Foreign Affairs committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair. Hello, everyone. Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear again. I have no idea how much time I have, but I am sure it will be enough. So yes, from western Canada you will get an introduction and a welcome in French. I

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me make the case very quickly. When we use the terms “bank” and “infrastructure”, people automatically go to financing, but the term “bank” is used more in the sense of the Inter-American Development Bank or the World Bank. The bank has a financing function, but it also has a

Foreign Affairs committee  All countries subsidize agriculture, so let's take this away from the Americans, and let's talk about Canada and Canadian interests. Our interest is in having a dairy sector that can compete globally, that can do what Australia has done, what New Zealand has done. Look at China a

Foreign Affairs committee  Congress is varied. The difference between the administration and Congress is that you have several interests. It's not one person changing their mind every five minutes; it's a committee like this with different sections of the country, different interests, coming to a conclusio

Foreign Affairs committee  Also, there are the timelines. The administration says it wants to move quickly. It's 300 days statutorily under TPA: 90 days here, 60 days there, 150 days there, 75 days there. You can project this with the U.S. mid-term elections and the Mexican presidential elections, which ar

Foreign Affairs committee  The scale-up is part of it. It's the information. With the North American infrastructure bank the financing is a small element that we have with the Americans along the border. The bigger element is information. We talk about integrated supply and production chains. We don't know

Foreign Affairs committee  With trade infrastructure, so a border infrastructure bank.... I'm speaking only about trade infrastructure, not building sewage treatment plants or parks, but with trade infrastructure, the private sector is the majority funder of trade infrastructure. They are the owners of tra

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, but again, there are banks that focus on trade infrastructure, and there are banks that focus on domestic infrastructure. We have to be really careful with defining the terms of the conversation.

Foreign Affairs committee  This is the importance of the trade agenda for Canada and our prosperity, our future growth. We currently have only one trade agreement on the other side of the Pacific. We are in second to last place on this side of the Pacific in terms of trade agreements with Asia. I think Ecu

Foreign Affairs committee  Oh, yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  What exactly is the tax called? The actual term is something like “distance-adjusted tax”. This is a subject on which I'm going to admit to being completely confused. You've heard the old joke about how you'd like to meet a one-handed economist, because an economist will say “o

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I can imagine.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are two trusted traveller programs in North America. One is a bilateral program between Canada and the United States. The other system is managed by the United States and applies to Mexico. Mexico has in fact declined the U.S. invitation to create a bilateral system south

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for bringing that up. This is an issue that's been troubling several of us. There has been one piece in the Canadian press on this, but I'm glad that it's coming to attention. You've read the recent piece we had on the Canada West Foundation blog about this. This real

Foreign Affairs committee  This is going to seem to counter what I said earlier, but I don't know that there's much that we can do other than open the door for Canadian business by signing good trade agreements, by putting them on the same level playing field as their competitors. The issue we have is that