International Trade committee  For the bulk of the agreements that does work. The negotiations are usually about exceptions. Even in our agreement with the United States we have exceptions written in on agriculture and things like log exports. You can get hung up on the exceptions. In many of the agreements we

International Trade committee  It would be helpful to the process if the government and the bureaucracy could get unanimous direction from committees like yours to change their approach, be more pragmatic, and focus on agreements and not differences.

International Trade committee  I think the Pacific gateway project is extremely important, starting with China, going through Hong Kong, and right down to India. The more effort and resources we put behind that initiative the better it will be for Canada, because it's generating goodwill. You've heard that Ca

International Trade committee  Well, it can, sir. We've been trying to negotiate with three Caribbean countries, Latin American countries, at the same time. They coordinate and work together. You try to provide the same type of agreement for all three. With ASEAN, they can work as a group and coordinate. It's

International Trade committee  Mostly, sir, because it takes time to negotiate them. I think Canada has negotiated, on a pretty ambitious scale, FIPAs around the world. There are a number of others currently under negotiation. The United States and Canada have models of these agreements, which they use, but no

International Trade committee  The FIPAs tend to provide investor protections. What they are is an insurance policy to ensure that the investor is treated fairly, and also as if they were an investor of the domestic country. So they tend not to have permanent secretariats on these agreements, because it's a fr

International Trade committee  There's potential for two-way trade in food and agriculture. We've had discussions. We've had round tables, talking to people from ASEAN about what we can do to help them in terms of improving food quality and food cleanliness, and in meeting standards. There's a good potential f

International Trade committee  I think so. Indonesia is very interested in expanding trade with Canada. We've had chats with the ambassador and his people. In terms of a market, it's the biggest potential market that we have in ASEAN, because there are so many people there. Indonesia is like many of the count

International Trade committee  I don't have any recent exposure to it. I haven't been there for a few years.

International Trade committee  Mr. Cardin, I think it could potentially cause problems in consistency if we were pushing to have other people open up their health and education services when we want to keep ours on the restricted list. When I look at medical opportunities, though, in Southeast Asia, Thailand i

International Trade committee  Well, building relationships in Asia tends to take longer than it does in other places, so you have to have people there to help you build the relationships. Once you make the relationships, they tend to last a long time. It's a building of trust, so you have to have people on th

International Trade committee  If there's resistance to doing it in a bloc...the United States hasn't done it in a bloc, which may well have something to do with their relations with Myanmar. But the United States is doing it country by country. They're dealing with Thailand and with others within ASEAN.

International Trade committee  My comment about China was in the context of the Doha Round negotiations, where I indicated that if anybody made a concession on a manufactured product, China would probably benefit more than anybody else because of its positioning. My view is that free trade between Canada and C

International Trade committee  As far as Brazil goes, I think it could expand its trade with Canada if it wanted to. It really doesn't want to because it prefers to keep MERCOSUR whole. It doesn't want to see the MERCOSUR countries picked off one by one, by the United States or by Canada. They want to consolid

International Trade committee  I think it would be useful to focus on countries in ASEAN. If it's difficult to do it with all of them—and there are quite divergent abilities to take on free trade agreements within the ASEAN—we could adopt a bit of the American approach, which is to deal with them country by co