International Trade committee  Thanks, Vice-Chairs Hoback and Ramsey and honourable members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. As Vice-Chair Hoback mentioned, I'm CEO of the Council of the Great Lakes Region. We were established in 2013 as a binational non-profit working with governme

International Trade committee  It's a good question. I think when you look at the Great Lakes region, obviously it has a long-standing history of co-operation when it comes to the environment, dating back to 1909 with the Boundary Waters Treaty, the creation of the International Joint Commission, and more rece

International Trade committee  Thank you.

International Trade committee  That's a good question. I think the first thing we need to do as Canadian policy-makers is to accept that Mexico is an important and growing economy. In the years to come, it's going to be even better positioned to be a world leader in terms of global trade. I think we need to b

International Trade committee  I think when we look at border management generally in the Great Lakes region, we still see areas, whether regulatory co-operation or customs co-operation, in which we're not doing as much as we could be. On the regulatory side, the more we align and eliminate duplicative regulat

International Trade committee  Yes, and in a very simple response, I think the U.S. congressional service would agree with you wholeheartedly. In its report from February 2017, it said right up front that it's very hard to determine exactly what effect NAFTA has had on job creation, because of all those other

International Trade committee  I'm Canadian.

International Trade committee  It's coming along, but it's moving slow. My understanding with the president and CEO of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority is that they're in the process of moving forward with their RFPs. I think there are still outstanding questions about financing for the customs plaza on th

International Trade committee  I don't necessarily see it that way. The bridge was identified as a priority when the Prime Minister and the President met back in February. You have a Republican governor in Governor Snyder who's very supportive of the project and has been working hand-in-glove with the Canadian

International Trade committee  I haven't seen an immediate impact. The economy is moving along. I think there are two perspectives in the short term. One is making sure that we do no harm. If we're going to reopen NAFTA, let's really try to look at what we can do on the ground in terms of some of those cross-b

International Trade committee  To add very quickly, market diversification is obviously important for any international trade policy. It certainly doesn't happen overnight but I think in the long term as we're an export economy, it can only help. With respect to the United States around “Buy American, Hire A

International Trade committee  The multimodal pre-clearance agreement that was initiated and signed under Prime Minister Harper and President Obama, and I think moved into law more recently, shows great promise in terms of opening up the border from a technology standpoint, particularly on the movement of peop

International Trade committee  That's always a million-dollar question. When I get back to the two-speed economy, we always seem to be in a different place in our conversations with the U.S. versus the U.S. and Mexico. However, I think there's a lot that Mexico can learn on the regulatory co-operation side and

International Trade committee  There are lots in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Finance committee  Thank you, sir, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. As the record shows, my name is Mark Fisher. I'm the president and CEO of the Council of the Great Lakes Region. I'm also pleased to have with us today one of my board members, Rakesh Naidu, the COO of