International Trade committee  There are no specific requirements in that regard, although we do have provisions under the environmental co-operation agreement that we would co-operate on various issues related to climate change, even though we did get a significant amount of resistance from the U.S. on issues related to climate change.

International Trade committee  Yes. Well, certainly softwood lumber has been a difficult issue between us and the U.S. for many, many years, as you're well aware. With respect to the existing NAFTA and the new NAFTA, the agreement stipulates that there is free trade between Canada and the U.S. on softwood lumber products.

International Trade committee  Absolutely, these are binding requirements. If one of the other parties does not comply with the obligations—a number of which I've just set out, but there are various others as well—we can pursue a dispute settlement case against them.

International Trade committee  No. My view would be absolutely not.

International Trade committee  No, but we do that as a matter of course.

International Trade committee  I can assure you that if we were to engage in any negotiations with a non-market economy under the obligations of this agreement such as they are, we would certainly be providing Canadians and Canadian parliamentarians with all of that information long before we'd provide it to the U.S.

International Trade committee  There would be no question that it would be provided to Canadians first.

International Trade committee  It's not set out in the same terms, because the terms of this provision are very specific, but I can assure you that we would be—

International Trade committee  These terms are legally binding in international—

International Trade committee  I'm not aware of any specific act—

International Trade committee  —but there would not be any scenario that I could imagine where we would give any foreign country our obligations in an agreement, or the results from an agreement to a foreign country, in advance of giving them to Canadians, including to Canadian parliamentarians.

International Trade committee  Well, it's certainly not for us to say whether there needs to be a legal obligation or not. The only assurance I can give is that we would not be providing anything to a foreign entity prior to providing it to Canadians.

International Trade committee  Certainly with this agreement we made significant advancements when it came to environment. Under the existing NAFTA, there is no chapter on environment; it was in a side agreement. We now have a full chapter in the agreement. It is subject to dispute settlement, so we can take cases against it under the dispute settlement process that applies to the entire agreement.

International Trade committee  We haven't done any kind of quantitative economic analysis, any kind of modelling of what that would mean. I think it's going to be something we won't really start to see the impact of until the rules come into effect. I think without a doubt the rules of origin on autos are going to encourage further production within North America of both inputs to the auto sector and the autos themselves.

International Trade committee  There was a lot of focus, in those negotiations on the rules of origin, on trying to encourage and incentivize further production within North America. When you take into account elements like the labour value content...in particular bringing production back to the U.S., and because we're in the same kind of category, back to Canada as well.