ARCHIVED - Canadian International Trade Tribunal

• Federal Court of Appeal
• Binational panels under NAFTA
• Dispute settlement body, WTO Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes
• Federal Court

In its quasi-judicial role, the Tribunal inquires into trade-related complaints (i.e. dumping, subsidizing and safeguards) and complaints regarding federal government procurement. The Tribunal hears appeals from decisions of the Minister of National Revenue and the CBSA under the Excise Tax Act and the Customs Act respectively.

Planning Highlights: In order to achieve the expected result for its quasi-judicial role, the Tribunal plans to undertake the following activities:

• • Review of the Tribunal's Rules of Procedure: The Tribunal will undertake an extensive review of its Rules of Procedure in order to streamline proceedings, reduce the paper burden imposed on parties, and increase efficiency and transparency while preserving fairness and protection of confidential information. It is expected that this initiative, which will benefit from the input of the Tribunal's stakeholders, will contribute to the Tribunal's main objective of processing cases within legislative and internal deadlines, maintaining quality standards and making sound decisions.
• • Improving and Facilitating Access to the Tribunal's Records: One of the initiatives that the Tribunal will undertake is looking at ways of improving and facilitating access to the Tribunal's records without compromising the protection of confidential information. For example, the Tribunal is developing an E-ToolKit application that will allow counsel to have access to and to search the Tribunal's record via a secure Web-based application. In an effort to reduce the paper burden, the Tribunal is also exploring the possibility of distributing Tribunal records using alternative means, such as secure USB keys. These changes will be implemented progressively, in consultation with stakeholders.

In its advisory role, the Tribunal undertakes general economic inquiries and tariff references for the Minister of Finance or the Governor in Council.

Internal Services are groups of related activities and resources that are administered to support the needs of the program and other corporate obligations of an organization. These groups are: Governance and Management Support; Resources Management Services and Asset Management Services. Internal Services include only those activities and resources that apply across an organization and not to those provided specifically to a program.

The Tribunal's planning highlights for Internal Services include the following.

• • Recruitment and Staffing: In response to a high volume of trade, procurement and appeal cases, the Tribunal will have a larger workforce in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 than it currently has.
• • Professional Development: In 2010-2011, the Tribunal will focus both on the training of new employees and the development of existing employees. As well, a leadership training curriculum will be developed for current and potential managers at the Tribunal so as to retain the Tribunal's top management talent. There will also be another instalment of the Value and Ethics Workshop for the Tribunal staff, which will help to ensure that new and existing staff embrace the Tribunal's culture and core values.
• • Accountability and Transparency: In 2010-2011, the Tribunal will continue to address opportunities for improvement resulting from its MAF assessment and from the small departments' and agencies' horizontal audits.
• • Improve Efficiency and Reliability of Tribunal's Infrastructure: The Tribunal will continue to improve the efficiency and reliability of its IT infrastructure in 2010-2011 by adhering to the environmental virtualization of its servers to increase performance, stability, maintenance and the business continuity plan readiness of its network. Also, to improve instant messaging services to employees, the Tribunal will study the feasibility of implementing a collaborative software environment.