International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much for the question. I'll try to be quick. I also desperately want to get in on a point that was raised earlier, so I'll try to slide that in as well. We're just getting spooled up now. Last summer, we spent some time at Global Affairs talking about a promotional program to get Canadian business properly supported, informed, and matched up to European partners and so forth.

International Trade committee  I think that's a really important question. Global Affairs has begun to talk to us about a promotion exercise that they would like us to participate in, and we certainly will. I think we need to not assume that a small business owner is dumb. They'll see opportunities if we provide support for them.

International Trade committee  I do. I think we have to be careful not to assume that we know about the complexities of every sector. It becomes quite complex. Already, Canadian parts are extremely significant in certain chunks of the European automobile market. In other words, we have some very strong winners.

International Trade committee  I think we all recognize that Canada enjoys a privileged position, and that gets more privileged if we have both free trade into Europe and free trade into the United States. No one else has that, so we're enthusiastic about the possibilities. The NAFTA dialogue that's starting in the United States obviously is a source of concern.

International Trade committee  I think Canada punches way above its weight in trade negotiation because we are such a trade-dependent nation. At least two-thirds of our economy is dependent on trade, so threats to trade are significant threats to us. Trade agreements have tended to be milestones on a path by which Canada has become one of the more effective trading nations in the world, and you can see that agreements....

International Trade committee  I think you're referring to the provisional process of—

International Trade committee  I'll beat my time. I'll be shorter than five minutes, I hope. I want to thank the committee very much for the invitation. I must tell you that over the last few years there have been plenty of times when we wondered if we would ever have a chance to be here on this legislation, so we're very delighted about it.

International Trade committee  On the offensive side, of course I believe Canadians will benefit from having recourse to the law, especially in the TPP nations that have not been all that respectful of property rights.

International Trade committee  I think trade remedy solutions are going to be part of every trade agreement. We're seeing a big fight in Europe and it's an odd one because Canada was not the demandeur on that one. I'm not quite sure how to handle your question. As long as a national government intends to deal with all players fairly regardless of their national origin, there's no particular concern.

International Trade committee  Many nations are involved now in the very parochial regulation of Internet, the data storage requiring local storage of data. There are privacy concerns for us, and it essentially nullifies the whole economic advantage of the cloud that we're all employing now. We're fairly aggressive promoters of free movement of data, and the TPP allows a framework that will lead that.

International Trade committee  Yes, thank you. There is almost no change to Canadian law as a result of TPP, an extension of authors' rights from 50 to 70 years, which at the Chamber of Commerce we would probably have supported anyway. We're very hawkish on IP. There is, as you know, a big debate about whether or not the TPP is somehow letting us down in respect of crafting the innovation culture that we need.

International Trade committee  No. Mr. Beatty will speak.

Finance committee  In that particular case, you need to give them a safety valve. You have to say that when you've sourced in your province and have sourced nationally and you have done it damn quickly and you can't get the people you need, we will allow you to bring in a specialist. I agree that the temporary foreign worker project was getting out of control with respect to the number of people coming in on low-skilled jobs, and I think both the previous government and this one are attacking that problem with issues of worker knowledge—that you are able to find where the jobs are—and as you pointed to, with support for mobility to get people to go and to take them on.

Finance committee  I don't want to indulge in nostrums, but I'm afraid they are applicable. Canada produces much more than Canada can use, so export trade is extremely significant. We're starting to see good numbers in the export businesses in eastern Canada, but we are not able to get our natural resources to market in many cases.

Finance committee  That is an interesting question. Thank you very much. The temporary foreign workers file is obviously a very hot one. There are at least five different categories of temporary foreign workers, and they're not all the same. A couple of years ago, when there was enormous public concern about it, I think most people were focused on the low-skilled workers who were doing jobs that most Canadians would be able to do.