Madam Speaker, I will be the last of the Conservative Party members to speak on this topic today. We are here to talk about the Canada-U.K. Trade Continuity Agreement that will replicate essentially the same terms and conditions as Canada has in the Canadian-European trade agreement, but in this case with the U.K. because the U.K. is no longer part of the European Union. This continuity agreement largely maintains the terms and conditions of CETA, but makes sure we have stability and continuity to be able to continue the trade agreement with the U.K.
What I would argue, though, is that this agreement is the floor or should be the minimum requirement of our relationship with the U.K. from a trade perspective going forward and should be viewed as barely the starting point.
My colleagues today have spent a great deal of time talking about the delays, the lack of consultation and all of the things that have challenged us in getting to this point with the agreement, which has left us behind the power curve with a trade continuity agreement. I would like to move beyond this agreement and talk about how we absolutely must make broadening and expanding our trade relationship with the U.K. a priority.
First, Canadians need the government to provide a plan with defined timelines to replace this continuity agreement, which is supposed to expire in a year, with a comprehensive Canada-U.K. trade agreement. Second, Canadians absolutely need the government to facilitate, support and coordinate an increase in our trade with the U.K. A trade agreement is merely the beginning; we need further action to ensure that the agreement is leveraged and actual increased trade results from it.
Even before COVID, we saw that the global economic balance of power was fundamentally changing, with economic power being used by some countries as a mechanism to increase their political power and strategic interests. Trade has been used as a weapon to influence behaviour. We only have to look to some of the things that the People's Republic of China has done to Canadian soybean, canola, pork and ginseng exports, frustrating the process and introducing non-tariff trade barriers that have mitigated our ability to leverage our exports, causing a distinct disadvantage in our economic outlook. We can also look at the devastating effect China has had on Australia with its embargo on critical Australian exports, which has undermined Australia's economic stability during COVID.
Therefore, with some of our partners, we need to be wary of trade being used as weapon. After COVID, we will need stable, dependable and robust trade. It will be critical for Canada, as some countries will race to gain even greater strategic advantage in their recovery. The key to defending against those who would seek to use trade as a weapon and to secure our recovery is to minimize our vulnerabilities and diversify and balance our trade, placing greater emphasis on relationships with countries that share our values, defence and security priorities and unwavering respect for the rule of law.
That is why our trade with the U.K. must be a priority. The U.K. is Canada's fifth-largest trading partner behind the U.S., EU, China, Mexico and Japan. We export considerably more to the U.K. than we import from it, but of the $19.8 billion we export, over 64% is gold, and we only represent 1.98% of the U.K.'s exports.
There are lots of opportunities for us to expand our exports to and imports from the U.K., but with our exports being significantly more than our imports, one could argue that we continue to need the U.K. to buy from us more than they need us to sell to them. That is the downside. It makes us vulnerable, but the upside is that there is a great opportunity to expand and mitigate that.
While the focus of the government at the moment, and our country, must be on vaccine acquisition and distribution, it is not the only thing we need to be focused on. I know that we are capable of doing more than one thing at a time. We need to prepare. We need to leverage our current trade opportunities and to broaden them with the U.K.
First of all, we need to start by developing a comprehensive plan and to include the provinces. We need to include businesses and we need to ask for broad consultation and to identify what those core capabilities are where we can use the trade agreement that we have right now and broaden it. We need to basically ensure that the government plays a key role in facilitating and supporting businesses as they expand into those new markets.
We absolutely need a dedicated minister of international trade. We need more trade representatives who are focused on all regions of the U.K. and northern Ireland. We need to ensure that we have dedicated programs and infrastructure to support and facilitate Canadian businesses to understand where the opportunities are in those markets.
We have a trade agreement. We need to find and figure out how we are going to leverage that trade agreement to turn it into real jobs and business opportunities. It does not happen without effort. It is something that we need to focus on now and we need to have key dedicated government, provincial and industry representatives to be able to get there.
We also need to start working on negotiating the key areas of the next comprehensive agreement. One thing that is missing from this agreement is a dispute resolution framework. Even though we are great friends with the U.K., we need a comprehensive structure that tells us how these things will be worked out if were ever to find ourselves in a dispute.
We do need to jointly address how we would deal with non-tariff trade barriers. Perhaps we need to think in terms of economic alliances, the same way that we look at defence and security alliances. Perhaps we need to unite when one adversary is not abiding by trade agreements when we have trade agreements with other people. That gives us the ability to have a greater influence to change and alter that behaviour.
Perhaps we also need terms to address potential nationalistic and centric policies. We are in an emergency and we have seen countries invoke their defence production acts, but with us largely dependent on international global supply chains, perhaps we need to look at broadening and thinking about, in advance, how we would mitigate those buy American policies or, if there were ever, a buy U.K. type of policy. Could Canada be included as part of that umbrella with the U.K. and address it in that manner?
We need regulatory alignment for existing areas like health, and perhaps vaccines, where we would look at the process that the U.K. goes through to approve and monitor a vaccine and perhaps rather than us having to do it again ourselves, because we were part of it or jointly reviewed it or agreed to the same regulatory conditions, we would be able to facilitate it faster in our country because we have shared regulatory alignment that we have negotiated in advance. We need streamlining for businesses and professionals who want to do things or emerging—