Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think governments past and present are doing exactly that. It took us six or seven years to get CETA in place, but as some people have mentioned here, there are probably some significant opportunities for Canada now that we have it. This government has announced th

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't know if I have any brilliant insights. Yes, of course, I think Canadians are modest and we're not very big on the landscape. The biggest problem, I suppose, is that we rarely cause any serious problems. I have a sign on my desk that says, “War is God's way of teaching u

Foreign Affairs committee  Sure. Let me take two aspects of that. The Chamber of Commerce has advocated carbon pricing for six or seven years now. We believe it's appropriate to try to price carbon so that people will use it where they can, and use it less, with the relative costs between carbon and other

Foreign Affairs committee  And we are, all of us, trying to break that landlock, aren't we?

Foreign Affairs committee  Above all else, before it was NAFTA, it was the Canada-U.S Free Trade Agreement. That was really the political dialogue that happened. If you recall, NAFTA slid in without a lot of controversy, whereas the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and the election around that, nearly kil

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't want to oversell our effectiveness so far. I think we're just trying to spool ourselves up a little bit. What we actually want to do is to talk to U.S. legislators in the presence of their own constituents about the relationship we have and the prosperity it has generated

Foreign Affairs committee  You know, all my life, Americans have protested against the decisions of the WTO when those go against them. It doesn't stop Americans from going to the WTO to petition against Chinese steel, for example, and fertilizer, and paint, and things like that. I have a view that is no

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't think we're going to lead with our chin on this. I want to make sure that we understand what the Americans are actually proposing before we start tilting against it. I think Mrs. Laverdière mentioned that the Americans don't have a VAT. They're one of just a handful of

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, there might be.

Foreign Affairs committee  Not in noisy ways. It's perhaps for the Europeans to[Inaudible--Editor]. This is the whole argument around country of origin, and the rules about that are arcane and very expensive to administer. Mr. Ross, the new commerce secretary, spoke a lot about tightening up the rules of o

Foreign Affairs committee  I have a couple of points. I agree with you, of course. There are at least five or six significant tax reform plans being proffered about Congress right now. Mr. Grassley has one and Mr. Brady has another. Obviously, Mr. Ryan has been out early with his proposals. It's too soon

Foreign Affairs committee  We hear those kinds of anecdotes now. Global Affairs says they track the numbers and that the numbers are down for those kinds of harassment things. By the way, that's not a legal action by that border guard. He's not entitled to deny anyone access to the United States.

Foreign Affairs committee  We do look forward to, and you heard the previous guest talking about, pre-clearance at land crossings. It does seem maddening that the same truck leaves the same plant with the same product heading for the same buyer driven by the same driver every day on behalf of Chrysler, Mag

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have a competence in this space, so I can't say anything useful. You've made the point. I think, in the imperial period of the United States in the fifties and sixties, Canada was seen as a helpful little brother for the military, and so it ended up with a separate path