International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, we thank you for inviting us to this meeting. We'll try to give you a brief overview of international trade policy, then answer your questions. Let me begin by referring to two base documents that set out Canada's trade policy. The first is a speech Minister Emerson delivered on International Trade Day, June 8, 2006, entitled, “Shaping a Global Commerce Agenda for Canada”.

International Trade committee  I would say there are considerable similarities between where we are in the Doha Round now and where we were in the Uruguay Round in 1991, when we went to Brussels for a ministerial conference that was supposed to lead to the conclusion of that negotiation. In fact the negotiations broke off, and there was a two-year hiatus before we could return in 1993, when some major agricultural issues were settled.

International Trade committee  A multilateral agreement would be an agreement among all the members of the WTO, all 149 members. A plurilateral agreement would be an agreement among a number of members, but less than all of the membership of the WTO. There are agreements within the WTO that are plurilateral, such as on government procurement, which only some members of the WTO have signed on to.

International Trade committee  Yes. I think we're impinging on an area where we're being asked what is the bottom line of our negotiating instruction when we're in the middle of negotiations. I don't think officials are in a position to say in a public forum what our bottom line is going to be. The negotiations evolve, and ministers will have to be consulted constantly, and ultimately it will be a ministerial decision—it won't be an official's decision—as to what we accept or what we put on the table at the end of the day.

International Trade committee  As relates to phytosanitary and sanitary issues, the Doha mandate does not include SPS or technical barriers to trade agreements that are WTO agreements. Not every subject within the realm of the WTO, or every agreement from the Uruguay Round outcome of the WTO, is a part of the mandate of the Doha Round negotiations.

International Trade committee  In the market access opportunities for least developed countries, which is the initiative you're referring to you that was agreed in Hong Kong, 97% was the number insisted on by two of our trading partners, the United States and Japan. That was as far as they could go in offering duty-free, quota-free access to least developed members.

International Trade committee  The negotiations are in a very difficult situation and we have a very short time to reach agreement on some very major items, starting with agriculture and NAMA, because we didn't meet the Hong Kong deadlines for agreement on the modalities that would be the basis on which those negotiations could be concluded in detail—the formula reductions, and the terms of export subsidy elimination, in the case of agriculture.

International Trade committee  NAMA includes industrial products, and also fish and forest products. We believe that all Canadian exporters in the non-agriculture sector would stand to benefit and that we, as an economy, as well as individual exporters, would stand to benefit by having the opportunity to diversify exports to the markets beyond the United States where we don't enjoy preferential access and where we still face very high tariffs.

International Trade committee  Examples in the European and Japanese markets would be forest products, fish products, non-ferrous metals; in the major developing countries, examples would include many manufactured industrial products, such as aircraft, automotive parts, and pharmaceuticals. There are lots of examples and lots of opportunities for Canadian exporters to enhance access in a whole range of markets.

International Trade committee  Thank you. Allow me to answer in English because I'm more comfortable with the key words and technical terms in English. Concerning the formulation of the government's position, the government's objectives in the negotiation are in the public domain. They are set out in papers that are published on a WTO website at DFAIT, and the AFC also has a website directly relating to the WTO.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Chair. We thought that in the interest of time we would simply introduce ourselves and our roles in the WTO negotiations, and dispense with opening statements to allow you to get directly to questions on the interests of most direct concern to you. However, if you want us to give an overview of the three subjects that are the focus of your meeting this afternoon, we can do so.

International Trade committee  All right. I'm Terry Collins-Williams, director general, multilateral trade policy bureau in DFAIT. Within the WTO negotiations I'm the deputy chief negotiator and the lead negotiator for NAMA.