International Trade Committee on June 6th, 2022

[Jean-Dominique Ieraci]

I am not sure I understand the question correctly.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

I would like to know what the government of Canada could do to support our food exporters without undermining the local Canadian market.

[Jean-Dominique Ieraci]

I can’t speak much about what’s happening in Canada. To my knowledge, Canadian food exports represent added value to our production, which can serve the Canadian market.

On the other hand, I can talk about the types of products we sell to Singapore. Singaporeans consume about half of their food in an institutional setting: restaurants or hotels, for example. So on the one hand, they tend to buy a lot of very high value-added products. On the other hand, the price of food, which we were talking about earlier, follows international prices.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you to all our witnesses.

To the heads of missions, I recognize that you started at four o'clock this morning, so thank you so much for accommodating us. You provided a tremendous amount of valuable information to us, so clearly you're not exhausted. Thank you all.

Mr. Liu, thank you for being here.

If the witnesses can disconnect, we will go on to deal with Mr. Baldinelli's motion.

Mr. Baldinelli has moved his motion that is properly introduced and before us.

Mr. Virani, you have the floor.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

Could I speak to the motion?

I thank Mr. Baldinelli for proposing it.

There are just a couple of things I want to note. One is that the ArriveCAN app and the ArriveCAN requirements are not new to Canadians nor to Canadian industry. They have been around for some time now, and it is my view that Canadians and Canadian industry have already started to adapt to these.

Second, it puts into question whether a study of this type would be merited. Even if a study of this type were merited, it begs the question as to where such a study should take place. I think you can make a very plausible argument that the industry committee or even the transport committee might be the better place to be studying the ArriveCAN app rather than the trade committee.

On that basis, Liberals will be voting against this motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We have Mr. Masse and then Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My only concern with the motion is about squeezing in the study by the end of the session, but I agree with the motion. We'll be supporting it.

I am from a border community where we receive lots of questions with regard to ArriveCAN. There is no doubt that there still are some issues out there.

One of the things I would like to have seen.... We did this before when we had the Western hemisphere travel initiative. The government did a lot of work to promote to Americans how to deal with the change to the passport laws, even from the perspective of their own country. I was talking with a number of different border proponents, and I don't think we've done a good a job on that.

For me, I'll be supporting having two meetings for this study.

It is a fair point about what committee this really belongs at, but it's one of those subject matters that gets booted around from committee to committee and never really gets any attention, so, for those reasons, I'll support it.

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

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

I, for one, tend to agree with the criticism raised so far; this issue is better suited to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. In the motion that deals with travellers, it talks about impacts on the tourism industry. I don’t think that’s really relevant to our committee. However, it does mention cross-border trade. Perhaps I should direct a question to the mover of the motion.

I’d like to know if he’s open to the idea of amending his motion so that, if necessary, we focus only on cross-border trade. If he is open to that, we would only need one sitting, not two. I’m throwing the idea out there.

I will not accept the motion as it stands now. On the other hand, if the amendment passes and we can focus on the subject matter pertaining to our committee, I am prepared to accept it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Do we want to hear Mr. Lewis and then go to Mr. Baldinelli to respond?

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Whatever you'd like, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Would you like to make your comments?

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to Mr. Baldinelli.

I think it's a great motion, and I give a lot of credit to my honourable colleague Mr. Masse. He and I are situated right next to the busiest international border in North America, and his office, I'm sure, is very much like my office, Madam Chair, in that we are inundated by the same businesses that the member from the Bloc is speaking to specifically.

It's vital. We need two studies. What we need is this to be gone, quite frankly, but at least two days of study is going to be vital to this.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I have Mr. Hoback, and then I am going to go back to Mr. Baldinelli.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Chair, if you want to go to Mr. Baldinelli first to entertain the idea of amending the motion, I'd be curious to see where that conversation goes before I speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Baldinelli.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to my colleagues' consideration of this.

I'd like the tourism sector to remain part of this motion. It is an import/export sector. It's a $105 billion in GDP generated for our Canadian economy. It employs one in ten Canadian workers. In my community alone, $2.4 billion is generated in tourism receipts. About 23% of our visitor base is Americans who will visit my community, but over 50% of that revenue generated in my community comes from those American visitors. What we're not doing is properly facilitating the trade and the flow of traffic that's coming from our American visitors to Canada.

For example, the recent Statistics Canada data that came in for March on international visitation indicated there were 465,000 Americans who visited in March 2022. That's up from 95,000 from the year before. But if you go back to 2019, it was 1.5 million Americans who visited in 2019, which was our best tourism year ever in Canada. Destination Canada is already saying that we're not going to get a recovery in tourism until 2025 or 2026 at the earliest. In my community alone, there are 40,000 people who work in the tourism community, and 16,000 hotel rooms devoted to it. What they depend upon is open borders, and right now on the American long weekend, we were hearing of two-and-a-half-hour border delays.

I've got council resolutions from the Town of Fort Erie and from the City of Niagara Falls advocating for the ArriveCAN app to be rescinded and dropped. I was disappointed to see as we're moving into a tourism recovery, the government, not committing one dollar this year to tourism recovery—they did they commit monies for indigenous tourism—and they committed $1 billion last year. And, again, consider that Niagara Falls generates $2.4 billion when the government committed only $1 billion last year.

Much to my surprise, the government's committing $25 million to the ArriveCAN application. And for me, I'm trying to determine and find from the government, and have yet to be provided an answer, where the public health benefit rests with the ArriveCAN application. If it's meant to facilitate traffic flow in border crossings, it's doing a poor job at that. We're hearing about this at airports. We're hearing about it at border crossings. We're hearing about it from our industry representatives, who are caught in those two-and-a-half-hour border delays. We shouldn't be doing that. It should take seconds and not minutes to cross the border. We've had representations from our two international border commissions, who have said that ArriveCAN needs to be replaced or augmented and changed.

That's why I presented this motion, Madam Chair, for our committee's consideration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We go back to Mr. Hoback, and then Mr. Virani.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Chair, I see considerations from the Bloc member and some of his concerns, but tourism is a part of trade, and thus is part of the trade committee's responsibilities. Trade in tourism is a part of the industry itself. That's why maybe it should be included, but only as part of a bigger study, or, like you say, when it comes to its trade implications. The reality is that when business people can't travel across the border because there are huge lineups, or they refuse to cross the border because of the impression that there are huge lineups created by the ArriveCAN app, that problem affects our business community quite directly.

And we're hearing of that quite consistently from people who are travelling through Pearson, especially even through Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. I've been talking to Americans and they're saying they're not going to travel up to Canada right now, that they'll just wait because it's a gong show. With the ArriveCAN app, they just look at it and say, “What the heck is this? What do I do here?” This is something that's not deemed as acceptable. Now, I would agree with the comment that people are tolerating it, but they're tolerating it because it's forced upon them. And they're questioning what useful purpose it actually serves in helping the government keep Canadians safer. It serves no purpose at all at this point in time.

I'd like to see this study go forward. I think it's important. If we need to make some adjustments on it timing to accommodate it, maybe we could have a meeting on it now and a meeting again in the fall to get an evaluation of how of how the summer went and how business travel happened through the summer. Maybe that's something we could consider. I think it is very important that it come to this committee and be dealt with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Mr. Virani.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I have two points. The first point is that I would reject categorically the assertion that the government has been failing to address the needs of the tourism sector and the hospitality sector. The tourism sector and all of hardest hit sectors were provided for extensively during the course of the pandemic, and we continue to support them.

The second point is that, as I hear more members of the official opposition speak, it just buttresses the argument that, in fact, what we have is an ideological opposition to the ArriveCAN app and the public health evidence that substantiates it. The term “public health” was used by Mr. Mr. Baldinelli and Mr. Hoback, which I would then add to my initial list of appropriate committees for this. Perhaps this should be properly studied at the health committee.

You now have, potentially, three or four different avenues to study this entity: the industry committee, the transport committee, and as I have just mentioned, the health committee. The actual concern, as underscored by the members of the official opposition, is what public health evidence underscores or provides their rationale for the ArriveCAN app. They should ask that at the health committee, which underscores the point that it does not belong at this committee.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Not seeing any other comments or—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Chair, I have my hand up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, Mr. Hoback.

Your little hand is way, way over there. I thought it was a decoration on the wall.

Don't hesitate to jump in there. Go ahead, Mr. Hoback.

We have Mr. Hoback and then Mr. Savard-Tremblay. Keep your eyes on the clock.