International Trade committee  In a word, yes.

International Trade committee  I might just add a word to that, if I may. I'm also a university chancellor, and one of the things we need is a much better dialogue between the business sector and our educational sector in terms of looking at what the demands are going to be in the future, what sorts of needs there are, how we can better prepare people for entry into the workforce, how we ensure that the skills we're producing are skills that we can use productively.

International Trade committee  We'll get him to pay for it. Our future lies in the global stage. We either go out after global markets or else the world is coming here after our markets. It means then that we have to prepare ourselves both in terms of the training of young Canadians and in terms of the business strategies that businesses have.

International Trade committee  If you're looking for a quantified figure, I can't give you a quantified figure.

International Trade committee  The downside is very clear and it was what I alluded to earlier. We're looking to attract investment into Canada, particularly in our manufacturing sector. We want plants located in Canada. Part of our pitch is that we have a free trade agreement with Europe, we're in NAFTA, and a plant located in southwestern Ontario has access without tariffs to those markets.

International Trade committee  Absolutely.

International Trade committee  Yes. Let's just come back for one second to automotive, in particular, and manufacturing. We've had an issue in Canada long before any discussion of TPP where we have not been able to attract those new manufacturing plants. We need to have a manufacturing strategy for Canada. Core to that has be an automotive manufacturing strategy.

International Trade committee  We are also hearing, obviously, from the automotive sector and it varies. Some elements of the automotive sector are very strongly in favour of TPP; others are concerned about it. It's important to pull back though and take a look. The first decision that you have to make as parliamentarians is what the net interest for Canada is, on balance.

International Trade committee  Thank you for that very important question. At the time the FTA was done, the big issue was tariff barriers between Canada and the U.S., and when NAFTA was done, that was the same focus. We weren't looking at these new, fast-developing areas of the global economy. Increasingly, trade is being done as a result of information technologies over the Internet and through our ability to connect ourselves electronically with one another.

International Trade committee  Increasingly, growth in our GDP in Canada comes from the services sector. What we're seeing is a significant shift in terms of what generates economic activity in Canada, and that's the case in the world as well. It's an area where Canada does it well, where we have the opportunity to provide services in other parts of the world as a consequence, as long as we don't find that the global marketplace is partitioned.

International Trade committee  I would be glad to supply you some information about the studies. The bottom line is that these business associations wouldn't be here today if they didn't believe there was a net good for Canada. We would not be working against the interests of the Canadian business community.

International Trade committee  You raise an excellent question. Trade agreements open the door; they don't guarantee that somebody will go through the door. The challenge for us, and one of the areas that I hope this committee will focus on, is that once we have the agreement in place, how do we ensure that Canadian business takes advantage of it?

International Trade committee  Maybe I can take a crack at that one. Rather than looking at it in terms of a study, individual companies have looked at it in terms of their business plans. You were citing, for example, manufacturing particularly in southwestern Ontario. My home area, where I was raised and lived, was Fergus, which is 12 miles from Guelph, where Linamar is located.

International Trade committee  We met with the negotiators periodically, probably as many as 10 times throughout the course of the negotiations, so we received briefings. They responded to questions that we had. We were in touch from time to time with the minister as well, directly, and with his office, so that we were kept apprised broadly of the direction in which things were going.

International Trade committee  My answer would be a short one, not substantial differences from what exists today. What is striking to us as we look at it is how little will be required in changing Canadian domestic law. By and large it brings in an international regime that's consistent with what we have in Canada today.