Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Thanks very much to the chair and to the committee for this chance to speak to you about the Biden administration's plan to tighten up the buy American and buy America rules. First, I'll tell you a bit about me. I currently direct the trade and investment research project at the

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Thank you, Mr. Oliphant, for the question. I'm not sure I would say that our assessment of the first buy America deal was nihilistic. I think that is not quite the right word. In terms of the leverage we have now with the Biden administration, I would say we should be working

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Savard-Tremblay. We talked about the steelworkers recently. The steelworkers have done some good work on this through Blue Green Canada. They have a proposal for sustainable purchasing at multiple levels of government. It would factor in things like the car

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  On things like renewable power, I think I heard Mr. Verheul propose that this is an area in which we might be able to get some kind of sectoral arrangement with the United States, rather than a full-on waiver for everything, which is probably unlikely outside of the buy American

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  If I understand your question with respect to the good regulatory practices chapter of the USMCA, the CUSMA, I suppose we'll have to see how that chapter works out in the end. There have been concerns raised by some U.S. businesses around how Canada's plastics management plan mig

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  It sounds like a good idea to me, and you're the expert on this, Mr. Masse. I would add the municipal governments to that mix as well; I think maybe you mentioned them. Especially when we're talking about procurement, this is an area where we saw during the CETA negotiations, for

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  I would say yes. A buy Canadian policy is probably out of the question at this point, given the commitments we've made recently in the CETA and other agreements, but, as we've been proposing and other unions have been proposing, there can be sustainability criteria attached to pu

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  It wouldn't strictly. We didn't seek, within the GPA or the WTO, a carve-out for those policies like the U.S. has. We don't have a carve-out or set-asides for minority-owned businesses or women-owned businesses. I don't see that as a reason not to pursue them. I don't think we sh

International Trade committee  To the chair and the committee, thanks very much for the opportunity to present today. I'm speaking in my capacity as a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It's a progressive policy research institute with offices in Ottawa and five other provinces. I'm g

International Trade committee  I'm not sure I have a great answer for that. From what I've seen and read, most of the time it's a question of proximity. Familiarity would be one of the reasons that we do a lot of business with the United States. Beyond that, I don't know. Given the government statistics, the

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. A couple of years ago, we at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives put out a report. The Canadian experience is that two-thirds of cases, investor-state dispute cases, brought mainly, almost entirely, by U.S. companies were against env

International Trade committee  Unfortunately, we don't have an “after” just yet, because we have the legacy clause in the new NAFTA. There are still some investor-state cases happening until July 2023, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that investment has decreased or increased since we dropped the mechan

International Trade committee  That's a good question. I didn't come prepared to talk about some of the mechanisms that are being considered at the UN, for example, but there is a UN treaty on business and human rights that has been in development for, I think, about 10 years now. Canada has been a bit on the

International Trade committee  Yes, I do believe that. Greenpeace, which we worked with on that press release, believes that as well. There are tariffs on palm oil, as far as I understand it, that would come down as part of the negotiations. That would almost certainly result in Canada importing more palm oi

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. I suppose it is in the region, but there was a case recently in Pakistan. Maybe members of the committee will have heard of it. It was Tethyan Copper, which involves Barrick Gold. This is a case where Pakistan was recently ordered to pay the company $