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.