OTTAWA – The us government says the legal overview of Canada’s free trade cope with the European Union has been completed – and also the door is open for the pact to come into force the coming year.
An agreement in principle was reached around the comprehensive deal, known as CETA, in October 2013. Negotiations between Canada and the 28-member EU began in ’09.
The agreement was negotiated underneath the former Conservative government, but International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said Monday that the Liberals supported CETA while in opposition.
“This is really a gold-plated trade deal,” said Freeland, who added that CETA’s entry into force can give Canada use of a market of 500 million people.
“It is going to bring tremendous benefit to Canadians and also to Europeans. We will feel it all in a real rise in prosperity and I’m confident this really is likely to end up being the landmark trade agreement.”
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In making the announcement, Freeland pointed to modifications including changes that strengthen the best of governments to manage, including in areas such as labour and also the environment.
“In the 21st century, it’s right and appropriate to make clear in trade agreements the ability, and even the democratic responsibility, of governments to manage,” she said.
Modifications, she added, are also designed to permit a lasting dispute-settlement tribunal and an appeal system.
“The core perception of using a dispute-resolution process is not to supersede that to regulate – it’s to ensure that governments don’t discriminate against foreign investors,” Freeland said. “That is the core idea behind trade deals.”
Earlier this month, Canada’s chief negotiator Steve Verhuel told a parliamentary committee that Ottawa was dealing with the EU to revise controversial investor protection provisions in CETA.
Verhuel said Ottawa was exploring whether improvements might make the dispute-resolution mechanism more favourable to Canada.
The Europeans first raised the problem after political opposition surfaced in Europe in 2014 within the chapter that deals with settling disputes between companies and governments, known as ISDS.
Some European politicians and anti-trade activists have expressed concerns that the investor-state dispute settlement chapter will give big companies the power to file a lawsuit governments for creating regulations that affect their profits.
They have warned it might undermine the ability of countries to regulate environmental and health policies, amongst other things.
European officials, such as the EU ambassador to Canada, have said they didn’t see ISDS as an impediment to the pact’s implementation.
Freeland, who expects to sign the offer later this season, said she didn’t hear any opposition to CETA during consultations she held on it across the country.
She said there’s still time before next year’s ratification to look closely at the agreement to determine potential negative effects for some sectors and just how Ottawa can respond to them.
