International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I'll make a few comments on the negotiations and then go into questions. From time to time, I send a number of you commentaries on the state of play of the negotiations. I'd like to assure Ms. Guergis that I do believe the WTO is important, and

International Trade committee  The timing is bad, with elections in a number of places, including the United States, Brazil, and Europe. It might be a better time if you waited a couple of years, but if it does crash, that's going to force people to act. It does need reforms inside the system. You can't real

International Trade committee  I would have to say that having been a negotiator and having been in trade policy, you do try to keep these negotiations going, because they provide a discipline on policy-makers. They provide a discipline on domestic industry. If you don't think we're going to have problems, y

International Trade committee  It's a question of where the incentive is. There are a number of groups that have linked issues; for example, the United States and the European Union have made it quite clear they're linking what they're prepared to do on agricultural support to movement on market access and NAM

International Trade committee  We don't have any tariffs going into the United States; we're in a free trade area. The problem is the domestic support there and in Europe and other areas, which contributes to low world prices, particularly for grains and oilseeds. Until we get that sorted out, our farmers are

International Trade committee  Mr. André, the proposals put out by the United States and by the European Union regarding subsidies are interesting in terms of the numbers, but there is a lot of water in the numbers they're starting from, because the base is very high. There is some question as to whether or no

International Trade committee  Mr. Menzies, I may well have said it was dead at a breakfast, but it's like a cat--it keeps coming back. We've got Mr. Lamy around here. He has brought his dog-and-pony show to Ottawa or Kanata, or wherever he is this afternoon. He's trying to get people interested in it again,

International Trade committee  When I talked at the breakfast, we were part of G-1. G-12 is a big improvement. We are doing better, but we were bumped out of the quad, where we had an important role. We're a bit slow getting into our broader relationships. We're doing better now. I think the more we're able

International Trade committee  Let me explain. The trade promotion authority just means Congress will vote up or down on the deal: if they like it, they'll buy it, and they won't amend it. If they don't like it, they'll can it. That's the way it is. They're shaping it through the process, so they can buy it.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I consider that Canada's need to get closer to ASEAN on trade and investment, including a free trade agreement, is rather more urgent than Mr. Woo suggested. ASEAN is a very large potential market. It's becoming increasingly affluent, and the way that tr

International Trade committee  While I have seen some problems that Canada has caused in bilateral negotiations, I would have to applaud our negotiators for not accepting a second-best deal. There's no reason we should. And there's no reason we shouldn't try with ASEAN. Most of the other countries have a diffe

International Trade committee  As far as Brazil goes, I think it could expand its trade with Canada if it wanted to. It really doesn't want to because it prefers to keep MERCOSUR whole. It doesn't want to see the MERCOSUR countries picked off one by one, by the United States or by Canada. They want to consolid

International Trade committee  I think it would be useful to focus on countries in ASEAN. If it's difficult to do it with all of them—and there are quite divergent abilities to take on free trade agreements within the ASEAN—we could adopt a bit of the American approach, which is to deal with them country by co

International Trade committee  If there's resistance to doing it in a bloc...the United States hasn't done it in a bloc, which may well have something to do with their relations with Myanmar. But the United States is doing it country by country. They're dealing with Thailand and with others within ASEAN.

International Trade committee  My comment about China was in the context of the Doha Round negotiations, where I indicated that if anybody made a concession on a manufactured product, China would probably benefit more than anybody else because of its positioning. My view is that free trade between Canada and C