already too late.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Excellent.

The situation in India is particularly interesting for me, because my leader was denied access to India back in 2013, so I don't know what the.... I got on the early list of those banned in Russia. I think you did, too, Madam Chair, and everybody else is on it now, so we're not going there.

To Mr. Davison, we're moving in this direction. I think a lot of parties in Parliament are moving towards having that as a component. How do we structurally change that, in terms of our offices or outreach and building that a little bit more into the process, having that as part of the culture of our outreach and extensions? Is there a resistance to that in business? Is there resistance to changing that model a bit? I see it like this: If we want to do stuff like this, then we have to have it as part of the front service and delivery when we're looking at those advantages to increase trade.

[Chris Davison]

I'm happy to kick this off, but I welcome comments from my colleagues. I want to be careful, because I'm not an expert in human rights.

I think we can take a little bit of a lead from what the focus of our report was, even though it was in a different area. I would mention three things. First, we've already talked about the opportunity to support capacity building. Second, we're very much about promotion and encouragement of adherence to international standards. Third, our report, while it did look at Canada versus our competitors, uncovered the role that development work does play in this space as well. The report goes into quite a bit of detail on that. There are different approaches by different countries around the world, but basically it highlighted that we need a multi-faceted approach and that there is no silver bullet in our case. I don't think there is in what you're speaking to either. I think there are some parallels, but I want to be careful.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That's fair. Is there anybody else?

[Daniel Ramage]

I think Chris summed it up well, but it's that there really is an opportunity. We're exporting food. We want to enter these markets to support food security, so there is a development component just in the very nature of doing that. The opportunity is in linking the work we're doing, when it comes to capacity building in some of these key markets, with the priorities that align with Canada's ability to supply some of these key commodities so that we can help deliver on food security needs. It's about recognizing that the work we do in engagement on development, trade facilitation and capacity building can have those outcomes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You don't have any objections, though—in terms of our outreach teams, if we're actually going to create offices and so forth—to including human rights in those issues as part of the structure. I think that would be a bit of a departure from our current trade missions, but we would be entering into that at the front end of it versus having NGOs and others discovering that later and having to investigate. That's what I want to get out of—investigating afterwards, as opposed to having our frontline service being engaged in this to begin with.

I know Mr. Ghayyur wants to chime in. Go ahead.

[Taha Ghayyur]

As part of the trade missions we're talking about, one of the recommendations we had made to the Canadian government and also to the ministry of international trade was to include independent human rights experts and legal experts who actually focus on global human rights. I think that would be a very welcome addition.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you to all of our witnesses for the information today. It was extremely valuable and well worth the wait, from our end anyway. Thank you very much.

Thank you, committee members, for your co-operation.

This meeting is adjourned.