International Trade committee  We raise concerns about trade agreements. We don't take firm positions like that.

International Trade committee  I have a critical perspective on trade and investment treaties, and what I see in this negotiation affirms me in that view.

International Trade committee  Yes. My position is that the push for WTO-plus patent protection, particularly from the pharmaceutical industry, is basically a bottomless pit. They will never be satisfied unless governments—as I think your government is feeling now in the Canada-European negotiations—take a ver

International Trade committee  I haven't heard any inside reports. You're quite right, though, that there was a 90-day consultation period before Canada joined, and they didn't join until the end of the second round. I'm not privy to what may or may not have been agreed to during those two rounds. During tha

International Trade committee  They certainly can and they usually are. Even though documents are formally classified, they are usually more transparent than the TPP. They do tend to be circulated, and someone who has a strong interest in these matters can usually get access to the relevant texts. That's certa

International Trade committee  By DFAIT? No, not to my knowledge. There was a request for comments which was in the Gazette and open to everyone, but no, we haven't been expressly consulted.

International Trade committee  No, we haven't.

International Trade committee  As far as I know, the terms of entry letter was never published, but it was widely reported in a U.S. trade publication. The terms of entry for Canada and Mexico were similar and in my view quite unprecedented. Basically, as a condition of being admitted, Canada and Mexico agree

International Trade committee  Mr. Chair, I thank the committee for the invitation to participate. Today's trade and investment treaty negotiations no longer deal exclusively, or even primarily, with trade matters. They are increasingly about putting new types of restrictions on how governments and societies

International Trade committee  Yes, I can.

International Trade committee  You are missing something: the NAFTA chapter 11 experience. Take the S.D. Myers case, where Canada banned the cross-border transport of toxic waste, or the metal-clad case in Mexico, where the Mexican state regulated to control the siting of a toxic waste dump, and many other iss

International Trade committee  I just want to correct a comment. I said that complete tariff elimination would not provide much of a kick to the Canadian economy. I think that is undoubtedly true. I'm glad that you've raised the issue of jobs. There was a study done in 2009, before the fall of the euro again

International Trade committee  Sure. As a clarification on the enforcement of different aspects of the agreement, the investor state arbitration mechanism is used to enforce the investment chapter of the agreement, and the procurement provisions are normally enforced through a domestic administrative tribunal

International Trade committee  I think that the level of knowledge among certain municipal officials about this agreement is certainly very low. I was quite shocked to learn at the FCM convention in June in Halifax that City of Toronto councillors were not even aware if their procurement was about to be includ

International Trade committee  The demands made by the European Union for changes to our intellectual property rights protections, particularly in the area of drugs, would have very serious consequences for Canadian health care costs. The specific figure I cited and you repeated was in a study by Toronto- and