International Trade Committee on Sept. 27th, 2022

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Correct.

[Barbara Barrett]

I'm not sure what stricter border restrictions there would have been.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

To prevent the spread of COVID, the government could have taken other measures. What are your thoughts on one of those measures being stricter border restrictions and on what impact that would have had on exports?

[Barbara Barrett]

Anything that encumbers the border and people being able to pass over in their car affects our businesses. We were already 95% down when only essential workers were allowed to cross over. Other than 100%, I'm not sure how much worse it could get. When the border did open to more than essential workers, we were at 50% down.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

But we've already established that the 95% was not because of ArriveCAN.

[Barbara Barrett]

No. That was because the border was closed.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 25 seconds remaining.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Okay.

Just quickly, Mr. Lovegrove, can you answer that last question as well?

[Douglas Lovegrove]

I have to apologize. Can you repeat the question and clarify?

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

How would exports have been impacted if instead of implementing ArriveCAN, we had implemented stricter border restrictions?

[Douglas Lovegrove]

I can only imagine that we would have seen a further reduction in exports through any more aggressive restrictions.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Monsieur Savard-Tremblay, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Since I feel that we've covered all of our questions in this study, I'll ask you this open-ended question.

What more can we do for you?

[Douglas Lovegrove]

For myself personally, I'd like to see the federal government step up with some campaign in the U.S. for tourism, for travel, and specifically for businesses like ours.

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

Ms. Barrett, I'm listening.

[Barbara Barrett]

Thank you for asking.

We've clearly been the hardest hit of the hardest hit. We have not started to recover fully yet. We hoping to, as of October 1. However, the winter is long. We've missed three high seasons. We would love to see a loan program that would allow us to get through to the other side of the winter and allow us to survive.

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

Thank you.

Gentlemen, what do you think?

[Kenneth Bieger]

I'll go first and say that from our perspective, it would be nice if the communication between the U.S. government and the Canadian government was improved with respect to the CBP and the CBSA at the border. We went through this whole pandemic, and it just seemed like there was a lack of communication. The timing of some of the openings was different. If we had to go through this again, it would be nice if the coordination and the timing of some of this could be rolled out together.

It seemed like it was a problem from the beginning. We're still seeing it now. Obviously, October 1.... We haven't heard if the U.S. government is going to eliminate the vaccination requirement. Right now, we don't think so. We haven't heard anything. These types of things probably should be communicated and worked through a little bit better from both sides.

The other thing that we would like to take a look at—and I think it may be public information, but I'm not sure—is the testing. Going into Canada throughout this pandemic, there was a lot of testing done. I'm not sure, but some of the information that I've heard is that the rate of those testing positive wasn't any higher than what it was in Canada in general.

I kind of question.... I know this is more of a health department-type issue, but this question was brought up earlier: What really changed this week or in the last couple of weeks versus six months ago or a year ago?

At the point that the U.S. was at, let's say, 70% vaccinated and Canada a few points higher than that, we all strove for the same thing. I just don't know if there was enough of a reason to keep the U.S.-Canada border closed for the reason of vaccinations for as long as they did. I understand the closure at the very beginning, but when we get to a point where the vaccination rate was as high as it was, it just seems that this could have been done a lot earlier and the border communities would have felt the improvement earlier.

I think that could be tested by looking at the test results of the travellers who came through the CBSA and seeing what the rates were.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Masse, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm a little bit taken aback by some of the questioning that's taken place here this afternoon.

I'll give a quick example with regard to duty-free stores. These are small businesses. Even during the pandemic, they came forward with solutions for what was taking place. In fact, they actually asked to donate their perishable goods to charities, but the government wouldn't provide a change to allow them to do that, so those goods rotted.

They didn't come here to say that ArriveCAN destroyed or had implications on their businesses. They came here by invitation to show that it's another barrier that was still in the repertoire of problems that they face on the border and that it needs to be adjusted.

Yes, now that it's actually optional, people can use it if they want. They may not want to. I get the point that you're making, Mr. Lovegrove, with regard to when they go to the app. I've heard this from the Americans I deal with on a regular basis. Mr. Maloney is correct that it is on the website, but it's pretty shocking when you're on your personal phone and you read about the fines and the penalties and all those different things. They haven't necessarily gone through those things, so sometimes it's the tone of things that's out there.

What didn't happen with regard to this is is that there weren't any education programs. When the western hemisphere travel initiative came in, you remember, Madam Chair, all the times we went to the United States to push. Then there was actually advertising that went out to the United States and so forth.

I'll conclude by saying that I want to thank the witnesses and all my colleagues here. Perhaps if we can get in front of some of these things a little bit better, it would be much more helpful. That's where I think I want to go with this study. It's to see how we can ameliorate the damage that's taken place and go forward from there.

I will conclude by saying that with regard to duty-free stores, again, I never heard any complaints. The border was shut down. These organizations are not generally run by big businesses. The Ambassador Bridge runs one of them, and the Taqtaq family, a local family, runs the other one. Almost all the other ones are family businesses. It's not a big multinational conglomerate that owns them all. They have been suffering more than any other businesses because their customers were shut off. They couldn't actually get there. This is one of the things we need to ameliorate, because if we're going to have recovery, we need them back in the game.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

I believe that has completed the questions for our witnesses today.

On behalf of all of the committee, I want to say a sincere thank you to all of you for participating today. We know it's been tough. Come October 1, things, we hope, are going to get that much better. However, there is still a lot ahead of us to recover completely.

Thank you very much for this information.

We will suspend for a few minutes while we go into committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]