Trade deal excites few Canadians

JUST ONE IN THREE ARE PLEASED WITH REPLACEMENT FOR NAFTA, ANGUS REID POLL SUGGESTS

There was a mood almost of elation when the federal government announced earlier this month it had finally reached a North American trade deal after months of high-pressure bargaining.

A new poll suggests those giddy feelings are not shared by the public.

Barely a third of Canadians are pleased with the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), while 45 per cent are disappointed, the Angus Reid Institute survey indicates. And half say that Canadian negotiators — who gave up greater U.S. access to dairy and poultry markets here, among other concessions — were overly soft in the talks, the poll concluded.

“Canadians are feeling significantly less euphoric about the pact than the government officials who negotiated it,” the polling organization said in a news release. The survey also indicates that Canadians’ views of the United States have diminished in the course of the trade talks, with the lowest favourability ratings for their southern neighbour since the 1980s.

About 49 per cent of those polled said they had a very or mostly favourable or opinion of the States, down from 62 per cent in June 2016.

The results suggest the trade deal is unlikely to be a winning issue for the Liberal government in next year’s federal election, though it’s unclear whether it will become an electoral liability.

Talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement began a year and a half ago at President Donald Trump’s request, with Mexico and the U.S. shaking hands on a new pact in late August after five weeks of two-way talks.

Canada reached an agreement in principle with the U.S. and Mexico late on Sept. 30, after a harried last few days of talks.

Canadian negotiators agreed to open more of the supply-managed dairy and poultry markets to American exports, extend the patent protection for certain prescription drugs by two years and change copyright rules at the behest of the Americans.

But they managed to preserve the “carve-out” from free-trade rules for cultural industries and kept NAFTA’S “chapter-19” system for resolving disputes over antidumping and anti-subsidy duties.

Asked for overall impressions about the deal, 34 per cent were either pleased or very pleased, while 45 per cent were disappointed or very disappointed. NDP and Conservative voters tended to be more disappointed than Liberals, according to the poll.

Close to 50 per cent of respondents felt the USMCA is worse than NAFTA, and only 18 per cent thought better.

As the talks unfolded over the last few months, the previous cross-partisan unity on the issue seemed to crumble, with opposition politicians criticizing how federal negotiators handled the talks.

Canadians as a whole share those misgivings, the poll suggests.

Asked about bargaining performance, 50 per cent said negotiators were “too soft/gave up too much” to get a deal, while 39 per cent thought they struck the right balance and 11 per cent that they were too tough and uncompromising.

The results were based on an online survey of 1,500 representative members of the permanent Angus Reid forum, a sample that would be considered accurate to within 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. it was