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A handful of Manitoba business leaders made their case for an improved free trade agreement to top U.S. trade officials Tuesday.
Paul Soubry, an adviser with New Flyer, said it was “serendipitous” that Manitoba’s first meeting with senior trade officials in years happened the same day Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc met with his American counterpart.
Manitoba’s U.S. trade representative, Richard Madan, organized the meeting.
“The fact that Manitoba was at the table telling Manitoba’s story on the same day the federal minister will be at the table telling the federal story — everything aligned today,” Madan said in an interview.
“We really did leave [the meeting] very encouraged.”
The six-person group, which also included Keystone Agricultural Producers’ Jill Verwey and Manitoba Pork’s Cam Dahl, had 45 minutes of face time with U.S. trade officials.
Soubry said their delegation heard the Americans’ trade beefs but also drove home the province’s value to the U.S. economy.
For example, he pointed to his own experience at New Flyer, a bus manufacturer headquartered in Winnipeg.
“We buy a dramatic amount of U.S.-sourced components that we then put in products that are put in U.S. buses, but also that come into Canada,” said Soubry, who recently retired as president but is now an adviser for the company.
The meeting comes as Canada looks to renew its trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico.
High on the agenda of the federal government in Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement talks is getting relief from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the Americans have shown no willingness to remove them.
Given CUSMA is coming up for review on July 1, Madan said the timing of Manitoba’s meeting is helpful.
The provincial delegation hopes for more opportunities to make their case.
“We have now direct relationships at that senior level … that welcomed us to come back or to continue to communicate our story with them,” Soubry said.
Last week, the province published Madan’s report examining what 118 Manitoba business, labour and Indigenous groups want from the pending CUSMA review.
Unsurprisingly, the report found stakeholders hope to maintain tariff-free trade. It also said participants warned sudden trade changes, such as the imposition of new tariffs, “were repeatedly identified as more damaging than the existence of tariffs themselves,” creating an environment of delayed investment.
- Manitoba setting up India office for representative tasked with boosting trade
- Manitoba passed its Buy Canadian law a year ago. It still isn’t in effect.
Within the heavy vehicles sector, the report says there’s a worry some firms might relocate to the U.S.
The document also states rules of origin — a set of standards that determine how much of a good is produced in North America and could qualify as tariff-free — can be difficult to identify and result in costly fixes.
Participants also want CUSMA modernized to reflect advances in digital trade and artificial intelligence, and improvements at the Canada-U.S. border to ease delays affecting the flow of goods and personnel, the report indicates.
