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Results: 391 - 393 of 393
Diane Campbell
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Diane Campbell
2020-02-20 8:59
Thank you very much.
The Meteorological Service of Canada provides Canadians with authoritative information on weather, water quantity, ice conditions, air quality and other environmental conditions. We do this 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As Hilary said, we're poised to celebrate our 150th anniversary.
We also actively support the mission-critical operations of other entities. For example, we provide the weather services for our Department of National Defence, for the Canadian Coast Guard—particularly ice-related services—and for Canada's air navigation system. We also provide essential data to the provinces and territories to support their emergency management operations, including their government operations centres, as well as their provincial flood forecasting entities.
Canadians are avid consumers of weather data. About 90% of Canadians actively seek out weather data every day. For example, we issue thousands of products, and our weather website is visited about 50 million times per month. We launched a new service platform about a year ago: WeatherCAN is our weather app. We've had about a million downloads of that weather app since it was first introduced.
In addition to the products and services, we also make our data very widely available on some of our digital platforms.
I'll give you an example. On average, about 30 terabytes of data are downloaded every month. These are taken up by third parties, who either further distribute the data or create their own value-added products for their business purposes.
Partnerships are critical to our business. Weather doesn't stop and start in Canada, so the whole business model is based on international collection and sharing of data on a real-time basis. Every day, multiple times per day, there's a coordinated effort across the planet to launch weather balloons and to share the data in real time in a global telecommunications and information management system. Then we in Canada draw from that data in order to initialize our weather models.
In addition, back in Canada we work collaboratively at the local and regional levels with our provinces and territories. For example, for our water quantity program we manage more than 2,000 water quantity stations, where we measure the flow, the level of the water. That data is provided in almost real time to our provincial and territorial colleagues, who will then use the data to help predict floods and other hazardous conditions.
In order to deliver on this mandate, we run an integrated system, from the collection of the data all the way to the product and service delivery. It's based on a very large asset base of diverse monitoring equipment that includes weather radars, weather balloon launch stations, surface stations, water quantity stations, lightning detection systems, etc.
As a highlight, we're currently midway in a major project of replacement of our weather radars. We got an injection of funds in 2013. We have replaced 12 of our 30 radars and are on track to replace the rest.
The next part of the value chain is based on high-performance computing. We have one of the most powerful computers in Canada, one of the top 100 computers globally. It processes vast amounts of data every day. We run a top-tier global forecasting model—we're among the top five performers on the globe. Two years ago, we completed a replacement project of the current high-performance computing system. We've replaced it and we've done our first upgrade.
The performance of high-performance computing systems is pretty integral to how well weather models perform globally. The top-tier weather centres are always in the mode of planning the next supercomputer replacements. It's a small-knit community. We track each other's performance but also track the ability of the vendors to respond to our needs.
Finally, part of the chain is our experts, our meteorologists. Once we have the guidance from our computer models, our meteorologists take that guidance and issue the products every day, and that includes specialized products and services.
Overall in the meteorological service, we have about 1,400 employees, who are distributed in 50 centres across Canada. If we focus just on the weather business, though, there are about 300 meteorologists, focused in seven regionally based storm prediction centres. Then we have some additional specialized services for aviation, defence, etc.
We're very pleased to be here. The reason we exist is basically that extreme weather presents extremely high impacts to the global economy, and that's the same in Canada. The World Economic Forum recently identified that the highest risk, the most likely risk, is extreme weather. In Canada, the costs of disasters such as floods and fires are extremely high, so our focus is on improving the services, delivering more early warning information and having longer lead times to help Canadians and their institutions prepare for extreme weather.
Thank you.
Catherine Cobden
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Catherine Cobden
2020-02-18 17:26
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Catherine Cobden. I'm the president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association and it's my honour to share the perspectives of our members on Bill C-4, an act to implement the agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico.
I'm here today representing member companies, which produce approximately 15 million tonnes of steel pipe and tubular products annually and support 123,000 direct and indirect jobs in five provinces, from Saskatchewan through to Quebec.
Canada's steel sector plays a strategically important role in the North American economy. We are advanced manufacturers of 100% recyclable and enduring product. We are a critical supplier to other key Canadian and North American sectors, including the automotive, energy and construction sectors and many other general manufacturing applications. We're also a sector that knows first-hand how critical it is for our business success to have strong and productive relationships between Canada and the United States and Mexico.
We operate in a highly integrated marketplace with steel moving back and forth across the Canada, U.S. and Mexico borders as it is transformed into additional products. In this capacity, we thank you all for this agreement and we welcome it wholly. We urge all members of the House of Commons and the Senate to support this bill and ratify it without delay. We see immediate advantages of the new agreement that strengthen NAFTA in several important ways both for our country and certainly for our steel sector. The agreement also creates more certainty in our markets, a much needed and necessary condition for driving increased investment.
Now let me step you through some of the key advantages for steel that we see in this new agreement.
First, the automotive rules of origin incentivize the use of Canadian and North American steel. This means that more North American steel will be used over foreign, non-North American steel. It sounds obvious but it deserves to be said. The new requirement for a 70% North American steel content is a significant gain for the North American steel sector. NAFTA did not have any such provision, so that's a significant development.
Today the North American automotive sector is a valued customer for our technically advanced and high-quality steel, with approximately 25% to 30% of all Canadian steel supplying this sector. That equates to about three million to four million tonnes annually. This is an extremely important development for us and for our steel industry colleagues in the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed, we were quite engaged working together on this and other aspects of this agreement.
Furthermore, the increased North American value content requirements for vehicles and vehicle parts are also important and improve the original NAFTA agreement significantly. As Jean has already mentioned, in some cases it has moved the content requirement from 62% to roughly 75%, which is a tremendous increase.
In the case of steel, we also welcome additional definitions coming into effect in seven years' time that strengthen the rules of origin by ensuring North American sourcing. This is important for our sector. We face severe global overcapacity. It's severe. The OECD estimates that approximately 440 million tonnes of excess capacity exists globally. This excess capacity equates to about 30 times the entire Canadian production. That's steel out there that's looking for a home, that's trying to cross both the Canadian and the North American borders.
Beyond the rules of origin, I want to point out that the new agreement also improves market access for Canadian steel and allows the use of effective trade remedies against unfairly traded imports. That overcapacity, which I mentioned, often results in unfair and injurious trade practices.
The new agreement contains important provisions that will promote increased co-operation and information sharing between North American governments to address circumvention and the evasion of trade remedy orders. This is critical for us. This increased co-operation is essential for the North American steel marketplace because we face a relentless flow of unfairly traded goods due to the global overcapacity I mentioned.
I remind the committee that last May we celebrated the establishment of the Canada-U.S. understanding on trade that resulted in the lifting of the very damaging tariffs on Canadian steel. This did not come easily to our nation, but it came as we worked as one against the difficult tariff situation. For us, CUSMA takes us further along the path of working with our North American trading partners on what we refer to as the principle of a North American perimeter to trade that strengthens the competitiveness of the North American region, that addresses global steel overcapacity and that aims to deal more readily with unfairly traded steel imports.
Madam Chair, please let me end with a call to all, once again, to come together as team Canada, as you have deftly done in the past, and get this deal done as quickly as possible, with my thanks.
I'm happy to take questions.
Carlo Dade
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Carlo Dade
2020-02-18 13:00
Good afternoon.
Madam Chair and committee members, before I start, I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before you in order to present some viewpoints from the west. They are not just about NAFTA, because everyone is well aware of how important it is.
Instead, I'd like to talk about some of the things that need to be considered in our framework for understanding the agreement and in going ahead as the committee debates and, indeed, as the country looks on and debates participation in the new agreement.
The Canada West Foundation, as I'm sure the committee is well aware, was created 50 years ago to lend a voice to the western provinces, to facilitate the participation of the west and to facilitate the contributions of the west to the making of a strong Canada. A strong west is a strong Canada, and today, 50 years later, we realize that some of those debates have never gone away, and the Canada West Foundation remains engaged in them.
We are also one of the organizations most implicated on the trade file, given the importance of trade for the west. You will have seen our work on issues such as Bill C-69. Before it was a national issue, Canada West was there. You will have seen our work in forming the changes to the legislation.
On trade, we modelled the impact of the trans-Pacific partnership trade agreement on the Canadian economy before the federal government did. We continue this advance work. We are modelling the impact of the CPTPP on our trade infrastructure. Even though the government did this for CETA and has chosen not to do it for the CPTPP, the Canada West Foundation has stepped up to do this because of the importance of the agreement for the country, not just for the west.
On NAFTA, I have three points to consider quickly. These lead to my recommendations for action, about which I won't go into detail, because you have them in writing.
First is the rush toward normalcy in thinking about our relations with the Americans simply because we have an agreement. We have seen, time and time again, from the election of Donald Trump through his handling of diplomacy to his conduct of trade, a complete destruction and remaking of how the U.S. does foreign policy, diplomacy and trade policy.
Let me give you one example with this agreement itself. It's usually the process, with a trade agreement, to improve conditions of trade. Parties agree that there are things that can be done to improve conditions of trade, and they agree to meet, either starting from scratch or building on an agreement. We did this in North America. We updated the North American trade agreement to modernize it, to bring it into the 21st century, to take care of labour issues and intellectual property. We had a win-win situation, where all parties made concessions, and all parties were happy with the results. When Donald Trump came in, that was ripped up and we were told that win-win no longer works; what works is “I win, you lose.” Starting from this point is unprecedented in trade negotiations. We had no choice, and the government did the best it could—I think the best that anyone could. Hats off to the government for the job it did under those very difficult circumstances.
That is just one indication of how upended the world in which we are now trying to function is on the trade front. We see the U.S attacking the World Trade Organization. We can't proceed with our old ways of thinking, or our old frameworks, when looking at this agreement. Every witness you have has to tell how the agreement, and their interpretation, fits into this new reality.
Let me give you one example of something we are worried about. Yes, we have an agreement, and Brian is absolutely right: for those areas where the President does not pay attention, or pull the rug out from under us, or change the rules, the agreement will work. It is much better than not having an agreement. The modelling of the trade agreement done by others shows that the agreement is a net economic welfare loss for all three countries. The only thing worse is not having an agreement, which is an even greater economic and GDP welfare loss. I suggest you call in Dan Ciuriak, the modeller here in Ottawa. He does the modelling for Canada West. He used to work for Foreign Affairs. He can fill you in on the details of the modelling. That's a conversation I would strongly urge you to have, to get to the bottom of the modelling numbers and what they show.
Moving on to the statutory authority of the President, we have never seen a president exercise the four or five statutory provisions that the president has to manage trade. These are provisions delegated to the president from Congress.
We saw the steel and aluminum tariffs, Canadian steel and aluminum declared a national security threat. This is not the worst of what the President can do. There is more.
At the end of May, we woke up to see the following from the White House, and this is the White House statement:
As everyone knows, the United States of America has been invaded by hundreds of thousands of people coming through Mexico.... Mexico's passive cooperation...constitutes an emergency and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.... To address the emergency...I am invoking the authorities...[in] the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Accordingly, starting on June 10, 2019 [less than a week after this announcement was made], the United States will impose a 5 percent Tariff on all goods imported from Mexico.... If the crisis persists...the Tariffs will be raised to 10 percent on July 1 [basically three weeks or 21 days later].... Tariffs will be increased to 15 percent on August 1, 2019, to 20 percent on September 1, 2019, and to 25 percent on October 1, 2019.
This is the threat that hangs over us should the President decide to ignore the rules and use the statutory power he has. This is something that really needs to be taken into consideration. We need to realize that the signing of the agreement is not the end of our fight on trade with the Americans and trade in North America. It's not even the end of the first period.
This is going to be a long-term game. We are going to have to step up the extraordinary efforts we made to build alliances in the States to prevent this type of situation. We do not fight this in Ottawa with the ambassador. We fight this in Boise. We fight this in Springfield. We fight this in Sacramento. We fight this at the state level where premiers work with our counterparts as governors, and MLAs work with their counterparts at state legislatures. It's imperative that we not drop the ball and think of this as mission accomplished.
The second point, very quickly, is that there are parts of this agreement that I think we really don't understand. I would highlight article 32.10, the article dealing with negotiating with non-market countries. The provision itself isn't problematic. We announce when we are going to negotiate and we have to share as much text as we think is possible—these are not onerous or unusual provisions.
But what is a non-market country? What did we agree to when we agreed that we would give the Americans these powers with non-market countries? We think it's China, but the Americans have a list of 11 countries—10 plus China. Who else is on that list? Well, Vietnam was on that list, and we dodged a bullet by getting the TPP done with Vietnam before the Americans were able to use this for mischief. Again, I would urge the committee to look at article 32.10. Do we fully understand it? Can the government fully explain it?
Regarding cultural exemptions, we've granted the Americans the right to impose countervailing duties should we invoke our abilities under the cultural exemptions. Michael Geist just had a long piece on this. I would urge you to call Michael, Wesley Wark and others, to really go into that.
As for the points I raise in the recommendations, we have to help the provinces do their job in terms of defending our interests in the States. During the negotiations, the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister asked the provinces to do more. They stepped up.
The government gave money to ACOA to help the Atlantic provinces do more vis-à-vis the States. We haven't gotten the same in the west, and the west could really use the support. In a time of financial constraints, in a time of budget cuts, we are being asked to do more, and we don't have the resources, so we really could use the feds to step up.
There are also possibilities to engage the Americans on a bilateral basis for things that we couldn't do with the Mexicans at the table. The greatest failure of this agreement was not to advance provisions for moving business people. We can engage the Americans bilaterally, especially at the state-provincial, the regional level.
In terms of an infrastructure bank, the infrastructure idea is one where the Americans really need help. We can step forward and offer them help, and in so doing create a permanent institution with the Americans to avoid the vicissitudes of political changes and the changing political climate, and have a permanent institution focused on the North American border.
I will leave it there for questions.
Thank you very much.
Results: 391 - 393 of 393 | Page: 27 of 27

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