International Trade committee  I apologize, but I did not understand the member's question. I would prefer to hear his question once again in the language that he used, be it English or French. Unfortunately, I did not understand the question.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon everyone. I would like to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to talk about the potential free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union. I will limit my comments to four or five points. This accord is v

International Trade committee  Obviously, you know that I don't think so--

International Trade committee  Well, I have an answer. On the language you find in this agreement, which is committing to extending the arrangement of quick talks to extend the agreement or to consultation on a very expedited basis if there are problems that arise from this agreement, this type of language is

International Trade committee  Yes, and we have to go back a long way, to 1933. This is at the very heart of the Buy American clause, as defined by the Roosevelt administration at the time. They established three protection levels, literally in order to give American suppliers an advantage over foreign supplie

International Trade committee  They certainly are. The 50% level is used for military contracts. I did not mention this earlier, but the 6% and 12% levels are used depending on the project. This is the Buy American protection. In other words, if a foreign company can get over that—because it is more competitiv

International Trade committee  Yes, it does.

International Trade committee  Previously.

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. First, it was certainly not my intention to drop a bombshell. But I did want to draw committee members' attention to the significance of this agreement that is not on the same scale as the softwood lumber agreement or the free trade agreement, for exa

International Trade committee  Thank you for this question. I may have misspoken myself, but I never ever said we should retaliate.

International Trade committee  Yes. Thank you for that. Yes, I do see some parallels. Unfortunately, this agreement is only the second-worst agreement that Canada has ever signed. The first one was the softwood lumber agreement. My testimony four years ago before this committee is still available, I suppose.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, sir. It is always very difficult to conduct negotiations on a single topic when there is only one party asking. Around the same time last year, when we approached the United States to “solve” the Buy American problem, Canada was clearly the underdog. The Uni

International Trade committee  There is no better agreement that we could have got. You also mention the lack of data. I pointed that out myself in my opening statement. It does not surprise me too much, because data like that is hard to get. That is really the crux of the problem. You can bid on government p

International Trade committee  In the first free trade agreement, in NAFTA, there are paragraphs that are exactly like the ones that were included in the Buy American agreement; it says that we will take time to negotiate the expansion of everything, and nothing has come of it. And, given that understanding, t

International Trade committee  No, forever.