International Trade committee  I don't really have any comments, other than to say, on your comment about the wine industry, much of the success of the wine industry has to do with the foibles of the EU and getting the appellation system set up. Canada was able to make a profit on that, but that's all I have to say.

International Trade committee  I'll be very quick with this, but there are two specific points I want to touch on that you brought up. In this whole issue with promoting growth and trade at home and having trade promotion, EDC is important, but there's also something we can do here to get companies to help themselves.

International Trade committee  Our measurement in terms of export market volatility is just standard deviation movements over the past ten years.

International Trade committee  So the U.S. is a relatively stable market, which is important for us. In terms of looking forward to where our over-dependence on the U.S. can lead to, if the U.S. market stumbles then we stumble too. To rectify that, there are not too many options because the other stable markets we're looking to are the EU and China, with which we're already doing our best to make deals.

International Trade committee  There are a few points I want to bring up. I think there's a bit of a misconception about our reliance on the U.S. A lot of the trade statistics overstate our reliance on the U.S. There was a C.D. Howe report written recently that addresses this issue. I'll just raise the points that were made.

International Trade committee  I want to go back to the issue of going after small markets, as a way of testing the waters in trade. This goes back to the comments I made initially and would fall into the category of Canada following its own bilateral deals. We want to decide whether these deals would be strategic, in the sense of creating a Canadian brand or style of trade agreement, or whether we'd just go after markets that are of economic importance.

International Trade committee  I do believe North America is the area where we're going to have the greatest productivity gains. Although we do have the NAFTA, there are still several non-tariff areas that need to be addressed, and one is regulatory harmonization. We're dealing with the U.S., but all of our small businesses that are trying to access the U.S. market are having to deal with so many barriers.

International Trade committee  Again, most of my points have been said. I think it's important to note that if we look at where would we be without NAFTA, it's pretty clear we'd be worse off. If we want to look at discrepancies in income or standard of living between the rich and poor in Canada, it's not so much NAFTA we need to address as it is our internal policies, such as our marginal tax rates on the working poor.

International Trade committee  When economists talk about the benefits of globalization, it's important to distinguish between the long-run and the short-run effects. Economists are usually talking about the long-run benefits. In the short term, there are going to be drawbacks such as the costs associated with reallocations and people having to move.

International Trade committee  I think the issues have been addressed. It's mainly that Canada needs to look at what areas it's protecting and it needs to be able to loosen up, to free up, the negotiations. It's already been said.

International Trade committee  I like that option. I just don't know if it's politically viable.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jayson and Glen and Michael have all talked about why trade is important for Canada and why we should be involved in these international negotiations. A lot of what I want to say has already been said, so I'll keep it brief. I wanted to start by outlining what I think are the five policy options we have in pursuing trade negotiations.

International Trade committee  My name is Ben Tomlin. I am a C.D. Howe Foundation fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute. I'm also a PhD candidate focusing on international trade and finance.