International Trade committee  I think it's less of an issue for CUSMA, but it could come up. Canada is not doing the right thing. We should take these responsibilities and these human rights violations very seriously.

International Trade committee  If the online streaming act and the digital services tax move forward, I fully expect action to happen before the 2026 review. I think the Americans will respond. The two pieces are slightly different. The online streaming act can trigger retaliation associated with the cultural exemption in a way that is different from the digital services tax.

International Trade committee  Canada will have to respond to the EV issue soon, probably sooner than the CUSMA review. When it comes to circumvention and port inspections, Canada is not doing enough. We can see that with things like enforcing the elimination of forced labour from our supply chains. There were concerns among the Americans during national negotiations regarding the transshipment of Chinese steel and aluminum through Canada.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Chair Sgro and committee members, for the invitation to be here today. I teach North American trade relations, and this is my primary area of research. I participate in a number of trilateral initiatives focused on North American trade, including those led by U.S. and Mexican partners.

Canada-China Relations committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. If the committee could take away the reality that trade diversification goes through the United States, I think that would be a good thing. As much as we seem to understand it, we constantly try to forget that reality. When we're trying to diversify trade, we must do it in a way that works for that primordial trading relationship.

Canada-China Relations committee  I do absolutely. I think we often forget the importance of demography and aging populations. China has an aging population. There's lots of commentary about how perhaps its economy has peaked. If you look at the aging demographic profile of China, that makes lots of sense. If you're looking at markets where we should be spending more time thinking, “This one is rising”, we should be thinking a lot more about Mexico, actually.

Canada-China Relations committee  You'll have lots of time, because it's straightforward for me. It's the CPTPP. I think one-off trade deals are a bad idea. I think that CPTPP is a first-gen agreement, meaning that it's a top agreement with high standards. We should want to trade with economies that can play at that level, and if they can't, I don't know why we want to pursue free trade agreements with them.

Canada-China Relations committee  I'm not sure we'll win that game, and I truly think that China will continue to import from Canada when it serves China's interest. At the moment, we're under the WTO's MFN tariffs. They're already quite low in most things. We could pursue some narrow sectoral trade arrangements.

Canada-China Relations committee  If there's evidence in certain specific regions where we know that forced labour is ubiquitous, then yes, I would say that adopting the negative list approach would be smart. It doesn't surprise me—and I think I'm familiar with the position of the Canadian government—that they don't want to do that, but I would agree with you that I think we need to grow up a bit.

Canada-China Relations committee  I'm familiar with the list, but I don't know how they developed it.

Canada-China Relations committee  Using their list or at least following a similar process could make a lot of sense. During the USMCA negotiations, an area of real dispute between Canada and the U.S. was the transshipment of Chinese steel. The United States had concerns that steel bound for the United States was coming in through Canada.

Canada-China Relations committee  I think it is obviously a moral issue but also an economic issue, and some of that is due to all the reasons we know. Modern-day slavery and forced labour are awful. For the countries that practise it, it also means that goods are cheaper in those places. For instance, in the world of critical minerals, much of the world's cobalt is harvested by enslaved children in Congo and other places in sub-Saharan Africa.

Canada-China Relations committee  I think we could be doing a number of things. One is that we have to be looking for problems, and that takes resources and money. Canada tends to adopt a reactive approach in that we rely on the reporting in voluntary attestations of what's in shipments. We take people's word for it that what they say is in the box is in the box.

Canada-China Relations committee  Absolutely. If we care about these things we should implement them well, but if we don't care about these things we should stop talking about them. That's my honest view.

Canada-China Relations committee  Some of this is beyond my expertise. I can certainly speak to the trade side of things and to some of the regulatory pieces. Having everyone sing from the same song sheet is helpful. This is across departments of government and across federal-provincial partnerships, and it includes municipalities and indigenous populations, ensuring that indigenous populations can benefit.