International Trade Committee on April 27th, 2023

[The Chair (Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)), Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everybody. This is meeting number 60 of the Standing Committee on International Trade.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application.

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Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Friday, November 25, 2022, the committee is beginning its study of non-tariff barriers in Canada’s existing and potential international trade agreements.

We have with us today, by video conference, from the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, Flavio Volpe.

From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, we have Stuart Trew, senior researcher.

We have, from Mondo Foods Co. Ltd., Tom De Nardi, president.

For the Organization of Women in International Trade, we have Nathalie Bradbury, president.

Welcome to all of you.

We will start with opening remarks and then proceed with a round of questions.

Mr. Volpe, I invite you to give an opening statement of up to five minutes, please.

[Flavio Volpe, President, Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's good to see you again.

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to this august panel to talk about something that is, from time to time, the biggest issue for our industry in trade with other countries.

I'm going to frame my remarks with our relationship with commercial and diplomatic relations with Japan, because I think it's illustrative of where some of the non-tariff barriers play in a real and practical manner in the auto sector, where we can ground a couple of examples, but I want you to keep in mind that countries like Vietnam, which are now our CPTPP partners, are emerging players in the auto sector.

Anybody who's been to the Yorkdale mall in Toronto can see that you can buy a VinFast, which is a Vietnamese-produced, -engineered, and -supplied vehicle. It's a very competitive product for sale to Canadian consumers.

We spent a lot of time with this government and the previous government in updating, renewing, and starting new trade relationships and formal trade agreements with great existing trade partners like Japan. During the TPP discussion and negotiation that started with the former government and finished with the current government, one thing that we were seized with was how to deal with our Japanese partners' global-leading automotive products and the local demand here. How do we properly work out an agreement that is accretive to operations in both countries? Also, how do we balance a scenario in which Canada does not have a domestic automaker and does not make decisions on product allocation and design, as even the Vietnamese do?

Specifically, Toyota and Honda manufacture vehicles here and sell vehicles here. Some of the vehicles that they manufacture they sell here. Some of the ones that they sell here they manufacture in other parts of the world, including, especially, in Japan.

We tend to conduct these negotiations as if we're equal partners, at least in the automotive space, but we're not. We're the world's 10th-biggest automotive jurisdiction, by units of production, but we have not had a sustainable Canadian car company for 100 years. Malcolm Bricklin gave it a shot in the the seventies, and it didn't work.

I draw attention to the fact that different countries have different vehicle import penetrations that are starkly different from Canada's. In Canada, 85% of the vehicles sold have foreign origins. In Japan, that number was 6.9% in 2017, when we started the TPP negotiations.

We talked with both governments, the previous one and the current one about this. Some of the reasons are that the non-tariff barriers in Japan take the form of ownership taxes. For example, Japan charges private vehicle owners three annual taxes for vehicle use, paid at registration time: automobile tax, which is on the dimensions; automobile weight tax; and on-the-road tax. They're all charged on a sliding scale. The first two are by vehicle weight and size and the third is by engine displacement.

We'll use this example. For a Canadian car made in Brampton on the Stellantis, Dodge and Chrysler line, the LX cars that we all know—the Chargers, Challengers and 300s—those three taxes would have totalled 105,000 yen at the time. A Japanese domestic market Nissan Maxima with a base engine would annually cost a Japanese customer about 79,000 yen. For that comparison that we used, for a similar product into that market, the annual ownership difference was the equivalent of about $1,500 to $2,300 Canadian.

On the fuel side, the fuel costs in Japan are 40¢ a litre higher. A lot of that difference—52%—is in taxes. This adds a disproportionate cost for the less fuel-efficient vehicles that we manufacture here for the North American market.

Using the regular Transport Canada duty cycle of 24,000 kilometres a year at $1.60 for a litre of gas, the difference in operating a Canadian-made vehicle from Brampton and a Nissan Maxima was somewhere between $989 and $1200 in incremental tax. This is the ownership price difference.

There are no distribution dealerships for Canadian cars in countries like Japan. There are Japanese car companies that operate dealerships here. The cost of importing a vehicle would be borne by the consumer.

It makes it price-prohibitive for a consumer in Japan to buy a vehicle made in Canada. We signed up to do a free trade agreement, the CPTPP, with the view that one of the advantages would be we would open up a great Japanese market in the same way that we opened up a Canadian market. However, we are not organized the same, from an industrial point of view; we don't have Canadian-domiciled companies. The Japanese non-tariff barriers in the form of taxes, both for the ownership and on the gas, make it prohibitive, and that is a bigger barrier than anything else in terms of customer preference.

If we're going to continue to do these trade agreements—Vietnam is inside the CPTPP—we're going to have the same challenges, with an imbalance in trade between them and us on those vehicles. It's the same thing with Europe and CETA.

I hope we take a deeper look to see the other barriers to consumer entry the next time that we reopen or start a trade negotiation with another car-making country, rather than just saying what we usually say, which is that if you're competitive, you can sell there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Volpe. I'm sure we'll have lots of questions from committee members.

Now we'll go on to Mr. Trew, please, for up to five minutes.

[Stuart Trew, Senior Researcher, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives]

Thanks very much, Chair and committee, for the invitation to be here.

To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure how to frame my presentation on the topic of non-tariff barriers. It seemed to me to be quite a broad category. I thought, maybe given the high profile of certain food issues around non-tariff barriers, that would be the focus, but from looking at the group you have here, it's more eclectic and more varied than that. I decided to keep it to the big picture and mention three things I think are important to keep in mind in any discussion about non-tariff barriers.

The first is that what one group—whether it's a producer group or a trade economist, for example—considers a a non-tariff barrier, other groups might simply call good public policy.

I'll give you a few examples. One is front-of-package health labelling on cigarettes, alcohol or food, talking about the sugar or fat content, for example. That labelling applies to domestic as well as international companies. You could have labels that have to do with other aspects as well, like halal labelling in Indonesia. That has come up as both a technical barrier to trade and, in that country in particular, as good public policy.

Another example is California’s animal welfare laws that expand minimum cage and pen sizes for captive farm animals and ban the sale of food products, even from out of state, that can’t meet those standards.

There are policies aimed at reducing the use of pesticides, for example, and favouring organics based on environmental considerations or the preferences of a given local, national or regional population, in the case of the European Union.

There may be public stockholding. There are tons of other examples, but public stockholding programs in, say, India aim to stabilize prices and compensate struggling farmers.

All of these are clear cases that serve public health, public ethics and social and environmental purposes, but they may also be challenged in trade deals that have overly strict rules on how governments are allowed to regulate.

The second point I'll make is that I think existing trade deals go far enough, and probably too far, in limiting regulatory and policy space in ways that impoverish our democracy and the democracies in other countries.

Canada and the U.S. are among a relatively small group of countries at the WTO that continue to expand disciplines on government regulatory space in their bilateral and regional trade agreements. The CUSMA is the most striking example. I can share some of the research I've done previously on some of the ways that's true, if the committee is interested.

For example, the agreement goes further than most trade deals to privilege the interest of foreign investors and foreign companies in the domestic rule-making process. It also enshrines in international law a single—allegedly best—way to regulate in all instances in what they call the “good regulatory practice” chapter, which is open to dispute settlement in that agreement.

The amount of work that Canadian regulators already do now to ensure that public protections comply with our trade obligations—things like red tape reduction, act rules and regulatory burden assessments—has been described by different groups as creating “red tape for regulators.” It actually gets in the way of governments doing their job in some cases, which is regulating to protect public interests.

That job, I would say, is complicated enough by today’s overlapping and very serious environmental and social problems. In some areas, like fossil fuel emissions, biodiversity loss or online privacy, I think governments are under pressure to do more to restrict trade and to create what might be considered as trade barriers or technical barriers to trade, and for good reasons. Rapidly lowering greenhouse gas emissions and protecting public privacy by limiting cross-border flows of data are examples. These are all examples of how public policy could be framed one way or the other.

The final thing I'll say is that I believe appropriate venues already exist at the WTO and in our bilateral agreements for addressing differences with other countries with respect to technical barriers to trade, food standards and other policies. The notice system at the WTO is quite effective at defusing problems before they end up before a dispute settlement panel.

Where we have bilateral commitments and committees established to look at certain issues is in CETA. Obviously, it's not what a lot of producer groups would say is a perfect solution, but I would say it's one that strikes a good balance between the democratic obligations of governments to their people and varied interests in how they develop policy on the one hand and the trade interests of limited groups on the other.

I'll conclude there to say that I think this is possibly a huge area of study for the committee. I wish you good luck in grappling with it.

I think it's an important area because it also goes to the heart of what our trade agreements do and could be doing better in this era as we grapple with these very big problems, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, for example.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Trew.

We'll move on to Mr. De Nardi for up to five minutes.

[Tom De Nardi, President, Mondo Foods Co. Ltd.]

Thank you.

My name is Tom De Nardi. I am a family member of a second-generation food business that I hope to pass on to my children one day. My 80-year-old parents still come to work every day to make sure their legacy continues.

For 50 years, our family has been importing, retailing, wholesaling and distributing domestic and imported cheese to pizzerias, restaurants and retailers, both local and nationally. In fact, some of the products you buy at your grocer may have been pioneered, developed, imported or distributed by Mondo Foods. We have grown from a 600-square-foot Italian deli in Winnipeg's ethnic west end to a medium-size business today.

This was through hard work and dedication to family, staff and customers. It's been a long road. It's been a tough road. Multiple times over the years, we pioneered and built specialty cheese programs for major retailers worth millions of dollars, only to be cut out by the quota holder.

Until CETA, CUSMA and TPP, the only way to import cheese into Canada was to own or rent quota from a historical WTO quota holder. A small amount of WTO quota was reallocated to us in the late 1990s as a result of the Canadian trade tribunal report. This allowed us to pioneer new, exciting specialty cheeses for our customers. We were finally in control of our own destiny. In fact, we further developed a specialty cheese market by acquiring other WTO quota holders' licences, but once again we became a victim of our own success. We developed an imported cracker and cut-cheese tray never seen in Canada before, which we unfortunately had to stop selling, as sales demand far exceeded quota availability, costing us millions.

CETA was rolled out with a four-pool program from 2017 to 2022, which saw access to the Canadian market increased from 15 million to 30 million kilograms. We thought this was the beginning of a more level playing field for companies like ours: a small and large pool for manufacturers, and the same for retailers and distributors, with 60% going to the small and medium enterprises and 40% going to the large enterprises. The threshold for manufacturers was approximately 50 million litres and approximately one million kilograms of cheese sales for retailers and distributors annually.

It is worth noting that under the supply management system, there are potentially thousands of distributors and retailers, but there are under 100 manufacturers.

In 2017, Mondo received its first CETA allocation, which grew to 120 tons in 2020. It used this allocation to import and develop a specialty cheese program with major retailers. The program grew, and we were comfortable in thinking we had a stable 100-ton—plus or minus—supply of CETA, as our sales volume had not changed since 2020. It never occurred to us that in five years the threshold would slide backwards to 475,000 kilograms from one million kilograms.

In 2021, we were devastated to find out we would be competing with the likes of Loblaws and Sysco for quota in the large pool, and we received only 5,800 kilograms, down from 120,000 kilograms just the year before.

Think about that for a second.

This put our family business in extreme peril, and all the hard work evaporated. We sounded the alarm bells to Global Affairs and had several conversations and assurances: “We understand the effects on companies like yours”—there were several—and “This is a result of unintended consequences” of the formula, and there was a comprehensive review to address it.

Follow-up emails and meetings with the deputy director were summed up in the following email to him on September 13, 2022: “In conclusion of our meeting, Mondo is hoping to get a timely resolution to the unintended consequences of the mathematical formula that currently governs the small and large pool of distributors and retailers.”

Some of the key points discussed were thresholds that better reflect those established at the outset of CETA; greater transparency of thresholds, so that companies are not blindsided from one year to the next and put into the large pool; that a reasonable continuity of quota amounts from one year to the next is crucial to a company's contractual commitments and continued viability; that it is unfair and devastating for companies like ours to be given quotas to build our business and then be penalized for maintaining and growing; that it's not just the economic cost but also the damage to the company's goodwill; and that the current system has created a market of “armchair traders” who increase the price to consumers, causing inflation and market instability.

We feel no further ahead than at the beginning, beholden to armchair traders who are making millions of dollars on our work and doing nothing.

Just this year we lost a 30-year customer for the value of the quota that I had to pay for, and a manufacturer was gifted by Global Affairs from a WTO reallocation, a reallocation of 250 tonnes that I was not entitled to, so we are not sure where the equity and equality is on that.

CETA is not the only area where there are problems. Both CUSMA and the TPP are being challenged by the United States and New Zealand. We have problems with this system.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Those are not good things to hear.

We'll go to Ms. Bradbury, please.

[Nathalie Bradbury, President, OWIT Ottawa, Organization of Women in International Trade]

Hello. My name is Nathalie Bradbury. I'm representing the Ottawa and Toronto chapters of OWIT, the Organization of Women in International Trade.

I am the president of OWIT Ottawa and a former trade commissioner, economist and policy officer in various parts of the Canadian public service, including Global Affairs, agriculture, immigration and Canadian Heritage.

The Organization of Women in International Trade, OWIT, is a global not-for-profit association that has been seeking to advance women's role in international trade and business for over 20 years. OWIT has 2,500 members in over 25 chapters active in North America, Central America and South America, as well as in Europe and Africa. OWIT members are professionals engaged in all aspects of international trade. Together, our members make a significant contribution to global economic growth.

At OWIT Ottawa and OWIT Toronto, we provide mentoring, networking and educational events, as well as trade missions. We have corporate members, including Export Development Canada, and members from the private and academic sectors, as well as individual members, who tend to be professionals in the legal and financial sectors, academics, the public sector, as well as members from large and small corporations.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving us the opportunity to speak about non-tariff barriers—NTBs—in Canada’s current and potential FTAs.

You can ask me questions in French, if you like.

NTBs are, as Stuart said, a huge area of study. They are complicated and detailed, and yes, they have a good side and they have a bad side, so it's hard to really assess them broadly since they have different impacts. I have stories to tell that are different from those of either of my colleagues here, so in the interest of time, I'll pass on to that.

How do these NTBs pertain to women in trade? Canadian studies show that women-owned businesses tend to be smaller, have fewer employees and have more trouble with access to finance than those owned by men.

CanExport grants, for example, have high thresholds for applications that can work against service-based businesses, which a lot of women hold, and the application process is onerous. Besides service businesses, Canadian women entrepreneurs are very active in retail, buying and selling to international markets, an area with many technical trade regulations, which are essentially NTBs. These kinds of challenges for women-owned businesses are similar to those of our trading partners as well. In fact, they're worldwide.

The 2022 report, “The State of Women's Entrepreneurship in Canada”, released on International Women’s Day in March, found that only 18% of Canadian companies are owned by women, up from 16% two years earlier. That's small progress, but it's very small.

Many women-owned businesses are not incorporated, so they aren't counted in the statistics, or are sole proprietorships, which is another definition again.

Women-owned businesses congregate around the small end of the business spectrum, and many business services are designed for the larger, incorporated businesses run by men. This, however, is slowly changing. The business world is adapting.

What are some of the implications of NTBs for women? Complexity of rules of origin, heavy use of legal jargon in the wording of rules, as well as the complications of tariff classification for certain types of products make it difficult for businesses, and in particular SMEs, to leverage free trade agreements because they or their foreign suppliers can't understand the eligibility rules.

Importers are often obliged to rely on their suppliers to provide certifications of origin and have limited ability to conduct due diligence on the production process because of commercial confidentiality concerns, even though the duty liability is borne by the importer. This creates risk for the importer. Here, I'm talking clearly about small business. I'm speaking about women-owned businesses, which is where most Canadian women-owned businesses are located.

Variations in rules of origin across different free trade agreements have created a spaghetti bowl of different rules that make compliance and record-keeping difficult and costly for companies, especially companies that have a small number of staff.

We all agree that health-based or environmental policy-based trade restrictions have positive aspects from one perspective, but there are also some negative ones. There are always trade complaints in the courts trying to sort through those issues.

I participated in a recent event organized by the British chambers of commerce of Canada, Ecuador and Chile. OWIT UK and OWIT Ottawa were present. According to Simonetta Zarrilli at UNCTAD, for many decades it was felt that trade and gender had nothing to do with each other. Customs procedures, duties, and tariffs are the same whoever is doing the importing and exporting, right?. However, what is different is the impact of these rules and procedures on women and men, since they play different roles in society and the economy.

First, women are employees. With trade liberalization and a switch to export orientation in many developing countries, large numbers of women were hired to work in these sectors, such as textiles, clothing and shoes, and later in the high-tech factories for microchips, cellphones, iPhones—you name it. However, the best jobs—the high-paying jobs for factory managers and trading professionals—were held by men. This might remind you of the situation with C-suites in Canada, where there are not enough women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Could you give us your closing remarks, Ms. Bradbury?

[Nathalie Bradbury]

Women are entrepreneurs. I've already spoken to some of the issues there. Trade liberalization provides opportunities to export, but can be a double-edged sword for families.

My conclusion is that FTA negotiations can lead to progressive policies being implemented in the broader government policy framework.

Canada-wide, low cost child care, with our lead in Quebec, has greatly improved the situation for women and their families. Quebec is now the world leader in employed women who are mothers with children under the age of three.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Ms. Bradbury.

For six minutes, we have Mr. Martel, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses who are with us today.

My question is for Mr. De Nardi.

[Tom De Nardi]

Just a moment, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Please wait a second. I will make sure everyone has interpretation.

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

This is an interesting discussion.

Mr. De Nardi, we are hearing about flaws in trade agreements, often putting the Canadian market at an advantage. Take dairy farmers and processors, for example. I hear a lot about the reciprocity of standards. Products come into Canada, but some of our products can't be exported to other countries because they don't meet the standards. I also get feedback on the quotas.

I'm curious as to whether the sector is consulted on the negotiations. It's hard to imagine that it is. My understanding from your comments is that Canada often seems to get the shaft when it comes to the negotiations. Another witness brought up the issue of vehicle exports and Japan.

What do you think of all that?

[Tom De Nardi]

Could you please repeat the question, because I would like to give you a clear and decisive answer? I'm sorry. It's probably the translation, which I'm not getting. I apologize, because my French is not that good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Would you repeat the question, Mr. Martel, so that Mr. De Nardi can answer effectively?

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

All right.

As a result of these trade agreements, it seems that Canada is frequently at a disadvantage in relation to other markets. That's the case for dairy farmers and processors. Once the agreements are signed, it looks like the reciprocity is universal. The standards are different. When Canada tries to export certain products to other countries, it can't because they don't meet the standards. European countries, however, have no trouble exporting their products to Canada. People often say that Canada is backed into a corner because of the quotas.

According to you, Canada is at a huge disadvantage. What happens during the negotiations? Is the sector consulted?

[Tom De Nardi]

I can't speak to the negotiations between Global Affairs and their European counterparts. What I can tell you is that we do have access, in this country, for about 30 million kilos of EU product, most of which comes as specialty cheeses, but there are some commodity-based products. That's the access they have to our market. I'm not sure what access we have to their market or the access we gave up in order to have access in pork or whatnot.

At the end of the day, I think you might be drilling down to the fact that the most advantaged sector is the dairy manufacturers, the big processors. They're the ones who get the most licence and they're the ones who control most of the imported cheese quota in this country.

Whether it's CETA, with 50% of the 15 million kilos, or whether it's the CUSMA, with almost 100%.... That one broke. It was an 80-20 rule, whereby 80% went to the processors and 20% came to the distributors.

What ended up happening is that the U.S. challenged that. Then Global Affairs said, “Okay, we'll have it your way.” In the spirit of the agreement, instead of some of it coming to distributors to deal with the breadth and depth of the manufacturers in the U.S., like many of the small manufacturers, they said, “No, have it your way” and they removed the 20%. Now it's the more you sell, the more you get.

For example, sir, I got 10,000 kilos of butter from the U.S. and about 13,000 kilos of cheese, which I used to buy from many small producers in the United States. After Canada dug in its heels on its ruling, I now have 900 kilos of butter and about 2,000 kilos of specialty cheese to bring in.

The Canadian manufacturers, I'll tell you, sir, have plants in the U.S. What they'll end up doing is bringing their commodity-based products from the U.S. into their Canadian plants with all of that CUSMA licence. There, their product cost is half, and they get to sell it for the same price in Canada. You tell me if that's the spirit of the agreement. Of course our trading partners are up in arms.

I would say to you, sir, that it was the same with TPP, but CUSMA is the best example. The United States is challenging that one more time.

I hope I've answered your question; I don't know if I understood it correctly.

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

Yes, thank you.

Mr. Volpe, what you said about the auto sector was fascinating. According to you, Canada's environment is different from Japan's with respect to the applicable taxes. Japan isn't all that interested in the car market. The negotiations take place, but certain details seem to be lacking once the agreements are signed.

What do you think, Mr. Volpe?

[Flavio Volpe]

Thank you for your question.

The information is there. I think specifically on the TPP initial negotiations, I think it was the decision of the negotiating team—the government at the time—that there were priorities other than protecting vehicle access in exchange for gains in other sectors. I think it was the same with the government that closed it.

I think what's really important to understand is that while we agreed to disagree with the government on what the threat was from Japan.... We also had the Japanese investment here. Toyota and Honda were extremely invested in the Canadian market and were making a million cars a year, which was half of our production. There were some advantages there that kind of balanced things off. However, we included Vietnam in the CPTPP, which the government dismissed at the time because Vietnam and Malaysia, for example, were just parts suppliers like Canada. There was a balance with Japan, but they weren't worried about the Vietnamese threat. Here we are now, five years later, and the Vietnamese make cars and import them to Canada, tariff-free in part, because of the deal we signed that didn't see any emerging threat or consider it to be a risk for the market share of Canadian producers.

VinFast makes great vehicles. They are competitive and they look good. They're designed by Pininfarina, which is Ferrari's designer. They are priced competitively against Tesla, the market leader. They are sold directly, past distributor agreements, in places like shopping centres in Toronto.

When we get a chance to review the CPTPP, I think the first thing I would look at is the balance of cars made in Canada and sold in Japan. I'll tell you there will be none, or 300 or 400, versus maybe 150,000 here. Then look at the new Vietnamese threat. There will be zero going from Canada to Vietnam and there will be a good cohort of cars sold by VinFast here.

I think that should be a case study lesson for the next time we renegotiate CPTPP or we dismiss the potential of other trading partners emerging to compete with us in one of the most important sectors in this economy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Virani, go ahead, please, for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

First of all, I want to say thank you to all of the witnesses who are here in person, and Flavio, it's good to see you online.

I want to start with Ms. Bradbury, actually.

Thank you for your service as past trade commissioner. It's a really important service to Canadian entities for what we do on exports around the planet.

You mentioned the empowerment of women generally in the entrepreneurial space. You talked about some very important programs. You highlighted Quebec and the child care program. As you well know, we are patterning a national program on Quebec's very successful model. We're hoping to see the same sort of results replicated in the other nine provinces and three territories around the country. I want to ask you to comment on that.

As well as commenting on that, could you comment on one other aspect that you raised? It was this issue about how non-tariff trade barriers apply to women who are predominantly small-sized entrepreneurs and how that dovetails or not with the women entrepreneurship strategy.

That's a big policy that we've rolled out over the last few years. It's almost $7 billion of investments. It has several heads. One of the heads of that investment deals specifically with the pursuit of market opportunities abroad through market strategy and promoting business advisory services, etc.

Do you have any concrete suggestions about what we need to do with respect to the women entrepreneurship strategy to empower women entrepreneurs to both export more and also overcome non-tariff trade barriers as they exist as impediments?

Could you comment on both of those?

[Nathalie Bradbury]

First of all, with regard to the broader government policy framework outside of trade, this is something that.... There's the example of child care. This has been very well noted. Canada's often a world leader in promoting women in trade and women in the economy. At one of the recent events I was attended, OWIT UK—actually, it was the U.K. Department for Business & Trade, I think—they mentioned that child care is something that they are really pushing forward, and this is coming from a Conservative government.

Other countries have also understood the importance of national programs such as child care. They also look at other types of government policies and industry initiatives that can move things forward. In other countries, gender-based violence is a big issue, and there are all sorts of issues, so these government policies....

It's interesting, because foreign trade negotiations that have a progressive chapter—a gender and trade chapter or an inclusive trade chapter, broadly—often lead to progressive reforms taking place in other parts of the government policy framework generally. That's just a quick overview of that aspect.

In terms of NTBs affecting women primarily at the small side of the spectrum, in terms of working with the women entrepreneurship strategy, a key part is trade. It's such a wonderful strategy and it covers so much. Again, other countries look enviously at Canada and what we've accomplished here.

Non-tariff barriers encompass so many different areas, and one of them is intellectual property. In the field of textiles, for example, in traditional areas like in indigenous groups, women are the owners. They are the creators of intellectual property, of the designs, the textile designs, and there are even the genetic resources—medical herbs and that kind of thing. There's understanding that they need to be helped, so WIPO—the World Intellectual Property Organization—has set up programs to assist women indigenous groups to assist them to become more entrepreneurial, to understand the value of their intellectual property and to set up training. WIPO does things for women in these countries.

I don't know to what extent in Canada we assist women owners. I don't know if the indigenous peoples of Canada can benefit from WIPO. I think it's strictly for developing countries. This is an example to show that maybe developed countries, if they don't have their own strategies, may be not be at a disadvantage, but they can't also benefit, so there's the idea of replicating some of the programs at the UN level.

Another one would be SheTrades, which is a combination between UNCTAD and the International Trade Centre for developing countries to teach women entrepreneurs from these places how to engage. They are also also finding them mentors, teaching them programs, teaching them confidence building and assertiveness training so that when they're with a bank, they don't sound like a huge risk because they don't sound as if they don't believe in their products or in their strategies. It's that kind of thing.

Working on these things requires a combination of government policies, industry initiatives and support from international organizations. We have to work together to move forward and to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bradbury.