International Trade committee  That there should be what negotiations? I'm sorry, I missed the second part.

International Trade committee  The auto—

International Trade committee  As far pre-negotiations go, I don't know if it's something you pre-negotiate or if it's just something you say. You say to another country, “I may be interested in a free trade agreement with you, but not in the area of auto”. That's not necessarily something you have to negotiat

International Trade committee  I think the negative list approach reflects a higher degree of faith in the assumed efficiency and mutuality of a free trade agreement. If you start from the assumption, as is embodied in those economic simulation models, that free trade will naturally benefit both sides through

International Trade committee  Again, I think that's a crucial question to the future prosperity of our country, because the problem with being a hewer of wood and a drawer of water and a scraper of bitumen—I guess that would be the extra phrase to add to it today—is that the resources run out, world prices ar

International Trade committee  When you say “Canada's auto industry” in a global setting like that, you're referring to other global companies that are actually not based in Canada. It would be the decision of companies that manufacture in Canada, like General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda—the five glo

International Trade committee  Whatever it is, the fact is that we don't sell anything there.

International Trade committee  I did look at the section of the joint study that very briefly summarized findings of the CGE modelling done on both sides, some in Japan, and some in Canada. Then they developed a range of estimates, like other CGE models of a trade agreement, based on the assumption of full emp

International Trade committee  Yes. It is kind of standard practice now for governments that are negotiating free trade to commission an economic study, as was done in the Canada-Japan case, based on the use of what's called computable general equilibrium models, or CGE, which is the acronym in economics. I

International Trade committee  Oh, I'm sorry.

International Trade committee  You know what they say: an economist always has two arms, because we always say “on the one hand” and “on the other hand”.

International Trade committee  That's a very important question, which cuts to the centre of why Canada's trade performance has been so disappointing in recent years, even though we have accelerated considerably our extraction and export of our raw resources. First of all, in terms of the Canadian Manufacture

International Trade committee  Yes, certainly. That's kind of an example of the sorts of policy tools that are available and that should be applied to all our global champion industries, whether they are auto, aerospace, biotech, pharmaceuticals, or any other high-value sectors where we can succeed in global

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with your committee by video conference from Toronto. I see that it's blue sky behind me. Rest assured that it's not blue sky in real life. That's a backdrop to make Toronto look pleasant, whi

Finance committee  First of all, there's been a very wide range of risks to the real purchasing power of Canadians' savings, and I would suggest volatility in the inflation rate is near the bottom of the list compared to what's happened in financial markets, the value of assets, and so on. But my