LIBERAL TRADE STRATEGY GETS REVIEW
Seeing pushback on ‘progressive trade agenda’
OTTAWA • With Canada’s “progressive trade agenda” meeting more apparent resistance from prospective trade partners than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intended, officials are now discussing how the strategy might be reworked, according to sources in the Canadian foreign affairs community.
“It boils down to our political masters to have a serious reflection on all of this,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, a former ambassador to China who confirmed to the National Post he is being consulted on the strategy and that a reckoning seems to be under way within the government. “There’s a need for an internal debate and maybe (to) make some revisions to the strategy. I think this is taking place now, so hopefully there will be progress in the next few weeks. There’s a bit of hard swallowing that is required.”
An insistence on prioritizing provisions related to gender, Indigenous issues, labour and the environment appears to have created hurdles in Canada’s three priority free trade negotiations: the launch of bilateral talks with China, the signing of a Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (renamed at Canada’s behest) and a renegotiation of the behemoth North American Free Trade Agreement.
In a statement Tuesday, the Chinese embassy’s spokesman Xiaozhong Zhu put it bluntly: While China values Canada as an important trade partner and “stands ready to negotiate and sign a free-trade agreement with the Canadian side at an early date,” it considers some issues to be off the table. “China always maintains that non-trade issues should not be brought in the FTA negotiation no matter in what kind of name, for it is not conducive to talks on the basis of equality and fairness,” Zhu said.
According to Saint-Jacques, when Trudeau visited Beijing in December Canada and China agreed to launch a free trade negotiation but failed to agree on the wording of the press release which would have announced it.
Despite having agreed to discuss labour issues before exploratory talks launched last year, China wouldn’t agree to include a specific reference to such issues in the release, Saint-Jacques said in an interview Tuesday. Had Canada not drawn such a hard line on the wording, diplomats could have found “creative language,” he said, to announce the two countries would discuss a range of progressive issues without explicitly referencing labour rights.
“I think that if the prime minister wants to stick to an explicit reference to labour rights, we won’t have negotiations — and in a way, then, that could have an impact on the bilateral relations because they will say, ‘Well, the Canadians are not serious and they should know better,’” he said. There is a need for a clearer game plan on how to actually achieve the kinds of progressive goals that Trudeau talks about publicly, Saint-Jacques added, without trying to impose views on other countries whose domestic situations make reforms difficult. “Otherwise I think it will remain an agenda that will be difficult to push,” he said.
With the 11-country CPTPP, Canada’s emphasis on getting a more progressive deal has been cited as one of the issues keeping it from endorsing the deal — although what is said to be a vague request for better cultural protections is the only issue actually being discussed at the moment. Mitsuru Myochin, an official from the Japanese headquarters for the TPP, said further meetings aimed at finalizing the deal have not yet been scheduled, but discussions have continued with Canadian officials over the cultural issue. Joseph Pickerill, a spokesman for Canada’s trade minister, said Monday “there is still some work to be done.”
Asked to comment on the idea that the government is rethinking its approach, Pickerill doubled down on the concept of progressive trade and called it a competitive advantage. “A progressive trade agenda opens more doors, raises standards and positions the middle class for success,” he said.
The prime minister told the Post on Tuesday that his agenda recognizes the benefits of trade must be widely shared. Responding to the notion that Canada’s trade partners aren’t buying it, he said, “But we feel that way. I’m not going to accept a bad deal just to get a deal, if I know it’s going to leave out workers and middle class Canadians.”
Several Japanese sources told the Post in December they were confused at what exactly Canada means by its request for more “progressive” trade. Japan’s ambassador to Canada, Kimihiro Ishikane, said last month that “progressive” is “a political word,” and that Japan is ready to talk when specific issues are laid out in concrete terms.
Carlo Dade, director of the trade and investment centre at the Canada West Foundation, noted that despite their differences, Japan and China share a similar view that “progressive” issues only belong in a free-trade agreement when they are directly tied to trade.
Dade argued that the government has neither defined what it means by “progressive trade” nor proposed concrete solutions to solve problems of inequality referenced by Trudeau. For example, he said, adding a chapter on gender to NAFTA is held up as one of the Canadian government’s negotiating priorities, but a similar chapter negotiated in the Canada-Chile free trade agreement contains no substantial, binding commitments.
“There’s more substance in a fluffernutter sandwich than there is in that damn thing,” Dade said. “The government is actually endangering the progressive agenda that they’re putting forward by making people think that all these wonderful things have been done, when jack all has been done.”
THERE’S MORE SUBSTANCE IN A FLUFFERNUTTER SANDWICH THAN THERE IS IN THAT DAMN THING.