Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  At this point Minister Garneau is exactly correct. The U.S. has not yet formulated its position on how it wants to deal with the issues of dispute settlement at the WTO. The big difference we see is that the Americans are open to a dialogue and are prepared to talk about it. They have made it clear that they have ongoing concerns they would like to see addressed with respect to the dispute settlement process, but at least we have the opportunity to start to talk about it and see if we can find some solutions.

International Trade committee  Well, there were changes. As I'm sure you know, there was an allocation given to departments, in terms of departmental budgets, and within that my own branch, as a relatively small proportion of that overall departmental budget, is allocated a certain amount every year. Now, through the course of the year, given that we have not been travelling as much, we have returned a fair amount of those funds.

International Trade committee  Well, I wouldn't say that entirely. I think that as we move forward we have been required to deal with some of the elements that we have to fulfill with respect to the implementation of new agreements. Particularly when it comes to the new agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, we do have additional duties that we have to perform, which will take additional people to perform them.

International Trade committee  Well, I can. I wouldn't have any difficulty doing that, but I will caution you that this is generally done at a departmental level rather than at a branch-by-branch level. I'm responsible for a branch rather than the department. What you would probably want to see is how things look at a departmental level rather than at some of the smaller branches.

International Trade committee  Yes. Certainly the negotiations that we're currently conducting with the U.K., as I mentioned, are on a transitional agreement that we can reach, which would try to preserve as many of the elements of CETA as we can as the U.K. moves out of the EU and into a relationship where it's no longer part of the EU.

International Trade committee  I don't think we can say anything other than we do have more work to do at home in particular. Interprovincial barriers are something that we need to address to ensure that as a country like Canada we can have the most coherent posture when we go to other countries and not be held back by barriers between provinces.

International Trade committee  I think we are in pretty good shape and we're doing what we need to do. Certainly with the kind of work that I do, we have the various trade agreements in place. We have those preferences. We have advantages in other markets for other countries. All of that is very well advanced.

International Trade committee  Well, I think I would have to say, and from my own personal experience too, that there's certainly no substitute for having face-to-face discussions. Whether you're trying to do negotiations or whether you're trying to do business, I think there's an extra element there that makes it that much easier to do those kinds of deals.

International Trade committee  Well, we're working with other parts of the department, obviously, because the key to achieve what you're talking about is really making sure that our domestic policy intersects properly with our trade policy. Now, we are in a fortunate position compared to many others, because we do have agreements with the European Union, and we have agreements with the Trans-Pacific Partnership—Southeast Asia, including Japan and others—and we have our agreement with the U.S. and Mexico.

International Trade committee  This is a departmental budget that operates as it has in the past.

International Trade committee  I think I'll start. Others will certainly have something to add to this. I think it's...particularly since we had a number of trade agreements coming into place. Certainly CETA was before COVID-19, as was CPTPP. The new agreement with the U.S. and Mexico came into effect during the pandemic.

International Trade committee  I think that's more likely to be in Sara Wilshaw's area than in mine.

International Trade committee  I'll start. We're not operating without a budget in the trade policy and negotiations branch. We do have our budget. We've had to make significant adjustments to our budget because we're not travelling as much as we used to and that's been a major portion of our budget. Without question, however, we're certainly operating within a budget for the course of this year.

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, I think the discussions we've been having with the U.K. have advanced considerably since we resumed discussions back at the end of the summer. We now feel that we're within range of agreement on an outcome to the transitional agreement that we've been talking about.

International Trade committee  Okay. It will be very short. The main challenge was that we were taking the CETA, which was an agreement with all of the EU members, and trying to convert it to a U.K. agreement only. That did require us to negotiate on some market access issues in particular, which meant separating what we had provided to the EU in CETA and converting that into what we would provide to the U.K. and what they would provide to us in a bilateral transitional agreement.