International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a prepared statement to give to today to kick off our discussion. I'd like to start by thanking you for inviting me and my colleagues to join you today to update this committee on the recently signed trade agreement, the comprehensive and progres

International Trade committee  The obligations under the agreement on investor-state dispute settlement have not changed. Any citizen of a country can take a dispute through the investor-state dispute settlement process. The only difference in the new agreement is that, as driven by the United States, the or

International Trade committee  It's a good question. When we originally were discussing this provision and the proposed suspension, there were clearly a few members around the table whose primary interest was to see the United States return to the CPTPP, or to the TPP. They felt that we needed to set up an e

International Trade committee  All parties have to agree, not just parties that have ratified the agreement, but all parties to the agreement.

International Trade committee  That's unclear. If the United States were to come back, with seven countries having ratified the agreement, whether the non-ratifying countries would be a part of that discussion—

International Trade committee  —to be honest with you, that's still an open question.

International Trade committee  I was there on the ground in Da Nang, Vietnam, and I can tell you that the Prime Minister of Canada was not a no-show at that meeting. There was a misunderstanding. He had a bilateral meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, during which he explained that Canada was not ready to

International Trade committee  The CPTPP rules and provisions apply to the 11 parties. The United States is not a party to the agreement.

International Trade committee  No, that's not the case. We often have overlapping trade agreements. Countries have an option to abide by the rules—by one or the other. In the case of NAFTA, for example, the rules of auto trade, the rules of origin on autos, would be governed by the NAFTA agreement, not by the

International Trade committee  We will treat the United States, if it indicates a serious interest to accede to the CPTPP, as we would any other potentially acceding country. There's no special fast track for the United States' accession. We would meet as a group to explain to any potential acceding party that

International Trade committee  We made a conscious decision at the outset to not reopen the text of the agreement, and specifically to not reopen market access. Our collective belief was that if we started to open up the texts and the market access provisions, the whole process would unravel. Similarly, we ha

International Trade committee  Malaysia.

International Trade committee  In the original agreement, we would have been able to meet the 45% rule of origin for the value of an automobile, given that a significant number of parts sourced from the United States would be counted in a Canadian-made vehicle. Without the United States in the agreement, we co

International Trade committee  As I mentioned a few minutes ago, we had come to the decision that we were not able to reopen the market access provisions of the agreement. The side letters that you referred to with Australia and Malaysia were just intended to level the playing field. With regard to Japan, yes

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely. We would like to export more cars from Canadian vehicle manufacturers to the Japanese market. The purpose of our side letter was because through our consultations, Canadian vehicle manufacturers explained to us that, since there is no automobile tariff to export