International Trade committee  No. That would have decimated the industry.

International Trade committee  I don't know. It's probably that history and blood and all of those types of things keep us in Truro and keep us in the province of Nova Scotia. Really, my father sat on the tribunal for NAFTA and he left that tribunal for two reasons. One was that he had to go and rebuild the c

International Trade committee  The products would be distributed only in Canada because they're duty-free, so if we were to look at the U.S. market and a cross-dock, we would look at a more preferred nation there, but Canada is probably one of the most preferred nations of manufacturing apparel products into t

International Trade committee  I'm not really.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I don't feel threatened by the deal, because we've been in Nova Scotia for 160 years. We've been through free trade agreements that allow countries access by Canada. I think that the world has been levelled to a certain degree, and we have to be competitive in nature to solve a u

International Trade committee  We principally sell our products in Canada, but basically in North America. How can we utilize our quick-to-market strategy to expand our business? Well, we own two U.S. companies as well. We have about 225 employees in the U.S and two factories, one on the east coast and one on

International Trade committee  That's a good question, and it's one that we face every day. Our competitors are all very global. They have manufacturing platforms throughout the world. What we have available to us in Canada is a quick turnaround and distribution play. We were vertical from the year 1 forward,

International Trade committee  Yes, I think so, as long as the skilled labour includes the people who sew, because that's a skill. In the modern world, that's not a skill. A skill is how you integrate technology into your mobile phone or how you integrate technology into a car and these types of things, but ma

International Trade committee  We have not accessed that program. We accessed it once when we could not find a department head for our textile department. We went through that program and brought a person in from Pakistan who had skills in that area. I think that largely it all comes back to the availability o

International Trade committee  I thought it was not right that the whole thing blew up when the Royal Bank was using foreign workers. There are companies like ours that live in rural areas and need access to labour. Maybe it's not the use of temporary workers, but there is some other moniker that could be used

International Trade committee  There are too many Stanfields. Good morning. I am Jon Stanfield, president of Stanfield's Limited North America. We are an apparel manufacturing company primarily focused on men's, women's, and industrial safety base layers, or what we call underwear. We have several brands tha