International Trade committee  Again, I would say that the work we do is again reflective of our domestic regime. We're also basing our activities on the work of extensive consultations with Canadian stakeholders—industry, civil society, organized labour. We certainly have, as I said, put all our proposals on

International Trade committee  I think that with the work we're doing in the WTO, along with any other trade agreement, we are looking at creating a level playing field for all companies. In fact, the work that we do in terms of increasing certainty and predictability in our trade agreement outcomes pertains t

International Trade committee  The WTO initiative on electronic commerce, and I'll define it a little more broadly as digital trade, because sometimes e-commerce is conceived to be more narrowly about goods bought and sold online. We are talking about something much broader. However, the discussions are very m

International Trade committee  In fact, the trading services agreement negotiations were effectively suspended in November or December 2016. With the change of administration in the U.S., a decision was taken by the Americans to ask for more time to contemplate their position on this issue. To this end, they h

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. Quickly, I guess it's basically us trying to establish minimum standards with respect to domestic regulations in the sense of transparency and process-oriented matters. These are all the types of rules that would provide the kinds of standar

International Trade committee  Yes, this is much more basic. This is more about looking at licensing and certification matters and trying to ensure that the regimes for the members of the WTO provide a minimum standard of treatment with respect to these types of procedures. For instance, if you are in a profe

International Trade committee  Actually, standstill and ratchet do feature as part of the market access work that we're doing. That's basically one of the benefits we see in TISA, to the extent that in the context of national treatment, for instance, we don't have to come back to our negotiating table to deal

International Trade committee  It has really fallen under the broader development framework. What we are finding now is that the literature and the analysis related to these issues are catching up to the interests in these areas. It's kind of an interesting time, because now we have facts and statistics to wor

International Trade committee  TISA will certainly give some of our non-FTA partners improved understanding of and access to the Canadian marketplace, but in services all we are really talking about is increasing transparency in our existing regime. It's not going to have the same kind of effect as eliminating

International Trade committee  It's still part of the negotiations. Definitely one of our priorities is to promote Canadian engineering services as opportunities in TISA. Hopefully, we'll have an agreement one day that sees that realized.

International Trade committee  If the question relates to what the government is doing in terms of progressive trade elements in TISA, yes, there are actually some of those features in our approach. In fact, we were one of the first to operationalize something with respect to work on domestic regulations. In t

International Trade committee  Sure.

International Trade committee  In terms of the international education and training front, it's certainly something the department recognizes. It's not so much what we would do in the trade policy context; it's more something in the international business development or trade promotion context, where there's a

International Trade committee  It has to be a short answer.

International Trade committee  That's correct, so we work with the provinces and territories with respect to commitments that we make in this regard. Part of our process in tabling any type of offer is to do it in close conjunction with the provinces and territories.