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dissimilarity of the two types of shirt, as this might have led to the news leaking that the Canadian Government were asking Hong Kong to exercise restraint on polyester/polynosic shirts.
(iii) Accusations of bad faith
Mr. Jordan strenuously denied the allegations of bad faith made by Mr. Rodney Grey at his meeting with Mr. Robin Gray on Friday, 30 May.
Mr. Howarth accepted Mr. Jordan's statement but said that while he realised that Mr. Jordan was not in possession of the information on Hong Kong polyester/polynosic shirt exports when he visited Ottawa last year, the Canadian authorities had rather expected Mr. Jordan to contact them after be had ascertained the position. Mr. Jorden said that this was not his understanding of the situation.
(iv) The general Canadian approach to low cost textile
imports
Mr. Howarth said that representations of both Canadian manufacturers and trade unions had seen the Frime Minister earlier in the year and had called on hia to impose global quotas on low cost textile imports including shirts. The Premier of Quebec had also written to the Prime Minister on the same lines in strong terms. The Canadian Government were against the introduction of global quotas. They had resisted the Stans initiative and in the recent U.S./Canadian talks in Washington had continued to resist the U.S. approach to the problem of low cost imports. The Canadian authorities believed that this range of problems should be tackled on a bilateral and not a multilateral basis. Unlike the U.S. Covernment, the Canadian Government accepted that the Canadian textile industry in general and the shirt industry in parti- cular would decline. What was essential was that any decline should take place in an orderly fashion and should not be too precipitate. If the Canadian Government were to be able to maintain their present position politically they had to be able to demon- strate that they could obtain results from importing countries when such results were really necessary. Ia the present case, shirt manufacturers had been slow to wake up to what was happening with regard to shirt imports into Canada in 1968. However, between January and March of this year Canadian shirt manu- facturers had become aware of the heavy inroads which low cost textile imports were making into their market and had brought heavy pressure to bear on the Govern- ment to take protective action. It was, therefore, politically imperative for the Canadian authorities to take action both against those countries which had failed to carry out their restraint agreements vis-à-vis shirts, and also with regard to countries such as Hong Kong, who were exporting polyester/ polynosic shirts to Canada under no restraint arrange- ments,
(v) Possible course of action
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Both Mr. Howarth and Mr. Jordan made it clear that they had no authority to negotiate. Mr. Howarth said that as the ball was in the Canadian court, he
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