Finance committee  It wouldn't take much for me to want to vote against the package itself, because it doesn't help the people who are the innocent victims in this process. Let me put it into perspective. The home improvement program, the one we call the Home Depot program, gets six times as much a

Finance committee  Thank you very much. I have with me our executive vice-president, Barbara Byers, who will comment quickly on pay equity. I wanted to focus my comments on employment insurance, or unemployment insurance--I still want to call it unemployment insurance, because it seems that whe

International Trade committee  I'm sure it would have an effect on our forest industry. Colombia has a big potential there. It will have an effect on manufacturing, if manufacturers are allowed to locate there without proper regulation. For example, in China they can build a coal-fired generating plant twice a

International Trade committee  Again, we have no idea, but based on our experience, there will be some. There will be some dislocation as a result of it. The second question we always ask is, what are the mitigations for the dislocation? As I said, if you ask Canadians what they think about the free trade ag

International Trade committee  Those are the facts so far. Those aren't speculations; those are facts.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. We think CIDA does an exceptionally good job for Canada around the world. We work very closely with CIDA on programs like that. It's a great step, but it's not the end. It's just a start in that country. If you got the facts when you were there, I'm sure you know that

International Trade committee  No, I don't think it does. The comment from Mr. Miller highlights that. Just because you get to go to Bogota, Colombia, on a junket to see a set-up from the government on what's happening.... It's not the real world. If you want to talk about what the real world is, you should go

International Trade committee  I keep asking the same question: how can we make a deal with people who don't respect human life? That's the point we want to keep making. To negotiate in good faith, you need people of good faith. When the behaviour of a government is such that human life, human rights, and envi

International Trade committee  I have no idea. We have no idea whether that's true or not. Who are they? How do they operate? Under what name do they operate? There are a lot of companies that operate by different names in different jurisdictions. We don't know.

International Trade committee  Upon reflection here, I think I would. There was one trade agreement we did like and that was called the Auto Pact, when we got to manufacture one car for every car that was sold in Canada. But you have to understand that the experience of our membership--if you look back 25 year

International Trade committee  No, and they're not trade agreements. Just as my friend Geoff illustrated, they're investment agreements. Investors have all sorts of rights to sue. There was the example of MMT. We banned MMT in gasoline in Canada. Investors sued and won, I think, $100 million from the Canadia

International Trade committee  Well, your question was about a trade agreement, and none of them yet have been good trade agreements for us.

International Trade committee  The agreement is about giving large Canadian-based transnationals the ability to do business in Colombia. It paves the way for them to do that. They're going into a regime where, if anyone seems to get in the way, they physically mow them down. They call them guerillas and attach

International Trade committee  It's rhetoric, and it doesn't add to the dimensions. Surely our government can bargain better deals than that for us. If they can't, we can come to the table and show them how. We do know how to negotiate agreements with employers and governments that respect what we need to hav

International Trade committee  Yes, it passed at our convention two weeks ago, where 2,000 delegates sat there for a week discussing issues like this.