International Trade committee  I would argue that the better Latin American immigrants do in Canada, the greater a win-win situation there is. Why is that, precisely? The remittances--which are now a very hot topic in developmental economics--from the U.S. and now from Canada back to Central America particular

International Trade committee  Yes, I think there is uniform unanimity on that. Some people involved in exporting have said, for example, that EDC does a very good job, but it is not geared towards the SMEs. That may be something the committee may want to look into, in terms of the financial and program suppor

International Trade committee  Yes. I actually wrote a piece on that last August in The Globe and Mail. This is an interesting antidote to Chavez, to a certain extent. What I have said is—and it is not private inside information—Raul Castro is an admirer of China and Vietnam, and actually convinced his brother

International Trade committee  Because of language and the like, and culture, which is quite funny, because at that time Latin Americans probably felt a lot more favourable towards many other European countries or countries other than Spain. There was no huge love between Latin Americans and the Spaniards, at

International Trade committee  There are books on it and people who are much more versed in how the Spaniards did it, but there was a complete package of fiscal, financial, trade...a whole series of policies that were implemented. I'm not versed enough to lay out chapter and verse as to what each one was. But

International Trade committee  I lived through that, and I know that when we were doing projects there was very close collaboration with the government. It was as if it were an extension of the company; it was hand in glove. You know, there was constant contact: Where are you going? What do you need for your p

International Trade committee  Right. Just to give a bit of a background, I think Spain went into Latin America, one could argue, because it was a defensive measure. Now, the timing was propitious for Spain. Nonetheless, it was felt that it was something they had to do. There was an urgency to it.

International Trade committee  Well, there were several reasons. One was that the green papers were coming out in Europe, and Europe was going to face something that a lot of Europeans hadn't really seen before, something called competition. I think there was a big push to get out and start competing around th

International Trade committee  My understanding, and I'm not a complete expert on the export flows back and forth during the last number of years, is that there was still an increase of sorts until the late 1990s, when Latin America went through a very bad economic crisis. When you start to see the end of the

International Trade committee  Let me add that one of the things Canada has going in the hemisphere is that it's not the United States. For better or worse, the perception and image of the United States—although really not of the States necessarily per se.... At this point, a lot of it is a particular antipath

International Trade committee  This is a Chavez question and a Morales question. There are a number of different ways of answering it. Are you asking if it's something we should be worried about in developing economic relationships, or are you asking generally about what some would call the trend that Chavez

International Trade committee  Okay. There's no question that what Chavez is doing is somewhat problematic. There's an historical context for why Chavez is in power in Venezuela, unfortunately. But I think a lot of the hysteria in certain quarters about Chavez is a little bit overplayed, and I'd like to segreg

International Trade committee  Is the question whether Canada should adopt similar programs?

International Trade committee  First of all, I'm not that familiar with the Buy America program, although from what I understand, it's not as monolithic as people sometimes describe it to be, and there are plenty of people who still do business with the U.S. despite that. It sounds more draconian than it actua

International Trade committee  I'm sorry, do you mean write the plan for...?