International Trade committee  CUPE represents 700,000 workers across Canada. I work for the national office here in Ottawa. I think the national office includes about 600 people who work for the national union.

International Trade committee  There are regulatory changes around intellectual property, cultural protection, or extension of copyright that will have an economic impact. The past three deals were mostly about tariffs, so you could model what a 1% change to different tariffs would mean, and that was more str

International Trade committee  Whomever we wanted to meet with—

International Trade committee  —we got to meet.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. There can be more progress in terms of making that process mandatory so that it's not a one-off, including legislators, and making the impact assessment earlier on. As for the United States, it's actually in their fast-track legislation; there are timelines for when

International Trade committee  But there was no opportunity between the signing of the deal and its ratification to give any more feedback, as happened in the U.S.

International Trade committee  That's just the difference in our process.

International Trade committee  No. I think it's still a failed trade model that doesn't benefit workers. It benefits the most powerful and hurts the least powerful. There is no distributional impact here on how this trade deal will affect people who have a lot of money and power versus people who don't. Howev

International Trade committee  That's a very good question. I think it's good that there is the C.D. Howe estimate so that we can compare that with the government estimate and show what the different assumptions were. Often, whenever you're doing economic analysis, it really depends what your assumptions were

International Trade committee  They would have calls, but there would be very little information in the call. It would be after the round, and there really would be no opportunity to give input until after the parliamentary process had happened. The process still hasn't changed to allow input earlier on.

International Trade committee  Absolutely, the government—the public servants who were responsible for setting negotiating priorities and doing negotiations—reached out and met with labour as a group. They met with civil society as a group. Then they said that if you wanted to reach out with regard to a partic

International Trade committee  Yes, that domestic process definitely needs to be strengthened. In many trade deals or under the OECD rules, we have a national contact point where they can offer good offices. If there's a disagreement, they can say they'll provide a neutral place to meet. However, there's no po

International Trade committee  Because of the goodwill, it happened, but....

International Trade committee  There is a unique side agreement with Mexico that deals with they what they call “yellow unions”. The rapid response mechanism is between Canada and Mexico, and between the United States and Mexico; it doesn't apply between Canada and the United States. So there are those two par

International Trade committee  This is a difficult issue. The United States has a much more transparent process that includes legislators. Canada doesn't have that. There's also a process in the United States whereby lobbyists, or people who want to be included in the consultation process, can get clearance to