Premiers hope for quick NAFTA deal

WASHINGTON (CP) — Canada’s premiers left a series of meetings in Washington expressing hope that the upcoming renegotiation of NAFTA will be quick and relatively pain-free, rather than a drawn-out bargaining slugfest.

Eight provincial and territorial leaders were in town for meetings this week with U.S. administration officials, lawmakers, and business as they gathered insights on the upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement talks.

Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne said she came away encouraged. She said heard a prevailing desire for a lighter touch, with upgrades aimed at modernizing the deal with provisions on newer industries like data services.

Some of those adjustments had already been worked out in the ill-fated Trans-Pacific Partnership, which included chapters on things like cloud computing and biologics medicines that weren’t an issue in the 1993 NAFTA. Now the U.S. says it wants to recycle some of those elements in NAFTA and other agreements.

“I would say that overall, the quicker, less comprehensive review is what people are looking at. I don’t mean by that that there wouldn’t be a lot of detail because there always is in these negotiations,” Wynne said in an interview.

“But I think everyone I spoke to felt there was a way through this negotiation that would not overturn everything in the agreement ... I think there’s a hope that we can move through this pretty efficiently, improve what’s there, add what's missing.”

The U.S. strategy will become clearer when it publishes its negotiating priorities this summer.