SINT Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE, TRADE DISPUTES AND INVESTMENT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

SOUS-COMITÉ DU COMMERCE, DES DIFFÉRENDS COMMERCIAUX ET DES INVESTISSEMENTS INTERNATIONAUX DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 30, 1997

• 0913

[Translation]

The Clerk of the Subcommittee: The first item on the agenda is the election of a chairman for the subcommittee.

[English]

I am prepared to receive motions to that effect. Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): I place into nomination the name of Mr. Speller.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau (Repentigny, BQ): Agreed.

[English]

The Clerk: Is there any other nomination?

Mr. Robert D. Nault (Kenora—Rainy River, Lib.): I move that nominations be closed.

The Clerk: Thank you.

It has been proposed by Mr. Reed and seconded by Mr. Sauvageau that Mr. Speller take the chair of the subcommittee.

(Motion agreed to)

The Clerk: Congratulations.

The Chairman (Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, Lib.)): Thank you, colleagues.

A voice: That's two nominations in two days.

The Chairman: Yes, two nominations in two days. I'm on a roll. Maybe I should run for prime minister or something.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

The Chairman: Colleagues, you have an agenda before you. One thing I'm going to do, though, before we move on, is other business.

Mr. Sauvageau.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Mr. Chairman, you have no doubt noticed during the last Parliament and will probably notice during our coming work that the Bloc Québécois likes to be well informed before discussing any matter tabled before the subcommittee for its consideration.

As the subcommittee's title is the Subcommittee on international trade, trade disputes and investment, it will probably be called upon to examine other matters either after or during, if we have the time to do so, our examination of the MAI agreement.

• 0915

There's one matter I hold dear and I'd like to ask our researchers if it would be possible before examining this question to prepare documents, studies and do some research. It's the examination process used by the International Trade Tribunal.

I don't know if you noticed, but it seems to me there's something like disinformation—but maybe we're the ones making the mistake—concerning the process to be used to lay a complaint before the International Trade Tribunal. There seem to be two routes. The first one seems to be where a business feeling aggrieved by an international agreement, like the Canada-Israel agreement, for example, after calling upon the services of the Minister for International Trade, gets the answer that to respect the process the International Trade Tribunal must become involved. A parallel route seems to be the one where a business who has information and wants to lay a complaint can go directly to the Department.

I'd like us to examine this here in our committee. The exact process that a business, whatever the province of origin, must go through to lay a complaint before the International Trade Tribunal when there is a trade disagreement. Must the business go before the International Trade Tribunal or can it avoid the tribunal and go through the Department? I think everyone will agree to examine this very important issue to obtain clarification. Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chairman: Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Penson (Peace River, Ref.): Mr. Chairman, the subcommittee from the last Parliament did some work on this and some good information was placed before the committee. I suggest we distribute that. I think it's pretty well covered in terms of the process.

The Chairman: Yes. In fact, the minutes of the full committee of last week say that this issue be deemed referred to this committee. So it's on the agenda.

But I would like to take some time to go through what we should be looking at over the next six months or so in order to give our researchers time to look into it and bring us up to date. Maybe I could ask Gerry to put together a document for us outlining some of the issues we may want to look at. At a future meeting we could then decide what we're going to do after our MAI study.

Is that agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Through you, Mr. Chairman, could I ask Jerry if in this study, that will certainly be on a par with the other excellent studies, he could more specifically consider the case of the Shan industry which seems directly concerned by the Canada-Israel free trade agreement, especially in the area of textiles? Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Okay. That's something he can look at, and we'll bring it forward later.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Ms. Folco will certainly be interested, because it's in Laval.

Ms. Raymonde Folco (Laval West, Lib.): Yes.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: We were talking about a business in your area, the one called Shan.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Yes. Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Colleagues, you have in front of you a letter from the minister. You also have an extract from the foreign affairs committee, which has sent the whole issue of MAI to us. You should also have a work plan that was drafted by the clerk of the committee and a résumé of a professor that we'll want to look at in terms of somebody who will look after the research for and the writing of any report that we have.

Before we start, does everybody have all those documents? You should also have a list of witnesses proposed by the staff.

• 0920

What I want to do today is to go through this work plan to get your ideas on how we might approach this subject of the MAI and to encourage you to get to us as soon as possible the list of witnesses you want to see in this study.

Mr. Sauvageau.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: We also had a quick look at the witness list when it was given to us. I know that this isn't the time to look at all the witnesses in detail, but the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association which led to the dead end seems to be missing. I'd also like to give you, for the section concerning cultural matters, a list of participants that we would suggest be consulted. Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chairman: Am I going too quickly for colleagues if I ask that we get your lists by Friday? Is that fine? Is that agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Done. When we get those lists we can start contacting people.

Are there comments on the work plan in terms of the timing?

Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): I'm not sure what it is you want us to comment on in terms of the work plan. During the week of, for instance, November 17 to November 27, you have a whole list of experts. Is it a proposal to hear all these people?

The Chairman: As many as possible, yes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Okay.

Mr. Jerry Schmidt (Committee Researcher): I would just say that they may not all be available, or available at the time. The list will get longer, I'm sure, but the time is very limited, so it'll be a matter of how many can be heard.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: It seems to me that one week looks a lot fuller than the other.

The Chairman: There isn't a lot that can be done next week. We are running into time schedule problems there. As well, we wanted to leave room for colleagues' suggested witnesses. We have to slot them into this process, too.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Fine. I'm just trying to nail down the process. If we put in some more names, do they get added to the list?

Mr. Jerry Schmidt: It's how long we are prepared to meet, I guess.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Some of the people I had in mind are on this list already, obviously. I have a half-dozen in mind. It's not a long list.

The Chairman: What we will do is go through the whole list. If we can fit everybody into the schedule, then we will fit them in. If we can't, we'll come back to you to make sure your specific requests are included on the list.

Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Penson: I've submitted a list as well. There are a few missing, obviously—the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council on National Issues, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

What's the process? Are we adding those to the end? Does the list just keep going? How do we fit them in?

Mr. Jerry Schmidt: To some extent the Chamber of Commerce and BCNI are all members of this Canadian Council for International Business, so the idea there was to have a kind of business- and labour-type panel. It might take three hours, something like that. Then it's a matter of how many you can hear at the same time, because there are a lot of others who also want to appear.

It could be a bit of a juggling act in terms of scheduling to get all the people together, but we don't have a lot of time.

Mr. Charlie Penson: I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we should make this representative.

The Chairman: We can deal with this either in terms of bringing in a whole long list of witnesses, hearing them all, then trying to focus on all of these issues afterward, or we can do it thematically, too. Perhaps one day we'll bring in a whole number of witnesses in terms of culture, for instance. Culture is clearly an area where we could have a round table with a number of witnesses on that specific issue. At the same time, we could have days where we have the main groups that have concerns about this, or have an opinion on it that may not be thematic.

Some groups are going to be broadly across the board on very many issues, but there'll be some issues—and culture is a good example—where you'll want maybe a round table for part of the day on culture.

• 0925

Sarm.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale—High Park, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, as we're talking about culture, an issue the heritage committee wanted to look at as well was whether it would be appropriate or whether the committees would consider having a joint committee of both heritage and this committee on that day.

The Chairman: That's something we can look into, certainly.

Comments?

Mr. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, PC): There is one difficulty with having a theme for a day and focusing on culture. I found with finance committee meetings last week, when we were doing pre-budget consultations, that if you have a group that represents a particular mindset it really doesn't create an environment within which to have a discussion between the witnesses about resolving some of their own differences. I find the quality of discussion is much better when you have witnesses from different perspectives—someone from culture and someone from business. It creates a more effective forum for discussion.

The Chairman: Bill.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I just assumed we were going to have days with particular themes and within those themes we might have conflicting points of view. I don't think the idea, if we have a day on culture, is to try to make sure we have somebody within that theme who takes a different view from what we might expect is predictable in other groups. So I don't think we need to breach categories if we're going to have a thematic day in order to get debate. Surely there must be people on the business side of culture who would take a different view from somebody else.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: In the short period of time you have it will be difficult to get the people here, never mind trying to set them up in certain categories on certain days. I think you'd be better off to just find out who's interested. Even though we have a very nice-looking list here, half of those people won't even want to come because of the short notice. This is not a simple subject to just walk in here and have a conversation about.

We could probably assume that a number of these people will not want to appear and we can fit the ones in who are not on the list. We'll have to leave it up to you and the staff to try to fit them in based on when they're available.

It would be nice to have at least one round table and build it near the end with the prominent experts from different sides of the coin—labour and others—and then we could have a serious round table. I don't think it would be workable to do it almost every day, nor would it succeed. If we could do one at the end it would be a pretty good thing and we could have them really give it to us full bore that day.

Based on past experience, I'm sure other members would agree it's not going to be easy at this short notice to get all these folks excited and pumped up about coming.

The Chairman: Bill.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I think Bob has good idea. It is something that crossed my mind as well. Maybe the best we can hope for is to hear as many people as possible, and at the end ask those who most impressed us, on different sides of the issue or whatever, if they could come back near the end for a final round table where we could have a real set-to. That might help us write our report.

The Chairman: Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Penson: I don't have difficulty with that, except I think we need to hear from some of the expert witnesses up-front so it sets the tone and generates food for thought for some of the questions we'll be asking.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: As for culture and the MAI problems, we'd have to see which is the most important question. I agree with Ms. Bulte who says that we could look at the possibility of holding a joint meeting with the Canadian Heritage Committee. Perhaps we could also think about having a specific day on culture if the number of witnesses justifies this.

• 0930

But I think that we should focus on the most sensitive point of this agreement. As Ms. Bulte has said, we should be looking at a special day to discuss it.

[English]

Mr. Charlie Penson: The difficulty with that is, where do you stop? Do we have a special day and a joint session with industry, with agriculture, or environment? That's the trouble we get into. I think we can cover it without having to go to a joint meeting with heritage.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: It seems to me there are certain links between heritage and culture, and that is why I thought it was important to invite them.

It is the MAI, yes.

[English]

Mr. Bill Blaikie: When we look at the environment, Benoît, environment and industry are very closely linked.

Mr. Charlie Penson: Industry is the biggest user of investment capital. We could have a day with them, too.

Mr. Scott Brison: Regional economic development is affected.

[Translation]

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Of course, we could go looking for a lot of other departments and other committees. However, a request has been presented and is before us. This request comes from one committee, but that does not mean that other committees will ask for the same thing. People say that if one person or group does something, then all the others will do the same thing. In my opinion, this is not a serious enough argument. The request before us is clear and I think we need to react to this request without thinking about other hypothetical requests that are not even on the table.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Nault.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, maybe I could just propose to the committee that you talk to the chairman of the other committee to see whether in fact what we're being told is in fact reality. I've not found in this place too many chairmen who tend to be overly capable of working with each other in setting up these joint committees. I haven't seen too many joint—

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: —let me finish. If in fact that's true, before we all get carried away, maybe you could come back to us with some sort of work plan on that particular issue. But again, I caution, as Mr. Blaikie has, you can go a long way down the road here. We don't have a lot of time. If you want to start playing around with these joint groups, we're going to have enough trouble just getting these witnesses in here within this short period of time, in three weeks.

So if you want to start being fancy about having all these different meetings with co-groups and this and that, we're not going to get anything done here. I would leave it to you to go and have a discussion and see whether it's even workable. If it is, then let's see the work plan and see where we go.

The Chairman: Do you want to comment on this?

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Let me to respond to that. I was asked by the committee to come here to bring this up. This was something I was asked to bring together. If the feeling of the committee is that you don't, then the heritage committee will conduct its own witnesses on the MAI.

With all due respect, I think we're just wasting a lot of time of two committees. If the consensus is that this committee doesn't want to do it, notwithstanding the fact that the Government of Canada has said outright that culture is not negotiable, and we want to put it in the same thing as everything else, then that's a decision.

But I bring it as a representative here of the heritage committee. I can go next door and convey that to the committee so that they can get on with their own work.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Colleagues, I don't see a consensus yet on it. What I will do is see what I can work out over the next week and come back to you on it.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: I am a little surprised by the remarks of Mr. Robert Nault when he says that we will leave it up to the chairman. On the weekend of September 20, we were in Quebec City, and Ms. Folco was there I believe, at the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Americas. You were there, were you not, Madam?

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Yes, I was.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: All weekend, people talked to us about the importance of the role of parliamentarians, especially in international agreements. Today, we have a very simple decision to make that will allow us to maximize the time, economize witnesses and facilitate understanding of the key point which is the impact of culture on the MAI. Parliamentarians have a decision to make, and Mr. Nault is telling us that, as a parliamentarian, he does not want to make a decision and that he is leaving that to the chairman. I am very surprised because I think that our role is important and that we are here to make decisions.

• 0935

The chairman of the Heritage Committee, who is most likely a Liberal, is asking a Liberal member to ask our subcommittee, which has a Liberal majority, to accept a Liberal decision. What is strange is that the Bloc members would be ready to accept this because it is an important decision. I do not see why we should abdicate one of our powers, which is to make decisions.

[English]

Mr. Robert D. Nault: I want to make one comment. I don't know whether in fact I was very clear. What I had said was, I think we should explore the issue, but before we get all excited about it, let's not make culture the number one issue and highjack all the other items we are trying to deal with in a very short period—

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Probably you need to study the—

The Chairman: Colleagues, I don't see a consensus yet. We can work on this later. I do want to move on, though, in terms of time to deal with the issue of a researcher.

I'll turn to Jerry on this one.

Mr. Jerry Schmidt: The proposal would be to...in addition to some support that can be provided through the parliamentary research branch, but some of us are divided and conflicted and doing a number of other things. Given the intensity, scope and complexity of this study and the timeframe, it's thought advisable to bring in someone who would have a certain authority in the field and who could be a full-time adviser to the subcommittee for the period of this study.

I've approached Christopher Maule, a very distinguished person in the field, a former director of the School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He is on the sectoral advisory group on international trade for cultural industries. He has published very widely on multilateral investment issues.

The short form of the CV is before you, but there are about 14 pages of international publications that I didn't think necessarily would be required to be translated. He is very highly regarded in the field. He is based here in Ottawa, and he is also up to speed and available to the subcommittee.

I think another advantage is that he has an open mind on a number of these issues. He is going to be in a position to provide expert advice without coming in with a particularly hard position. I think that is also in his favour. We've discussed amounts, given the seniority of this person, but the ballpark figure—and I've discussed this with the chair, Mr. Graham, as well—would probably come in about $15,000 over the six weeks, which I think is a fairly reasonable amount.

The Chairman: Colleagues, what I'm asking for is your agreement to engage Mr. Maule and to go to the standing committee for a budget for this committee. Is it agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Colleagues, that's it in terms of agenda matters. In terms of the hearings—you have the list before you—I will work with the clerk and the researchers to get as many witnesses in as we can in that time period.

In terms of whether or not we have joint committee hearings with other committees, I will talk to other chairs of committees to see if there is any interest. For instance, if it's just the culture committee I would suggest we just go and do a day on it in that period. If it is just the one committee, then I would suggest we take a few hours at one point, invite them to come to this committee, and just move ahead with it.

Mr. Charlie Penson: Will we just be meeting committee to committee? Is that what you're expecting?

The Chairman: No. We will be adding a committee. I will invite members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to come to our committee just to hear witnesses that day.

• 0940

Mr. Charlie Penson: We have the cultural sector coming in also.

The Chairman: Yes, the day we have the cultural sector. Is that agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: The more friends that are with us, the more fun we have.

The Chairman: That's right.

Okay, colleagues, is there any other business?

Mr. Scott Brison: I have a couple of comments, Mr. Chairman.

Just to reiterate what Bill said, if we are going with one day on culture, I think every effort should be made to try to get the divergence of opinions at the table. Again, I found that the finance committee was poorly served when we had a group of panellists one day who would be completely alarmist about what the government was doing, and then in the afternoon we'd have a group of panellists who thought deficit reduction was wonderful and that the government was doing a great job. Very little was gained.

So if we have some joint interaction with, say, heritage on this, and we have a group of cultural alarmists or Luddites in one presentation—

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Scott Brison: No, no. If it is from one perspective, it might give a slant to the—

An hon. member: I don't care for that. Don't stereotype.

Mr. Scott Brison: Hypothetically, if that were to occur—

The Chairman: Colleagues, we're not—

Mr. Scott Brison: —we would get a slant to this that wouldn't be necessarily reflective of all the witnesses that we would be hearing.

The Chairman: Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Penson: Mr. Chairman, I certainly hate to belabour this, but I just wonder how this is going to work. Here we have a committee of twelve or so people. We're going to have another twelve in on that day. We have precious little time to question these witnesses to begin with, and now we're going to have a sector that's sort of pro-culture asking culture questions from that perspective.

We struck a committee to study this matter, and I think it's our job to do it. I'm happy to have witnesses from the cultural industries coming here before us, but it concerns me that all of a sudden we're going to have another twelve people in here diluting our time. I think it's the wrong approach to take, and I would be very much opposed to it.

The Chairman: Bill.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: While I have that concern about time, I'm not concerned that they're pro-culture. I hope we're all pro-culture. I mean, if some of us are against culture, we could put that on the record.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I'm just saying that I share Charlie's concern about time, if not about culture. If the heritage committee is going to come, they're welcome to come in to listen to the witnesses, but it's this committee that should be able to question the witnesses. Otherwise, our time for questioning the witnesses is going to be severely diluted. I don't think that's right, because we're the ones who have to write the report, so we're the ones who want to be able to ask the questions.

The Chairman: Ben.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: I have a modest suggestion: if we have time, if we have twice as many people, we can put twice as much time in.

[English]

The Chairman: In terms of my history in these joint meetings, generally you don't get everybody in here from the other committee, so you generally don't really run out of time for questioning. Maybe what we could do is put it at the end of the day. We could time it so that we might have an extra ten to twenty minutes in order to allow other members of the House to question.

I understand what you're saying in terms of it maybe being a big group and that you're not going to get time, but I just don't think that'll be the case. I just think—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: You're not going to hear everybody at once, right? So if you just stick them at the end of the day, they're only going to be able to question the witnesses that you have at the end of the day, unless you're having a day-long round. There are problems with this.

The Chairman: I know, and I'm trying to come to some kind of consensus in the group. I understand that there are—

Mr. Charlie Penson: We have other commitments as well, Mr. Chairman, besides this committee. We can't be taking the whole day every day for our meetings. You're not going to get people showing up to all of these meetings, because we have other things to do.

The Chairman: I don't see a consensus here in terms of joining with other committees. I'm trying to do what I can in terms of allowing the other committee to come in. I'm going to withdraw my suggestion, because there just isn't the consensus here for that. We'll just move ahead as this committee in looking at these issues.

Anything else, colleagues?

We stand adjourned.