International Trade committee  Could I add something to that, but in plain language? What Mr. Van Harten is effectively saying is that because tribunals are not independent, because they're not like Canadian courts, and because arbitrators depend upon having cases referred to them, no arbitrator would decide a

International Trade committee  There are two possible explanations for why the Canadian government decided to settle rather than defend against this claim. One is that AbitibiBowater was in distress, the government wanted to provide some funding to it, and this was a convenient way to do that without creating

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. I am going to address the impact of Canada's decision to settle this claim under chapter 11 on public ownership and control of natural resources, and in particular, water, a principal concern of the Council of Cana

International Trade committee  Well, I don't accept your definition of them as trade barriers. When Ontario procured photovoltaic cells, it insisted that the company providing them had to create jobs in Ontario. Was that a good thing, in my view? Yes. When Ontario bought rolling stock for its transit system,

International Trade committee  We can disagree about the right policy--

International Trade committee  Yes, and I'm answering your questions. I'm saying that if you describe local preferences--that's what I'm talking about--as something that Europe has, China has, Japan has, but we don't have, then we should have them.

International Trade committee  I think there's a misapprehension about the Smoot-Hawley Act and what it was about. It was about international trade. Procurement isn't about international trade. The Buy American provisions we're complaining about were actually established during the New Deal in 1933, and the

International Trade committee  Well, I don't agree with your definition. It's not protection to say that our procurement market is open to everyone but whoever wins the contract will use recycled goods from our community in that process. That's not protectionism, by my definition.

International Trade committee  I don't agree that it's protectionism. I think we should--

International Trade committee  Well, I don't think the Americans are going to make more commitments under the WTO than they have already. There's been repeated reference to the commitments made by 37 states in the United States, but those states have reserved a whole variety of local set-asides and offsets and

International Trade committee  Well, listen, the temporary agreement expires in a year and a half. There isn't an awful lot of advantage in the commitments the U.S. has made already. So my answer to you, sir, would be if there is to be any advantage to be derived in procurement negotiations, either with the Un

International Trade committee  I think probably the single most important thing I would advocate is that there be transparency in the negotiation process. We learned of this agreement only after it was negotiated, because somebody leaked it to the civil society organization. That isn't the way for any governme

International Trade committee  I would answer the question this way. When U.S. stimulus spending came down the pipe, much was made of the Buy America provisions attached to certain federal spending programs. Many of those had been in place since the 1930s. But the federal government made a bold commitment to n

International Trade committee  Yes, but it has to preserve the right to do so. It has to protect its right to put those local preferences in place so that it can use the available tools to put people to work in Canada.

International Trade committee  I have considered that question. In my view, the loan agreements weren't problematic. But Canada's response is emblematic of the way in which it seems to approach negotiations with the United States, which is to cry uncle even before the fight really gets under way. We have leve