International Trade committee  Good morning. I'm Glen Hodgson. I'm vice-president and chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada. I have a checkered career, having served at the federal Department of Finance, Export Development Canada, and also at the International Monetary Fund. This is one of my fav

International Trade committee  Jay's done a great job of opening up the debate. In fact, rather than having six points, I can only make three, because I'm going to play off many of the comments he's made. First of all, I should tell the committee that the Conference Board is very close to publishing the bigge

International Trade committee  Perhaps I can take on both points. First of all, I think all of us around the table would agree that multilateralism is the best option, so why is it not happening? I hate to disappoint you, but my own view is that the Doha Round will not restart until there's a new U.S. Pres

International Trade committee  Mr. André, I will answer in English if I may since I'm not as good in French. You've just identified the fundamental problems of any sector, any region, that has relied upon protectionism historically. It's a vicious circle. It's a vicious circle because the more you protect, th

International Trade committee  No. I'm talking about subsidizing existing industries in order that they can keep doing things behind protective walls.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take a slightly different tack. I agree with Mr. Julian that there is a fundamental issue in globalization. It's the changing shares going to capital and to labour on a global basis. The data in Canada show that family real living standards haven't rise

International Trade committee  I have talked a bit previously, so I'll be very brief. Effectively, I think we have to think of the world in three big blocs right now. There's the North American bloc, where we're very lucky to live in arguably the best neighbourhood in the world. Ben's absolutely right. Our f

International Trade committee  Following along the same thought, you're absolutely right, relationships matter, but so do the rules, and so do things like air routes and transportation linkages. We have the benefit of being a settled country. We have immigrants from around the world. Arguably we have not taken

International Trade committee  I wanted to close, in fact, by picking up on Mr. Williams' comment. In fact, Ben and I did a paper together as co-authors, because he worked with me at the Conference Board last year. It was a paper on services exports. It's ironic; we've talked for an hour and a half now and we

International Trade committee  Yes, in five minutes.

International Trade committee  Thank you for the opportunity.

International Trade committee  It's a preview.

International Trade committee  It's in their own words, of course, because they're trying to reach a bigger audience than we normally aim at.

International Trade committee  And that's the frustration, because it really is two solitudes to a great degree right now, in the north-south context, around security. We put all of our weight on economic interests and they put all of their weight on security, and it is frustrating. I lead a team at the board

Finance committee  Actually, Mr. Chairman, can I make four brief comments to open, because we've had a chance to hear from Mr. Lee, and I thought I'd say a couple of things about our perspective on the world. Message number one is on the U.S. outlook. We actually have not called for a U.S. recessi